Author: Douglas McLennan

Hundreds Sign Open Letter Calling For Accountability At The Banff Centre

The Banff Centre shut down suddenly as the COVID crisis began and has canceled most of its residencies and programs. Much of the growth of the Banff Centre in recent decades has come through a combination of revenue streams that, until recently, was unlike any other arts institution in Canada. This, says Banff CEO janice Price, made the center particularly vulnerable. – Canadian Art

Newark’s Arts Institutions Shut Down. Its Artists, However…

Newark’s artists have applied their imagination to both cope with the time and seize its possibilities. Many have been documenting public and personal lives, and some have contributed their skills to activist campaigns. Their output is now coming into view in multiple forms, including exhibitions — online and getting ready for in-person reopening — as well as zines, posters, and resources such as a citywide artists’ database. – The New York Times

Seattle Singer Lady A Sticks Up For The Right To Keep Her Name

The black Seattle blues singer has been in talks with the band [formerly known as Lady Antebellum] for weeks about using the name, maintaining that she doesn’t want to share the Lady A brand and that she shouldn’t have to fight to keep a name she’s used for more for 20 years. With a newly filed lawsuit from the band, she now may have to fight in court for it. – Rolling Stone

LACMA’s Plans For Its New Home Seems To Be Deeply Unpopular. Can Anything Be Done?

COVID-19, unfortunately, has given the nation pause, but for LACMA it may be a blessing, a reason to apply the brakes: the pandemic has opened up time, offering the museum board, the LA County supervisors, and the public the chance to reconsider what everyone already knows is a mistake. According to a recent survey (conducted by a group with which I am involved), only a shocking five percent of 2,750 people polled want the Zumthor design. LACMA’s stubbornly entrenched board of directors steadfastly refuses to acknowledge that this is the most unpopular public project ever to have been proposed for a major cultural institution in Los Angeles. – Los Angeles Review of Books

Britain’s Choirs Are Conducting Tests To See If It’s Safe To Sing

This week, in an operating theatre at the government’s science facility at Porton Down, a small group of guinea-pig choral singers, some professional and some amateur, are taking part in experiments to measure what happens to those aerosols — droplets measuring five-thousandths of a millimetre or less — when they are emitted by the singing voice. – Spectator

Olympic Ideals Are Great – The Reality Much Less. Is It Time To End The Games?

For the first time, anti-Olympics activists from around the globe are now joining to stand against the Games. Their slogan is “No Olympics anywhere,” and after 200 of them met last summer in Tokyo, one attendee — American Jules Boykoff, who teaches politics and government at Pacific University in Oregon — summed up the ills of the Olympics in a neat list: “overspending, militarization of police, citizen displacement, greenwashing and corruption.” – Washington Post

NYC Nightlife Shut Down And It’s Hard To See It Coming Back Any Time Soon

“Even if you had a hundred people in a space that’s supposed to be 200, are they really going to keep six feet apart? A lot of people expect a nightclub to feel a certain way and have a certain kind of energy. If we are going to reopen at a reduced capacity it will have a different feeling, it will have a different vibe to it.” – Politico