“The Ojai Music Festival has joined the list of coronavirus cancellations, … marking the first time since its founding in 1947 that the annual celebration of experimental classical music will not be held.” This year’s guest music director was to have been German composer Matthias Pintscher. – Los Angeles Times
Author: Matthew Westphal
San Francisco Art Institute Stops Enrolling Students, Prepares To Lay Off Faculty And Staff
The nearly 150-year-old school, which counts Ansel Adams, Richard Diebenkorn, and Dorothea Lange as former faculty, says that it can’t continue to operate in the near term unless it joins a larger and more stable institution. Administrators expect to cancel all fall semester classes. Students graduating this spring will get their degrees; others are being strongly encouraged to transfer elsewhere. – San Francisco Chronicle
Thanks To Social Distancing, Drive-In Movie Theaters Are Having A Comeback
“Drive-in movie theaters may seem like a blast from the past, something out of the 1950s or ’60s. Numerous baby boomers haven’t gone for decades; Gen Xers and millennials, perhaps never. But there are still 305 of them in the United States” — and they’re seeing increased demand from stir-crazy customers. – The New York Times
Voting for arts funding – a short video
We are making the adjustment to teaching arts policy at a distance for the remainder of the semester, and so I’m about to get used to (and hopefully better at) short videos for students, practitioners, anyone with an interest. – Michael Rushton
How One Top Off-Off-Broadway Company Is Facing Theatre’s COVID Collapse
Helen Shaw: “To try to understand the complexity of a situation that was changing minute by minute — last Thursday, we still had a full theater calendar for April, for instance — I talked to members of one downtown company: Elevator Repair Service,” best known for Gatz, its eight-hour, word-for-word re-enactment of The Great Gatsby. – Vulture
Gallerist Paul Kasmin, Who Helped Turn Chelsea Into An Art Hotbed, Dead At 60
“In the 30 years since founding the gallery in Soho in 1989, Kasmin developed a program that managed to toe the line between brainy and lighthearted by placing historic postwar artists like Lee Krasner, Robert Motherwell, and Stuart Davis in dialogue with established and emerging contemporary figures.” – Artnet
Hong Kong Museums, Having Reopened, Close Again
“After the city sought to reintroduce normal activity, a wave of new coronavirus cases hit, largely due to returning travelers. The reversal offers a cautionary tale to countries around the world that are eager to ease restrictions on social distancing practices and get business moving back on pace.” – Artnet
Second City Lays Off Two-Thirds Of Employees
“With its shows canceled until further notice and its revenue stream obliterated, Chicago’s most illustrious comedy theater … is trying to improvise its way out of a major crisis. … [Job losses] includ[e] all casts, front-of-house workers and food and beverage workers.” – Chicago Tribune
Upright Citizens Brigade, Already Teetering, Dumps Entire Staff By Mass Email
“Last week’s layoffs were just the latest addition to a list of controversial upheavals for the company in recent years, including climbing ticket prices in early 2017, the move from Chelsea to the bigger, less convenient Hell’s Kitchen theater in late 2017, mass layoffs in 2018, shuttering the East Village theater in 2019, and constant debate surrounding its choice to not pay performers. … There’s growing sentiment among many people in the UCB community that even if the theaters return post-coronavirus, they may not.” – Vulture
U.S. Supreme Court Throws Out Filmmaker’s Copyright Lawsuit Against North Carolina
“The justices unanimously upheld a lower court’s 2018 ruling that the state was protected by a legal doctrine called sovereign immunity and could not be sued for copyright infringement for using filmmaker Frederick Allen’s images [of the salvaging of the pirate Blackbeard’s ship] online.” – Reuters