Consider all the ways arts and cultural groups earn money: from ticket sales and admission fees; participation in educational programs; renting spaces for galas and gatherings; investments and endowments; and the largesse of public and private giving. Every one of those streams is now potentially shut off. – Washington Post
Author: Douglas McLennan
Opportunity: Unplug, Pick Some Music And REALLY Listen
There was a time when listeners treated the mere existence of recorded sound as a miracle. A wonder, a kind of time travel. Priests warned of early wax cylinders being tools of the devil. Vintage images from the space age show couples seated around their high-fidelity systems as if being warmed by a fireplace. – Los Angeles Times
Americans For The Arts Makes Plea For Federal Assistance For The Arts
In a national survey by Americans for the Arts, 91% of responding arts organizations have cancelled one or more events. Many arts organizations have closed their doors for months to come. More than one-third of respondents expect to make reductions in staff; 26% have already reduced their creative workforce. The $3.2 billion figure losses so far includes actual revenue losses to date from admissions (ticket sales, subscriptions, memberships), non-admissions income (gift shop sales, sponsorships, contributed income), and unexpected expenditures (new cleaning and disinfecting protocols, adoption of new technologies, cancellation fees). – Americans for the Arts
Rare Copy Of Newton’s “Principia Mathematica” Found In Corsica
Newton published his findings on the laws of motion in the 1687 book Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy. Now, by sheer accident, a rare first-edition copy of this groundbreaking book was found in a library on the French island of Corsica. (Fun fact before we continue: Newton made his discovery while “socially distancing” himself during the Great Plague of London in 1665. He was a 20-something Trinity College student at the time.) – Hyperallergic
LA Times Listings Editor Watches Schedule Fall Apart
The listings I had spent the previous several days carefully crafting and curating had mostly crumbled before my eyes. – Los Angeles Times
SCAD Hong Kong Will Close Permanently This Spring
SCAD (Savannah College of Art and Design) Hong Kong, which has been in operation since 2010, has a $4 million financial deficit due to low enrollment. The tuition fee of $38,440 per year for full-time undergraduate students is considered unfeasible for most local students, while students from mainland China who would be able to shoulder the financial cost of the institution often prefer to go abroad for their educations. The school only recruited eighty-eight students, or 40 percent of its target, in 2010—last year only half of its target, 156 students. – ArtForum
You Might Not Be Born With Talent, But You Can Learn Creativity
It’s tempting to ask if we can learn to be more creative. Creativity does have some genetic heritability: talent – mathematical, musical – runs in families. For example, the Dutch identical twins David Oyens and Pieter Oyens were both successful 19th-century painters. But, given that the human brain is plastic, constantly learning and changing, can we also learn to be creative, based on our experiences? – Aeon
Music Moves To Streaming Live – But First To Figure Out What Works
On an individual level, innumerable artists and bands have rearranged tours or scrapped them altogether. With streaming still offering low royalty rates for artists, most musicians rely on essential revenue from touring. So can a livestreamed show be a feasible replacement for the real thing? – The Guardian
Mighty Powell’s Books Goes Down
“We have been forced to make the unthinkable decision to lay off the vast majority of you in the coming few days. Many people have spoken publicly demanding we pay our employees and extend health insurance for the duration. No one can possibly know how much I wish I could make that happen. We are simply not that kind of business – we run on duct tape and twine on a daily basis, every day trading funds from one pocket to patch the hole in another.” – Powell’s
Online Gaming Platforms Fail To Keep Up With Surge Of Players
Nintendo Online was unavailable for almost nine hours on Tuesday, preventing users from playing games such as Mario Kart 8 online or buying new titles on the console’s online shop. Steam, a popular platform for PC games, reported its all-time highest number of concurrent users over the weekend, with more than 20 million people logged in at the same time, and almost a third of those were actively playing a game. – The Guardian