Author: ArtsJournal2

From Tanglewood To The Hollywood Bowl, Outdoor Summer Concerts Are All Gone

At Tanglewood, “the organization explored various alternatives to canceling the season, at one point sending a drone up above the expansive lawn to think about how social distancing might work. But with the thousands of people who congregate each summer in lines to the bathrooms and walk back to their cars at the end of the evening, … it just wasn’t feasible.” The economic pain will be widespread in the Berkshires. – The New York Times

This Author Published A History Of Two Millennia Of Restaurants Just As Every Restaurant Shut Down

What does he think will happen now? “Nothing will go back to how it was and the new normal will reflect some aspects of lockdown life. More people will work from home, more people will cook at home, more restaurants will deliver food and more producers will have a closer access to consumers. These are morsels of good fortune that we should cling to.” – LitHub

The CDC Uses A Chinese Textile To Illustrate A Cover Story On Virus Transmission

Or rather, misuses the textile, a late-18th-century military rank badge. “Byron Breedlove and Isaac Chun-Hai Fung, authors of the cover feature ‘Auspicious Symbols of Rank and Status,’ try to give an art historical analysis of this textile their best shot. However, their attempt at intertwining art and science takes a disastrous, even comical turn in the sixth paragraph, in which they state that ‘The birds and animals featured on the various rank badges (excepting, among others, dragons, unicorns, and qilin) may also serve as zoonotic reservoirs capable of transmitting viral pathogens that can cause respiratory infections in humans.'” – Hyperallergic

Betty Wright, Powerful Singer Of ‘Clean Up Woman’ And Many More, Has Died At 66

Wright, whose first hit came when she was 17 and who produced and mentored scores of other performers as she aged, had 20 singles in the Billboard R&B Top 40 and a voice that blew other singers out of the water. She was “one of the first pop vocalists to sing in the stratospheric ‘whistle register,’ a technique also used by Minnie Riperton, Mariah Carey and Ariana Grande.” – The New York Times

Will The High School Shutdown Derail Theatre And Other Performing Arts Careers?

For students at performing arts schools, the lost senior recitals, plays, dance recitals and more are not just about losing the opportunity to share performances with family: This is their careers on the line. One 18-year-old playwright and director: “The environment in theater is nice because you have a lot of voices together, and everyone was working on this cool project and it felt really great, and I felt that we were all in sync with the vision. … Without that to look forward to working on every day, it makes the days very glum.” – Los Angeles Times

Novelist Jenny Odell Wrote About Nature And Art, And Suddenly Her Book Seems Even More Relevant

Odell’s simply considering things, not worried about producing art during the lockdown. “I have been thinking about that redirecting of attention. Our grocery store has the usual spaced-out lines with markings on the ground, and as you stand in line you just find yourself standing near this weird part of the building that you would never stand near. So now you have all this time to contemplate this wall. That seemed like a visual metaphor for everything else. The thing has always been here; now you’re like standing in a very weird relation to it and you’re looking at it.” – Vox

Will French Bookselling Also Change Due To Covid-19?

French publishing, and its associated literary prizes like the (now somewhat disgraced) Goncourt, has long crowded the fall with a flood of titles (which has, in normal years, made the spring frantic for publishers getting the word out). But can that continue? One agent: “Why must so many prizes be awarded at the same time of the year? What logic is behind this? With a more balanced spread of editorial production, the chances of a larger number of books would be increased.” – Le Monde