Online, fans are fuming about being unable to get refunds for concerts that have been postponed, often with no rescheduled dates in sight. As they see it, ticketing outlets are being greedy at a time of crisis, holding billions of dollars in consumers’ cash that people now need for essentials. Their anger is being stoked by the sense that some vendors switched their refund policies mid-crisis to avoid repaying consumers. – The New York Times
Author: Douglas McLennan
Reclaiming The Private Art Experience
If we are cut off from experiencing art with others, we are perfectly placed to consider an old and out of fashion idea: the power of private contemplation and solitary engagement. The silence in the room as you read a poem or look at a print, or prepare to listen to a piece of music, isn’t absence. It is the presence of your undivided attention. – Washington Post
Original Drawings Of The Statue Of Liberty Have Been Discovered
Several drawings appear to depict a bulkier shoulder and more vertical arm—a more structurally sound arrangement. But one of these sketches (below) was marked up by an unidentified hand with red ink that tilts the arm outward. – Smithsonian Magazine
The University As Intellectual Factory (We’ve Been Warned)
The transformation of the university into a capital-intensive, bureaucratically organised enterprise was not simply an effect of academic specialisation. More than a century earlier, Adam Smith and Immanuel Kant had observed how some universities had begun to function as factories and organise themselves around the division of intellectual labour. – Aeon
Broadway’s Obie Awards Go Virtual
The annual celebration of stage work was originally scheduled to be held at Terminal 5 in Manhattan on May 18. Instead it will be postponed until a later, as yet unannounced, date. In an interview with Variety, Heather Hitchens, president and CEO of the American Theatre Wing, one of the organizations behind the awards, said the show will include some form of performances, but cautioned that details are still being worked out. – Variety
When The Music Stops – Your Life On The Road Scrambles To A Halt
Lara Downes: “Two weeks of dates cancelled, and then before we knew it, two months. Every single concert, opera, festival, club date–our calendars were wiped clean. When it happened, some of us were out on the road, and we made our way home in confusion and panic. Some of us were getting ready to head out on tour, and we cancelled flights, unpacked suitcases. We were all stunned. It was surreal and impossible.” – I Care if you Listen
Rehearsals Move Online – To Practice And For Community
“Physical distancing is the antithesis of what a community chorus is all about. We rehearse for four months before our performances twice a year. The community we form as we breathe, learn the music, and sing together is a vital component of who we are. Who are we in times of physical isolation?” – San Francisco Classical Voice
When We See Familiar Art Again We Will Have Changed
Peter Schjeldahl: Online “virtual tours” add insult to injury, in my view, as strictly spectacular, amorphous disembodiments of aesthetic experience. Inaccessible, the works conjure in the imagination a significance that we have taken for granted. Purely by existing, they stir associations and precipitate meanings that may resonate in this plague time. Why does the art of what we term the Old Masters have so much more soulful heft than that of most moderns and nearly all of our contemporaries? – The New Yorker
Sad: Pictures Of The Demolition Of The Old LACMA
The work that began Monday focused on the museum’s 1965 Leo S. Bing Center, a 600-seat theater designed by architect William L. Pereira that has been used for film screenings, musical performances, talks and other events. Interior demolition of three other buildings — Pereira’s 1960 Hammer and Ahmanson buildings as well as Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer Associates’ 1980s Art of the Americas building — is underway as well. – Los Angeles Times
Fenway Park’s Organist Is Playing The Games Even Though Baseball Has Been Canceled
Normally, Josh Kantor is in a perch at Boston’s venerable baseball park, churning out tunes as the home team’s official organist. In late March, with the season put on pause due to coronavirus concerns, he decided he would try a single video stream from behind his Yamaha Electone and leave it at that. But the online response convinced him to come back the next day. And the next. Kantor is now pledging to continue the “7th-Inning Stretch,” as he calls his 30-minute show, until baseball returns or people get sick of it. – Washington Post