“The pandemic has made people aware of the need to support their local bookshop,” said Maria Carme Ferrer, president of the Catalan booksellers’ association. “Bookshops are local cultural centres.” – The Guardian
Nudged By COVID, Six Philadelphia Museums Move Toward Forming A Consortium
“What began as practical fund-raising talk in the midst of unprecedented disruption has now become a full-blown exploration of the possibilities to cooperate and even collaborate on everything from programming to technology to health insurance.” – The Philadelphia Inquirer
Jeff Koons Has Joined The MasterClass List
That’s right, Koons could be your art teacher. Or, well, your something. “While the chef Thomas Keller demonstrates how to cook scrambled eggs on MasterClass and the tennis star Serena Williams walks viewers through groundstrokes, Mr. Koons is here as a life coach and a salesman. He wants us to succeed, and he wants us to be happy.” – The New York Times
Prestige TV Just Doesn’t Matter Anymore
Nobody cared in 2020 about “good” or “bad” TV. It was there for something different. “I craved a slightly different definition of quality. I wanted shows that made me feel just a bit better about the world, through their kindness or their zaniness or their offering of nostalgia—shows that made me, physically isolated from so many of the people I love, feel a little less alone.” – The Atlantic
The Pandemic Has Decimated The Live Music Business, Along With All Its Unsung Heroes
Yes, musicians and music venues have been horrendously hard-hit. But “not enough has been said about the workers who make live music tick – the people whom fans and gig-goers barely know about. Managers and tour managers, festival staff, sound technicians, promoters, and booking agents and their long-suffering assistants.” How to help them out at this point? – The Guardian (UK)
The Moments Of Theatre That Offered Comfort, Aid, Glimmers Of Light
“Needless to say, 2020 didn’t exactly go as planned.” But actors, directors, playwrights, sound producers, lighting designers, and stage directors came through just as much as they possibly could. – Playbill
If The U.S. Wants To Keep More College Students Enrolled, It Can Try This One Simple Trick
What will it take? Money. Cash money. Direct cash money, to the students, for their survival, with few barriers – and given out quickly. “Many students … aren’t sure they can afford to return for another college semester. They need financial support delivered flexibly, quickly, and respectfully. They should not have to demonstrate their poverty or rehash trauma to merit support.” – The Atlantic
A Composer With Hearing Loss Says Beethoven’s Music Encodes The Experience Of Being Deaf
Gabriela Lena Frank says that she can tell, from her own experience, some of what the composer was doing as he lost more and more of his hearing. “More pitch distance and difference, and more vibration and resonance, create a recipe for happiness for a hearing-impaired person, trust me. A more dissonant and thick language, with clashing frequencies, also causes more vibration, so the language does get more physically visceral that way, too.” – The New York Times
Barbara Rose, Art Critic And Art Historian Who Helped Define Art Of The 20th Century, 84
Rose wrote the 1965 essay “ABC Art,” which helped to define and codify Minimalism. She went on to defy the essay (she loathed its title, something The New York Times noted in its obit), defend the genre of painting, write the textbook American Art Since 1900, and teach, write reviews, produce documentary films, and champion both formalism and individual women artists. – Artforum
The First Movie Theatre Debuted 125 Years Ago, And Despite Everything, Cinema Isn’t Dead Yet
Cannes’ Thierry Fremaux: “Cinemas have been through other trials: they died often, and yet they’re still alive because the public yearns for collective experiences. In their absence, theaters — which are our homes, our churches and our rituals — have never been so present. When will we see each other again? Soon. We must!” – Variety
Just Because A Book Is ‘Literary’ Doesn’t Mean It Needs To Be Dull
Kiley Reid, the author of Such a Fun Age, published a year ago to strong sales and a spot on the Booker longlist, is helping change publishing’s mind, she believes. Talking to another writer, she found out that “she was saying that she’s used my novel to point out to editors that if this person is doing humour that is literary fiction, why can’t I do it too? The premise that literary fiction has to be a drag – it’s just so silly.” – The Observer (UK)
Look, Buildings Of Any Tradition Can Be Beautiful
Seriously. We’re having this discussion because the U.S. president is determined to damage as much as possible before he’s forced to leave, but: “America has beautiful and popular non-traditional structures – the Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles – and it has crude and soulless classical buildings.” – The Guardian (UK)