This debilitating, isolating historical moment should make us rethink our attitudes, priorities and national policies with regard to our criminal justice system, health and education infrastructure and physical environment. Similarly, the American arts sphere shouldn’t merely hope to restore the “old normal” when it could instead be re-envisioned and rejuvenated. – Crosscut
Author: Douglas McLennan
Two National Ballet Of Canada Dancers Retire With 114 Years Service Between Them
Laszlo Surmeyan danced lead male roles before becoming, in 1986, one of the company’s first principal character artists. This season has marked his farewell to the company after a remarkable 54 years, a record almost as remarkable as that of his wife, Lorna Geddes, who is also leaving this season, after 60 years. – Toronto Star
What Netflix’s List Of Ten Most-Watched Shows Tells Us
Netflix’s once heavily guarded vault of secret statistics has slowly opened up over the last couple of years, a gradual juicy reveal of viewer habits with some major caveats. – Irish Times
The Drivers Of American Innovation Are Slowing
The coronavirus pandemic and the administration’s botched response to it are damaging the engine of American innovation in three major ways: The flow of talented people from overseas is slowing; the university hubs that produce basic research and development are in financial turmoil; and the circulation of people and ideas in high-productivity industrial clusters, such as Silicon Valley, has been impeded. – The Atlantic
How Arts Schools Are Adapting
“It’s not an uninteresting moment to be part of CalArts,” said dance dean Dimitri Chamblas. “The school is ready to re-question, reinvent … innovating in this particular moment of time — it’s not a bad moment for study.” – Los Angeles Times
The Berkshires Cultural Crawl Without Crowds
“They parked all too easily; slung their fold-up camp chairs over their shoulders; and waited obediently in a socially distanced line to enter the grounds, cracking jokes behind their masks. The lawn — a special mix of Kentucky bluegrass, perennial ryegrass and a variety called fine fescue, designed to withstand the footsteps of up to 18,000 music fans a night — was as supernaturally green as ever. The vista, still magnificent. The sound? No tuning. Mostly birds chirping. Save for a robin dashing from the shadow of one red maple to another, it was very still.” – The New York Times
Seven Ideas For The Chicago Symphony To Perform Again
Howard Reich: “Should the organization succeed in presenting live events, it will deliver us from the current deluge of online performances by every musician who happens to own a smart phone. These musical snippets are better than nothing, of course, but bear scant relation to what happens when listeners hear music in a concert hall in real time.” – Chicago Tribune
The End Of Tourism?
It took a pandemic to stop the gluttonous consumption of other places, trips that relied centrally on the have-nots—armies of hotel workers, cleaners, food preparers, bartenders, pool attendants—to provide the lavish experience sought. The argument in favor of this juxtaposition was that tourists, however noxious, were propping up the GDP of places like Macau (51 percent), Maldives (32.5 percent), Spain (14.6 percent), and Italy (13.2 percent). It was, as neoliberal economics go, a top-down model, mere cents going to the worst-off at the bottom. – The Baffler
Hollywood Unions Say Federal Assistance Is Crucial For Its Workers
The Authors Guild said its members had lost on average 43% of their regular income since the start of the crisis. The Freelancers union said over 80% of its members were reporting loss of income and work opportunities because of the crisis, and are depending on government relief in record numbers. – Los Angeles Times
NPR’s Broken Business Model
For decades, the P in NPR stood for “public,” as in publicly supported, noncommercial radio and digital news. Yet with its growing dependence on corporate advertising, NPR has found itself on equally troubled footing as its for-profit competitors, all of them reliant on the same pool of advertising dollars that have dried up during the coronavirus pandemic. – Washington Post