“Mr. Schonfeld, who had been expelled from Harvard Law School for gambling, was nothing if not a risk taker. Early in his career he produced newsreels shown in movie theaters, and by the mid-1970s he was running an agency that provided news programming to independent television stations. In that role he met [Ted] Turner, a brash sailor, sports-team owner and cable TV entrepreneur who was looking to make a bigger name for himself.” – The Washington Post
Blog
Report: Going Green Now Would Create 25 Million Jobs
A new report calculates, in detail, what it would take to aggressively transition to a clean energy economy in the U.S. by 2035—the timeline needed to make it possible to hit the target of the Paris climate agreement—and finds that decarbonizing the economy could quickly create 25 million jobs. “For a world looking to bounce back from a pandemic, there is no other project that would create this many jobs,” the authors write. – Fast Company
Chief Of Leading Off-Broadway Theatre Will Resign To Make Way For BIPOC Leadership
“William Carden, who has been the artistic director of Off-Broadway’s Ensemble Studio Theatre since 2007, will step down from his position. A member of EST since 1978, Carden will continue with the company until a restructuring process is complete. EST intends to implement change throughout the organization and reconfigure the current leadership structure through the inclusion of Black, Indigenous, and people of color at the senior leadership and decision-making level.” – Playbill
MacDowell Artists’ Retreat Tries Virtual Fellowships
With the ongoing COVID epidemic making travel to its New Hampshire campus impractical at best, the no-longer-a-colony has invited this summer’s eight fellows to a four-week virtual residency that will include dinners and other events which the participants will join electronically. – AP
Saudi Arabia: We’ll Host The World Science Fiction Convention! Science Fiction Writers: Oh No, You Won’t
“A group of more than 80 science fiction and fantasy authors are protesting at the possibility of one of the genres’ biggest conventions being held in [Jeddah] in 2022, saying that ‘the Saudi regime is antithetical to everything SFF stands for’.” – The Guardian
‘Independent Cinema, As We Know It And As We Love It, Is Over’
Director and producer Oren Moverman: “The idea of independent financing, putting together films that have no home, taking them to festivals, trying to sell them — they’re going to have to take on a very different model, if they get made. A lot of producers I talk to are looking to set up projects with the streamers, the studios, whoever’s going to be left standing. Whereas the sort of grungy putting together of ten dollars here, ten dollars there to make a film — it’s possible from a financial standpoint, it’s just a question of where it will ever be seen.” – Variety
How America’s First Drive-In Classical Concert Since Lockdown Turned Out
San Diego’s Mainly Mozart got together an eight-member chamber group headed by L.A. Phil concertmaster Martin Chalifour to play octets by Mozart and Mendelssohn in the parking lot of a SoCal horse-racing track. – Newsweek
Giving To Arts Is Down In 2020: Study
The latest COVID-19 Sector Benchmark Insight Report, released by TRG Arts and data specialists Purple Seven, “includes data from 105 nonprofit organizations of all scales in the U.S., Canada, and the United Kingdom. The report reveals that there has been no aggregate growth in donations, but some individual organizations, particularly ones with a lower ratio of contributed income, have seen substantial increases in gift revenue.” – American Theatre
Picasso Murals Safely Removed From Doomed Building In Oslo
“The removal of a pair of concrete murals by Pablo Picasso was completed Tuesday from a government building in the Norwegian capital of Oslo whose demolition was under way.” (That building, called the Y block, was damaged in the 2011 bombing-and-murder spree by right-wing terrorist Anders Behring Breivik.) “The total cost of the removal of the art pieces — to be preserved and installed elsewhere — and the demolition is estimated at 59 million kroner ($6.4 million).” – Yahoo! (AP)
US Senate Report: Art Market Enabled Oligarchs To Get Around Sanctions
The report said the financial transactions were enabled by the secrecy and anonymity with which the art market operates and it called for tighter rules to force greater transparency. The investigators concluded that the auction houses — including Christie’s and Sotheby’s — and private sellers never knew the true identity of the oligarchs who were buying the art, but they said that was a loophole that needs to be closed for a sanctions policy to be truly effective. – The New York Times