“Between those who see meritocratic admissions as giving fair rewards to hard work and ability, and those who demand that schools focus on students’ identities rather than individual performance, there appears little room for compromise. But the two positions have unexamined common ground, coexisting in the consciousness of students and teachers.” – Tablet
A Report From New York’s Wary Return To Indoor Shows
“Like budding flowers awakening just in time for spring, music, dance, theater and comedy began a cautious return this past week as venues were allowed to reopen with limited capacity — in most cases, for the first time since March 2020. … Reporters from The New York Times visited some of the first indoor performances, and spoke with the pioneering audience members and staff who took them in. Here is what they saw.” – The New York Times
Is Network TV Done For?
According to Nielsen, through Feb. 28, ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox and the CW, on average, showed a loss of 23 per cent from the comparable period a year ago. Slippage among Americans 18 to 49 was down by the same margin. – Toronto Star
Savage Beauty
A generation of important Chinese composers, paradoxical beneficiaries of enforced rural relocation, wound up studying in the West. For many, Bela Bartok became a lodestar for his way of retaining the spontaneity and savage beauty of folk elements. And so they discovered a middle ground between Chinese and Western instrumental performance. – Joseph Horowitz
Slow Art Is More Than Just Taking Time With A Painting Or Sculpture
Slow Art Day, April 10, is about a lot more than getting lost in a Lee Krasner or a Betye Saar. Though that might be a first step: “Studies suggest that the average museumgoer looks at an artwork for less than 30 seconds. And with crowds that seem to push you from one piece to the next, overwhelmingly large exhibitions, and a dismal lack of seating options, museum spaces sometimes seem to encourage this ‘more is more.'” – Washington Post
The Hospitality Industry, Hard Hit By The Pandemic, Wonders If It Can Change Again
What’s going to happen as more and more people are vaccinated to the industries that supported thousands of aspiring actors, musicians, and others in the arts? “There’s a reckoning in the hospitality industry right now as these workers — and their bosses — contemplate how much of the old normal they’re are willing to return to. The restaurant trade has a reputation for grueling work and long hours, wildly uneven pay for workers, and a sometimes hostile environment, particularly for women, people of color, and undocumented immigrants.” – Boston Globe
Keeping Ancient Music Alive, No Matter What
The Ashti Peace Choir, at the Yazidi refugee camp in northern Iraq, is trying to keep music alive despite the desperate history and circumstances of the women in the choir. The group, founded by a 22-year-old who has lived in the refugee camp since 2014, “has become part of an effort to preserve a vital part of Yazidi culture, in which little is written down, and history and religion are contained within songs.” – NPR
Winfred Rembert, Artist Who Survived A Lynching And Southern Prisons, Has Died At 75
Rembert’s art “told the story of the Jim Crow South. It was exhibited in galleries and museums and helped support his family, though they lived in poverty.” – The New York Times
The SAG Awards, As They Happened
Kinda live, except pre-recorded, with a lot on the cutting room floor. In any case: All of the winners! Right here. – Variety
What Powered The Enlightenment
There was no single Enlightenment message: instead it was a cacophony of voices, speaking and writing in all the languages of Europe. There were great figures, many of whom are still familiar today, whose names were honoured in salons from Portugal to Austria and France to Sweden. Diderot, Voltaire and Kant were household names, but Ritchie Robertson argues for a varied, inclusive and rather unhierarchical image of the Enlightenment: one in which French bishops, English jurists and German poets, most of whom are now long forgotten, participated in equal measure. – History Today