“The Red Lion is thought to have been built around 1567 and probably played host to travelling groups of players. … Archaeologists are as certain as they can be that they have found its remains at a site in the East End of London where a self-storage facility once stood.” – The Guardian
Author: Matthew Westphal
Poets Threaten Boycott Of Poetry Foundation Over Response To Antiracism Protests
“More than 1,800 people have signed on to an open letter criticizing the Poetry Foundation’s response to the protests sweeping the United States, pledging not to work with the organization until it meets demands that range from replacing its president and board chairman to redirecting funds to antiracism efforts. The Chicago-based foundation is one of the nation’s wealthiest literary organizations, with an endowment that exceeds $250 million.” – The New York Times
Annenberg Space For Photography In L.A. Closes For Good As Funders Pivot To Pandemic Recovery
The museum, one of Southern California’s leading venues for photo exhibitions, had been closed for three months because of the coronavirus lockdown and was unsure when, and under what rules, it could reopen. “Its parent organization, the Annenberg Foundation, … ‘will be focusing its philanthropy especially on public health, food insecurity, economic recovery, helping get people back to work and social justice nonprofits.'” – Los Angeles Times
AMC Says It Will Reopen Its Cinemas Worldwide In July. Here’s Why It Needs To.
Affirming warnings it gave last week, the world’s largest movie theater chain reported that it lost $2.2 billion in the first quarter of 2020, a period that saw the beginning of the coronavirus shutdown. Though last week’s report warned of “doubt” that AMC could remain a “going concern,” the company’s CEO said Tuesday that, “in the end, AMC will both succeed and prosper.” – Variety
Pandemic Could Wipe Out More Than Half Of UK Performance Venues
“Half of all music venues and 70% of theatres across the UK face permanent closure as a result of the coronavirus crisis, industry leaders have told a committee of MPs.” Testified one exec, “Our latest survey told us 70% of theatres or production companies will run out of cash, go out of business, by the end of this year.” – The Guardian
Longest-Working Comics Artist In History, Mad Magazine’s Al Jaffee, Is Retiring At 99
“To mark his farewell, Mad‘s ‘Usual Gang of Idiots’ will salute Jaffee with a tribute issue next week. It will be the magazine’s final regular issue to offer new material, including Jaffee’s final Fold-In, 65 years after he made his Mad debut” and 78 years after he began his career. – The Washington Post
There Is No “Try”
Long ago Barry Hessenius charged us to move from thinking of the pursuit of equity as a “issue” to making it an obsession. So, if “doing” is where we go now, what does the doing look like? – Doug Borwick
Major Houston Art Dealer And Philanthropist Meredith J. Long Dead At 91
“Long was the right man at the right time in 1957, when he came to Houston to establish Meredith Long & Co. With less than a million residents then, the city had two art museums, three galleries and a core group of culturally ambitious oil, real estate and financial tycoons who could build important collections.” – Houston Chronicle
Krumping Right In The Faces Of The LAPD — And Getting Thanked For It
“[Even] as krump has journeyed from the streets to screens and stages, it remains a protest art,” writes Sarah Kaufman. That’s why, at a demonstration on Sunday in Santa Monica, Jo’Artis Ratti, one of the founders of krump (nom de danse Big Mijo), “used it to improvise on a lifetime of rage and despair within a few feet of a police line. The result is one of the most poignant images to come out of the past week of protests over the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police — and the story behind Ratti’s dancing, and what followed, is just as poignant.” – The Washington Post
How American Movies Strenuously Avoided The Issue Of Racist Policing
“The entertainment industry has generally followed the official line: blithe ignorance and denial giving way to grudging admission of a problem, but only as far as the ‘bad apple’ theory. And while it is safe to say the majority of law-enforcement personnel are not racist, the existence of institutional racism is repeatedly denied.” Except, of course, by Black filmmakers. – The Guardian