The online dramas that so many theatres have made available, from the RSC to the National Theatre, have had a hugely democratising effect on an art form that is often accused of being elitist and expensive. Now, viewers don’t have to be sitting in a velvet seat, just on their own sofa. – The Guardian
Author: Douglas McLennan
Trump Books Have Changed The Publishing Industry
There was a time, not that long ago, when—like most of America—publishers thought that this Trump boom would end when the president left office. It increasingly seems like it could outlast Trump’s own political career. – The New Republic
Misty Copeland On How Protests Are Waking Up The Dance World
“It’s the first time in my position that I feel like I’m truly being heard,” she explains of how she’s using her voice to raise awareness, later adding, “This has been my life’s work as a dancer: speaking about racism in the world, and in ballet, speaking about the lack of diversity. And to have my company, to have the ballet world listening, and to have different panels to speak about this—in a way that I have before, but again, for the first time, people are really seeing it. And I think that’s what’s different about this time, is that I feel like we have true allies and people from other communities and races that we’ve not had before.” – The Root
Why Pandemic Literature Doesn’t Work (So Far)
No one has had time to truly refine their ideas about personal life in a state of widespread isolation and existential dread, and literature, even when political, is a fundamentally personal realm. It relies on the ability to channel inner experience outward, and because no inner experience of the coronavirus pandemic could plausibly be described as complete, prose that renders it static and comprehensible rings false. – The Atlantic
Marciano Foundation Settles With Laid-off Union-Organizing Workers
The workers — public-facing staffers who watched over galleries and answered questions about art — had announced plans to unionize with AFSCME in early November over concerns related to wages and working conditions. Days later, they were all laid off via email. The Marciano also announced it would shut down its galleries due to low attendance. A month later, the museum made the closure permanent. – Los Angeles Times
The Harvard Professor Who Turned Distance Learning Into A High Art
For many professors, the sudden transition was a struggle. For Malan, it was the natural extension of a decade’s worth of experimentation. “Our team is fortunate to have been doing this blend of education for quite some time,” he told me recently. “For us, it was very straightforward.” – The New Yorker
Will Self: Zooming Into Dystopia?
“In the 15 years between the inception of a fully-integrated bi-directional digital medium—the internet—and the onset of the coronavirus pandemic bringing with it imposed social distancing, viewing the world through screens has become second nature to all of us. The terms of physical meeting have been more profoundly altered than they ever were by train timetables or wristwatches: the absolute location, together with the universal synchronisation afforded by mobile phones, enables both the place and the time of a prospective rendezvous to be continually recalibrated.” – Prospect
A Bail-Out For The Arts? We Need More
What is needed is “not just a bailout” but a “long-term plan” that would enable the sector to “come out the other side. What we’ve seen is a lack of joined-up thinking across government,” he went on, suggesting “huge swathes of our cultural infrastructure” are at risk. – BBC
The Brain Science Of Being In Love
“We put over 100 people who were madly in love into a brain scanner using fMRI. We noticed those who had fallen in love in the first eight months had a lot of activity in brain regions linked with intense feelings of romantic love. Those who had been madly in love for a longer period of time—from eight to 17 months—showed additional activity in a brain region linked with feelings of deep attachment. That vividly showed us the brain can easily fall happily and madly in love rapidly, but feelings of deep attachment take time.” – Nautilus
Which Roles Can The Arts Fill Beyond COVID?
“While we never mind insisting that art can change the world, we get fuzzy when pressed on the details of how. In pursuing “usefulness,” the past decades have witnessed an increasing instrumentalization of art, one which, in most instances, falls short of our transformative aspirations. Perhaps, in an age of “utility” and “impacts,” the more radical vision is not the instrumentalization of art, but the aestheticization of the world.” – The Philanthropist