“The pandemic has changed the way people think about geography. I think that you can connect with community anywhere, but there’s something to be said about proximity and sharing the same spaces that I’m really missing right now.” – CBC
Claim: Virtual Reality Is Where The Internet Was 20 Years Ago
With VR evolving at its current rate, movie nights or game nights could eventually turn into cyber nights, a new norm for those under 35. Games would no longer need to be marketed towards one group or identity, and would enable a more casual audience to approach virtual worlds without the traditional complexities. For more experienced audiences, this would be a new immersive way to play their favorite franchises. – NASDAQ.com
A Poetry Slam, Moved From The Apollo Theatre To A Clothing Boutique
“By noon, a dozen poets had arrived. Several paced the sneaker section, frantically whispering their metaphors, anaphoras, and onomatopoeias to themselves; others scrolled TikTok. A few snapped approval as fellow-finalists recited pulsing trochees and accentual slant rhymes. Alex Guzman, a nervous sixteen-year-old who wore glasses held together with Scotch tape, wandered into an empty room at the back and bellowed his stanzas into the dark.” – The New Yorker
How Glyndebourne Didn’t Miss A Step
Throughout the pandemic Glyndebourne has been notably agile, putting on outdoor performances last summer and leading the brief UK return to theatres in the autumn. Now, for summer 2021, the only real casualty of the originally planned season is a revival of Barbe & Doucet’s staging of Mozart’s Magic Flute, which, with its huge drop sets and puppets, would have required too many people working too closely together behind the scenes. – The Guardian
Study: BIPOC Arts Workers In LA Earn 35 Percent Less
On average, entry-level arts administrators in Los Angeles County earn $36,847 annually—a figure that’s higher than the $31,200 minimum wage in the area, but lower than the living wage of $40,200, according to the MIT Living Wage Calculator. BIPOC respondents from the same group reported an average income of just $32,027, while white arts workers earned $43,437, or 35 percent more. – Artnet
Still Burning: The Condition of Burnout
To be burned out is to be used up, like a battery so depleted that it can’t be recharged. In people, unlike batteries, it is said to produce the defining symptoms of “burnout syndrome”: exhaustion, cynicism, and loss of efficacy. Around the world, three out of five workers say they’re burned out. A 2020 U.S. study put that figure at three in four. – The New Yorker
Inside One Texas Museum’s Controversial COVID Response
Early on, positive press rolled in for the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, focusing on the MFAH’s safety precautions for guests, who would be allowed a welcome distraction during the pandemic. But behind the scenes, employees were growing increasingly frustrated with the risks they encountered while working low-wage jobs to keep the museum running; their job duties had been modified so that now they were tasked with scanning temperatures and controlling crowds as COVID-19 cases continued to rise that summer, and into the fall. – Texas Observer
A Sci-Fi ‘Rite Of Spring’ Set In The Arctic
Choreographer Andrea Schermoly, who created this wintry take on Stravinsky’s modernist classic for Louisville Ballet’s online “Season of Illumination”: “I’d seen a short film … about a stray albino penguin that ad been ousted by its tribe. I remember thinking it was such a strange parallel to Rite, and I liked the starkness of the terrain. … The music is so eerie, huge and violent, and I felt like the tribal sense could still be captured in that icy environment.” – Pointe Magazine
The Amenities This Developer Is Adding To Apartment Buildings Are Theaters And Gallery Spaces
Mind you, this isn’t just any old real estate mogul: it’s Dasha Zhukova, the collector who founded the popular Garage Museum Of Contemporary Art in Moscow. Her new U.S. venture, called Ray, is already at work on a New York building that will incorporate the National Black Theatre in Harlem and a development in Philadelphia’s Fishtown neighborhood with six street-level art studios. – Artnet
At Last, Bourse de Commerce—Pinault Collection Opens In Paris
“The reopening of Paris museums this week finally gives billionaire tycoon François Pinault the chance to showcase his vast contemporary art collection in the French capital, with works ranging from stuffed pigeons to slowly melting chairs. The museum’s launch in a converted 19th-century commodities exchange, blocks away from the Louvre, was put on hold twice due to the coronavirus pandemic after having suffered earlier planning mishaps, with an initial project abandoned in 2005.” – Reuters
V&A Museum Union Warns Job Cuts Would Cost “1,000 Years Of Expertise”
The museum, which plans to reopen only five days a week at first, is looking to save £10 million a year after its visitor numbers collapsed in lockdown. – Evening Standard
Using Public Domain Songs As Fodder For Something New
With support from a wide cast of collaborators, Angry and Katherine McMahon are taking songs from the public domain — a class of creative works whose copyright protections have expired or been otherwise forfeited, making them freely available for public use — and reimagining them for the present moment. – The New York Times
Regulators Eye Warner/Discovery Merger With Skepticism
“That deal was sold to the Department of Justice and to the public on the basis of an efficiencies claim, which apparently has not panned out,” said Diana Moss, president of the American Antitrust Institute. “Now there’s even more reason to cast a very skeptical eye.” – Variety
The Year Of Singing Dangerously
The wildfire-like spread of the coronavirus over a couple of hours of choral singing inside a Washington church was enough to send shockwaves throughout the singing community in California. – KQED
Britain’s Stages Are Not Reopening With Theatrical Comfort Food
“There has been a fear that the large-scale redundancies during the pandemic – an estimated 40% of theatre workers lost their jobs – could be followed by a reopening packed with ‘safe’ work. Instead, ‘bold’ is the adjective being used to describe much of what is to come. … The National Theatre’s deputy artistic director … says the public want challenging art rather than ‘comforting’ work.” – The Guardian
Diversity Means Teaching How To Think Rather Than What To Think
“Teaching kids what to think instead of how to think is dangerous. Advocacy-based teaching deprives them of the skills [they need] to reach their own conclusions. Instead they learn to parrot what they know they’re supposed to say to get a good grade. Kids are really good at that, but it doesn’t translate to actually believing what they are saying or knowing why it’s supposed to be important. When you present students with different viewpoints, they develop critical skills, learn how others think, and understand why they came to a given belief.” – The Atlantic
Blake Bailey’s Philip Roth Biography, Withdrawn By W.W. Norton, Picked Up By New Publisher
The acclaimed but controversial bio was dropped by its original publisher after several women came forward with serious allegations of sexual misconduct on Bailey’s part. The book is now in the hands of Skyhorse Publishing, which picked up Woody Allen’s recent memoir after Hachette cancelled it and has also released titles by former Trump attorney Michael Cohen, political dirty trickster and pardoned felon Roger Stone, and lawyer-to-famous-pariahs Alan Dershowitz. – The Guardian
Co-Host Bob Garfield Fired From Public Radio’s ‘On The Media’
The longtime co-anchor was dismissed by New York Public Radio “after two separate investigations found he had violated an anti-bullying policy. … Mr. Garfield said he was not yet able to speak fully about the circumstances surrounding his firing but defended his behavior as yelling.” – The New York Times
Amazon In Talks To Buy MGM For $9 Billion: Report
“Chatter that Amazon (and other tech giants) have been sniffing around MGM has circulated for some time. But sources indicated that Amazon’s interest in acquiring the studio has taken on a new tenor beyond the usual rumor mill.” – Variety
It’s Official: AT&T Is Spinning Off WarnerMedia To Merge With Discovery
“Under the terms of the deal, AT&T will spin off entertainment arm WarnerMedia and combine it with Discovery, creating a TV, film and streaming powerhouse. AT&T’s WarnerMedia owns the likes of the Warner Bros. studio, HBO and streaming service HBO Max, as well as the Turner cable networks, including CNN, TNT and TBS. Discovery’s reality TV-heavy properties include Discovery Channel, HGTV, TLC, Food Network, OWN and Animal Planet.” – The Hollywood Reporter
Radio City Music Hall Set To Reopen At 100% Capacity, No Masks Required
The first scheduled event is the finale of this year’s Tribeca Film Festival on June 19. Only vaccinated people will be admitted. And how will management ensure that patrons are telling the truth about their shots? Said CEO James Dolan, “That’s a really good question, I have no idea.” – The New York Times
A Design Challenge To Densify Los Angeles
“The challenge is a conversation starter and design exercise. It’s also a needed counter to commercial real estate developers, whose ideas of density tend to be based on a single principle — how many dollars they can squeeze out of every square foot — with little regard for green space or other community needs. (Case in point: those sad, blocky duplexes and triplexes jammed into islands of tree-less concrete.)” – Los Angeles Times
Despite Best Efforts, We’re Still Terrible At Predicting The Future
“When you aggregate hundreds of predictions, the result is a special, concentrated kind of wrong. Everyone was trying their best, and everyone missed. And these 40-year-old predictions don’t seem wrong in the fun, steampunk way that, say, late Victorian predictions of personal blimps or hot-air-ballooning robots might seem wrong. They’re just saggy middle-aged predictions.” – Wired
Lois Lew, The Woman Who Mastered IBM’s 5400-Character Typewriter
“Spinning continuously at a speed of 60 revolutions per minute, or once per second, the drum measured 7 inches in diameter, and 11 inches in length. Its surface was etched with 5,400 Chinese characters, letters of the English alphabet, punctuation marks, numerals, and a handful of other symbols. How was the typist in the film able to pull off such a remarkable feat of memory? … This young woman was a virtuoso.” – Fast Company
Inside The Museum Of Disgusting Food
As with the Museum of Sex, in New York City, and the Museum of Ice Cream, in San Francisco, the Disgusting Food Museum is conceptually closer to an amusement park than to a museum. There are eighty-five culinary horrors on display—ordinary fare and delicacies from thirty countries—and each tour concludes with a taste test of a dozen items. – The New Yorker