The Louvre Conservation Center, located in Liévin (20 miles or so southwest of Lille), “has six storage areas, including dry, low-humidity areas for metalworks, a photography studio, workshop rooms, a varnishing booth, and study space. The center has large windows for natural light, and the rooftop garden features 27 seed varieties. More than 5,000 plants have been sown around the building.” – Architectural Digest
Germany Earmarks Another €1 Billion In COVID Relief To Its Arts Sector
“This marks the second chapter of the so-called ‘Neustart Kultur’ program (New Start Culture), which was first launched last July with a bailout of €1 billion dispersed across cultural sectors in the nation of 83 million. The program consists over 60 sub-programs and supports cinemas, museums, theaters, and other venues and creatives.” – Artnet
The Man Who Realized Attention Was A Precious Commodity
His epiphany was this: One of the most finite resources in the world is human attention. To describe its scarcity, he latched onto what was then an obscure term, coined by a psychologist, Herbert A. Simon: “the attention economy.” – The New York Times
The Purpose Of Playing
The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche once described play as ‘[b]ecoming and dissolution, building and destruction without moral implication, in eternal innocence’ – as an act to be found ‘in the world only in the play of the artist and child’. – Aeon
Theatres Are Closed, Staff Are Furloughed, Colleagues Have Died, So How To Move Forward In 2021?
With joy. No, truly: “We must now work urgently, with purpose, centered in joy. … This is not joyful expression solely for the purpose of joy; they are the tools that work in community and can withstand great stress.” – American Theatre
Waterstones Doesn’t Want To Pay Its Furloughed Workers Minimum Wage
Some furloughed workers says they can’t make rent, can’t buy food, can’t make it in general, at 80 percent of their pay – and of course, that means the workers weren’t being paid much before the virus hit. From the workers’ petition: “It is not our intention to damage or attack our company. We are dedicated to our jobs and adore our colleagues, hold great belief in the product we sell and love the people and customers that we encounter daily. Rather we set up the petition with the aim of raising awareness.” – The Guardian (UK)
The Coronavirus Is Devastating Film And TV Careers
Yes, it’s devastating all kinds of careers in the arts. One TV director: “The big question is ‘will I ever work again?’ And if not, how can I best say goodbye to an industry I have been part of for all my working life?” – The Guardian (UK)
Turns Out Inaugural Poet Amanda Gorman Was Inspired By Composers
Gorman: “I love Black poets. I love that as a Black girl, I get to participate in that legacy. So that’s Yusef Komunyakaa, Sonia Sanchez, Tracy K. Smith, Phillis Wheatley. And then I look to artists who aren’t just poets. While I was writing the Inaugural poem, I was reading a lot of Frederick Douglass, a lot of Winston Churchill, a lot of Abraham Lincoln. I was also listening to the composers who I feel are great storytellers, but they don’t use words so I try to fill in that rhetoric myself. A lot of Hans Zimmer, Dario Marianelli, Michael Giacchino.” – Time
New Feature Film On Twyla Tharp
The documentary will feature interviews alongside select footage of Tharp’s more than 160 choreographed works, “including 129 dances, 12 television specials, six major Hollywood movies, four full-length ballets, four Broadway shows and two figure skating routines.” – IndieWire
Why Sherlock Holmes Has Become One Of Our Most Enduring Literary Characters
There are the endless literary takes. There are Anthony Horowitz’s sequels, or Andrew Lane’s tales of a teenage Holmes. Star basketball player Kareem Abdul-Jabbar has written novels about Holmes’s older brother Mycroft; Nancy Springer wrote the Enola Holmes books, giving Holmes and Mycroft a younger sibling. James Lovegrove has combined the worlds of Holmes and HP Lovecraft in the Cthulhu Casebooks. Nicholas Meyer’s forthcoming The Return of the Pharaoh is drawn “from the Reminiscences of John H Watson, MD”, while Bonnie MacBird’s The Three Locks, a new Holmes adventure, is out in March. – The Guardian
The Guy Who Moves Orchestras For A Living
Guido Frackers is the guy. “So I’ve seen the environment at least one year before. And we have a “bulldozer” who goes in 24 hours before the orchestra arrives to pave the way, to line every hotel up, so when the musicians arrive at the hotel, checking in is basically as quick as it takes them to pick up an envelope from a table with their room key.” – Van
While Bela Lugosi Slept, They Made A Whole Other ‘Dracula’ On The Set — And It’s Better
“Shot in half the time the Lugosi vehicle was allotted, and on a much smaller budget, Drácula” — yes, it’s the Spanish version — “contains revealing differences. It’s 29 minutes longer than the [Tod] Browning film, with more dialogue – we see more of Dracula’s castle; and the framing of shots are arguably superior – thanks to [director George] Melford’s crew having access to Dracula‘s dailies when they arrived at night, thereby being able to make revisions to lighting and camera angles.” – The Guardian
All The Work Went Away: TV People Talk About Careers During COVID
“At the start of the pandemic, no one had any work, so it wasn’t so much of a problem. At times it was even nice not to be working. But when you’re freelance, you wonder whose doing what and doubt yourself, and when shoots opened up again, it was difficult not being out and about and having a purpose.” – The Guardian
Video Opera And ‘Relevance’: Where They Meet And Where They Miss
“Recent case histories are alternately breakthroughs and models of artistic self-defeat. Which was which?” asks David Patrick Stearns. “The reverse of what I expected.” The key: the message and the material have to fit each other. – Classical Voice North America
How Do Great Cities Die? So Slowly That Most People There Barely Notice
It’s not usually after a disaster: in those cases, great cities tend to rebuild and often become grander. (Think of London and Chicago after great fires, Lisbon and San Francisco after earthquakes, Berlin and Tokyo after bombing.) “Mismanagement and inertia are more formidable foes than cataclysm, though they administer less dramatic death.” – Curbed
With Their Theatres Closed, The French Turn To Puppet Shows
Performances for kids in schools are the only ones allowed under current COVID restrictions, so puppet shows are the only live theatre happening in France now. “The situation for French puppeteers is bittersweet. While it constitutes a return to their roots, as children remain their most faithful fans, many of them have worked hard to position the form as more than family-friendly fare.” – The New York Times
Hubbard Street Dance Chicago Has A New Director (And She’s An Alum)
Linda-Denise Fisher-Harrell dropped out of Juilliard at age 19 to join the company, where she danced for three years before moving on to 13 years with Ailey. After retiring from the stage in 2005, she got a graduate degree and went home to Baltimore to teach. Now, as HSDC’s artistic director, “she is tasked with culling an artistic identity that gradually moved Hubbard Street away from its audience base as the company increasingly delved into experimental works.” – Dance Magazine
Furloughed Staff To Waterstones: Please, At Least Pay Us Minimum Wage! Waterstones: That ‘Would Not Be Prudent’
Britain’s relief package for businesses closed by COVID provides 80% of a furloughed employee’s salary, even if that salary is only minimum wage. Workers at the country’s most popular bookstore chain, most of whom only make minimum wage or a bit more in normal times, are publicly begging the company to top up the government aid. Management says they’d love to, but with all stores closed until god-knows-when, they just can’t. – The Guardian
When Dancers Form COVID Bubbles
A look at how small groups of (properly tested and quarantined) dancers and choreographers got together (at long last!) to make work this past summer at two centers of dance in the Hudson River Valley. – The Washington Post
Should Prime-Time TV Series Work In COVID Storylines? Or Is That The Last Thing The Audience Wants?
“In [writers’] rooms all over the internet, hospital dramas, first-responder shows, situation comedies and courtroom procedurals were having similar debates. To ignore the events of the spring and summer — the pandemic, America’s belated racial reckoning — meant placing prime-time series outside (well, even more outside) observable reality. But to include them meant potentially exhausting already exhausted viewers and covering telegenic stars from the eyes down.” – The New York Times
Archaeologists Discover Stone And Bronze Age Burials At Site Of Stonehenge Tunnel
“Bronze age graves, Neolithic pottery and the vestiges of a mysterious C-shaped enclosure that might have been a prehistoric industrial area are among the finds unearthed by archaeologists who have carried out preliminary work on the site of the proposed new road tunnel at Stonehenge.” – The Guardian
Despite Pandemic, UK TV And Film Production Only Down 21 Percent In 2020
As per fresh stats from the British Film Institute, film and TV spend on Brit shores was £2.84B for the year, down a surprisingly slim 21% on the year before. Film bore the brunt of that decline – 31% down for the year in comparison with 11% for high-end TV. – Deadline