“When the first COVID-19 lockdown rippled across the Bay Area last March, the dance community reeled. … But as the pandemic unfolded, the crews adapted: leveraging technology to rehearse remotely, dancing outdoors and performing via YouTube or Instagram as live events disappeared. Over the last year, they’ve found ways to keep dancing together, strengthening their community and confronting social justice issues in the process.” – San Francisco Chronicle
Why We Have Difficulty Trusting Science
Precisely the same methods, and precisely the same leaps of brilliance and faith that led in some cases to science that has withstood the test of centuries, led also to results that were rapidly cast into oblivion. Wish as we might, little more than the passage of time and thus hindsight tells us what was “good science” as opposed to a poor guess, based on faulty inferences and deep misunderstandings. – Los Angeles Review of Books
Santa Fe Opera Hires New Boss With New Title
With the previous artistic director, Alexander Neef (who was shared with the Canadian Opera Co.), having left for the Paris Opera, Santa Fe decided to combine his position with that of director of artistic administration and call the resulting job “chief artistic officer.” The company has now filled that job with David Lomelí, a former tenor who also has degrees in computer science and international marketing and currently works as director of artistic administration for The Dallas Opera. (He will continue to serve as a casting consultant in Dallas and for the Bavarian State Opera in Munich.) – Santa Fe New Mexican
Here’s What A British Musician Now Has To Go Through To Work In Europe
While the UK was in the EU, a British musician could pretty much just accept a gig and go. Now she has to apply to each member country for a separate short-term work permit, with all the embassy visits, surrendering of passports, processing fees, and delays the process requires. Pianist Joseph Middleton, one of Britain’s top specialists in art song, shares some of the painful details. – The Guardian
Italy’s Art Museums Emerge From Lockdown, And They Have Lessons For The Rest Of Us
“‘We are now where you will be in a few days,’ wrote novelist Francesca Melandri in a piece for the Guardian newspaper in late March 2020. Her moving ‘letter from your future’ coincided with the beginning of the first pandemic wave in Italy. One year on, her words can be repeated – only this time with a more optimistic resonance. As of last week, Italian museums, foundations and galleries were finally permitted to start reopening their doors post-lockdown. So, what lessons can be learned from their responses to the crisis?” – Frieze
Playing The Man Who Betrayed Fred Hampton Sent Lakeith Stanfield Into Therapy
Stanfield says it’s not only therapy that has made the last year bearable. “The one good thing about this pandemic is being able to sit at home by yourself and deal with yourself and just your inner voice. And even though that’s annoying as hell, beautiful clarity comes out of it.” – Level
Why ‘Nadiya Bakes’ Is Such A Big Deal In Foodie Shows
The new show demonstrates just how drastically far food shows have come – but reminds us of how far that had to be, especially when we can always rewatch Nadiya Hussain’s GBBO flavors making Paul Hollywood and Mary Berry squirm. “It’s hard to imagine that a show like Nadiya Bakes could have existed in the same way even just six years ago when Hussain first appeared on our television screens. Food media on both sides of the Atlantic has been aggressively white overall, with few people of color given the same opportunities as their white counterparts to be visible and excel. Even when ‘hybrid’ cuisine became trendy, it largely appeared to come from white chefs who were discovering ‘bold new flavors’ from outside their own experiences.” – Variety
Teresa Burga, Groundbreaking Peruvian Conceptual Artist, 85
Burga’s best-known work, 1981’s Perfil de la mujer Peruana, confused many people in its day. She and a psychotherapist friend “interviewed 290 middle-class women between the ages of 25 and 29 in Lima to obtain statistics on their political leanings, their bodies, and their identities. The presentation of their findings took the form of drawings and diagrams, as well as artworks, including a sculpture composed of quipus, knotted fabrics alluding to an Incan counting system. Against the backdrop of Peru’s transition from authoritarianism to democracy, Burga’s project attempted to question how much agency women in the country had at the time.” – ARTnews
The Hidden, All Too Contemporary, History Behind Middlemarch
No, it’s not that many mediocre men are threatened by smart women (timeless!) or that mismatched marriages can destroy those in the marriage (also timeless!). It’s about plague. – LitHub
Moving The Louvre’s Collection Far From The Floods
In 2016, when the Seine flooded its banks, museum workers toiled 24 hours a day to haul thousands of artworks out of underground storage for their protection. Cut to now: “For more than 16 months, a stream of trucks has quietly hauled treasures from the museum’s central Paris basement, and other sites, to the Louvre Conservation Center, a fortress of culture set up in the town of Liévin, near Lens.” – The New York Times
Cole Porter Created A Pro-Immigration Protest Ballet In The 1920s
Of course he did. “Like modern immigration laws, the [1921] Emergency Quota Act inspired a wave of pro-immigration activism, and Porter, who was born to the state’s wealthiest family and lived abroad after graduating from Yale, was part of it.” – Indianapolis Monthly
What The ‘To All The Boys’ Trilogy Has Meant For Its Star
Lana Condor on the To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before trilogy author Jenny Han: “When we first were talking years ago, she said, ‘I just want you as Lana and as a young Asian-American girl to have the same opportunities that Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss would have or Kristen Stewart as Bella from Twilight.’ And that was before we even knew we would have three movies. I’ve never had anyone say that to me, particularly as an Asian-American actress.” – The New York Times
Brenda Ballin, Longtime And Well Loved Guide At The Met, 91
Ballin started volunteering as a docent in the 1970s. “Whatever lucky group she had in tow was pretty much guaranteed a good show. Along with an extensive knowledge of the artworks, she contributed sharp opinions and a wicked sense of humor to the proceedings, making a walk through the American Wing or a ‘highlights of the museum’ tour a much livelier excursion than a museum visitor might expect.” – The New York Times
What We Talk About When We Talk About Amy Tan
Maybe Asian American writers should stop dissing Tan. “I understand the resistance to being lumped in with her; I feel it, too. But when I recently re-read The Joy Luck Club, I could not help but to be moved by the stories of mothers and daughters, how they accumulate layers and imbue domestic life with the power it has always had: to travel through time and space, to contain rooms beyond literal rooms, where imperfect people intersect in messy ways.” – LitHub
Can Theatre Help Heal The United States’ Political Divides?
Well, that sounds hokey. But it’s powerful, a program from Georgetown that, a co-founder says, shows “there is a particular power that performance has, to allow us to listen deeply, bear witness and ultimately empathize with each other.” – Washington Post
What’s The Best Place To Work (And Work Only) From Home?
Turns out it might not be sitting on the couch behind your daughter in the TV room. (Who could have known, pre-pandemic?) – Fast Company
A Right-Wing Mayor Opens Museums In France Despite National Restrictions
Not that left-wing art-lovers can’t sympathize (and a socialist mayor in another town is planning to defy the national orders as well), but … well, honestly? This is another seemingly bizarre restriction. A member of the Louvre’s board: “Right now, you can go and buy lingerie! … But how come museums — something that is paramount for social cohesion, for education, for entertainment — are still forbidden?”- The New York Times
Malls And Nail Salons Are Open, But Not Museums?
Dear Gavin Newsom, this makes no sense at all. Signed, a lot of LACMA and other art-lovers in California. Weirdly: “LACMA can open its Resnick Pavilion gift shop but not the galleries within the same Resnick Pavilion — even though the two share a front door and a ventilation system. The same goes at the Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens, where you may visit the gardens with an advance reservation, then mill around the indoor gift shop at your leisure.” – Los Angeles Times
Why Some Are Inclined To Be Seduced By Conspiracy Theories
In the face of complicated events, bewildering new technologies, and sometimes contradictory information, the explanatory power of some occult yet totalizing narrative easily overmasters more prosaic explanations of the world. To those in thrall to such conspiracy beliefs, observable reality conceals plots that are hatched in secret by powerful people and organizations with malevolent purpose—to control, harm, or kill us. – New York Review of Books
Dramatic Stone Henge Discovery In Wales Suggests Irish History
Its diameter of 110m is identical to the ditch that encloses Stonehenge, and it is aligned on the midsummer solstice sunrise, just like the Wiltshire monument. A series of buried stone holes that follow the circle’s outline has been unearthed, with shapes that can be linked to Stonehenge’s bluestone pillars. One of them bears an imprint in its base that matches the unusual cross section of a Stonehenge bluestone “like a key in a lock”, the archaeologists discovered. – Irish Times
Do We Have The Will To Stop Invention Of A Doomsday Device?
What we haven’t pulled out yet is a black ball: a technology that invariably destroys the civilisation that invents it. That’s not because we’ve been particularly careful or wise when it comes to innovation. We’ve just been lucky. But what if there’s a black ball somewhere in the urn? If scientific and technological research continues, we’ll eventually pull it out, and we won’t be able to put it back in. We can invent but we can’t un-invent. Our strategy seems to be to hope that there is no black ball. – Aeon
Zoom – It’s A Song Lyric, It’s A Facilitator Of Romance…
As a nonsense word perfect for a doo-wop song. It’s a video app that connects people and (sometimes) facilitates romance. – WBUR
Historic Weyerhaeuser Corporate Campus, Under Threat Of Development
The site, which the City of Federal Way annexed in 1994, has been lauded over the years for the pioneering way it intertwines building and landscape. Today, it is caught up in controversy over plans to build massive warehouses that opponents say would disrupt the balance with nature but that the property’s new owner says are necessary to pay for restoration of the headquarters building and maintenance of the grounds. – The New York Times
Did The BBC Censor This Play About Buckingham Palace?
“Peter Barnes had 14 soliloquies on BBC Radio 3 [in the late ’80s] under the umbrella titles Barnes’ People and More Barnes’ People. They attracted remarkable actors, including Laurence Olivier (in his final role), Judi Dench, Alec Guinness, Alan Rickman, Janet Suzman and Jeremy Irons. Barnes wrote, though, a 15th monologue, which the BBC, in mysterious circumstances, withdrew from production in 1990. A True Born Englishman, in which a Buckingham Palace lackey recalls his career.” – The Guardian
Orchestras Must Overthrow The Tyranny Of Subscription Programming, Says NY Times
Anthony Tommasini: “[The format] locks them into standard-issue, week-after-week programs loaded with the classics and sprinkled, at best, with unusual or new choices. … Why can’t orchestras be nimble and respond to sudden inspiration, or current events? If the Pittsburgh Symphony has a hit with a premiere, why must audiences in other cities wait years to hear it?” – The New York Times