Author: Douglas McLennan

Will People Flee Cities In Post-COVID World? Preliminary Findings Say No

“We found that 25-to-34-year-old college graduates were among the most likely to move of any demographic group, and that they were systematically moving toward some places and away from others,” states to the report, Youth Movement: America’s Accelerating Urban Renaissance. “To an apparently unprecedented degree, those moves seemed to be motivated by a desire for urban living.” – CityLab

The End Of The Liberal World Order

We could try to salvage the order by constructing institutions that enable us to meaningfully govern it. But to do that, we’d have learn to do politics with people who are different from us. Can that be done? Probably not. And that means either the nation-states will kill the liberal order, or they will find a way to disguise it in democratic daydreams. The liberal order might not last much longer. – Aeon

Drive-In Concerts In High Demand

These shows will be the first paid gig many people in the industry have had since March. Airwaves’ event director, Cindy Jensen, says organising her event has highlighted how desperate the music industry is for work. “Since we launched [last Monday] I’ve been inundated – and I mean inundated – with calls from production houses, foodies, market stall holders asking: ‘Have you got this sorted?’ Everyone is just screaming out for work.”  – The Guardian

Internet Archive Ends Its Free Library Initiative Early After Publishers Sue

The Internet Archive announced the National Emergency Library project on March 24, in response to the widespread closures of libraries and schools during the Covid-19 crisis. The temporary initiative unilaterally removed the usual one copy/one user restriction on scans borrowed from the Internet Archive’s Open Library project, allowing unlimited borrowing of the roughly 1.4 million titles scanned, unless an author or publisher opted out. The NEL was set to last until June 30, or until the crisis is over. – Publishers Weekly

Director Of Art Basel: Online Galleries Won’t Replace Art Fairs

Marc Spiegler: “Fortunately, the Amazon art world won’t come to pass. For one thing, artworks are unique, and thus not so easily commodified. They have no utility value, no truly provable worth, no strict comparables. All of which makes buying art an act of trust. It goes both ways, too, because galleries build the reputation of their artists by selling to great collections, while avoiding the speculators who might rapidly “flip” works into auction.” – Financial Times

Arts Organizations Asked Patrons To Donate Their Tickets Instead Of Getting Refunds. Did They?

With the cost of tickets ranging from a few dollars to a few hundred dollars, calling for ticket donations is a strategy many performing arts organizations are using to stay afloat amid coronavirus-related show cancellations and postponements. But are audiences actually donating tickets? And if so, what impact does that have on venues? – Los Angeles Times

The Objectionable Flannery O’Connor

O’Connor is now as canonical as Faulkner and Welty. More than a great writer, she’s a cultural figure: a funny lady in a straw hat, puttering among peacocks, on crutches she likened to “flying buttresses.” The arc is not complete, however. Those letters and postcards she sent home from the North in 1943 were made available to scholars only in 2014, and they show O’Connor as a bigoted young woman. – The New Yorker

Dance On The Internet – Not Really The Real Thing, Is It?

George Balanchine rightly said that watching dance on TV was like reading about a murder in a newspaper—a poor approximation of the terror of the real event. And, for all its offerings, the new online dance world feels cramped and constrained. Dancers are a kind of urban wildlife, and as they crop their bodies to Zoom squares we can almost feel their horizons shrinking. They can, too. – The New Yorker