Sotheby’s “LIVE GLOBAL AUCTION EVENT” was, per yesterday’s post-sale press release, “an unprecedented live-streamed event, with banks of telephone-bidding colleagues beamed in from around the world.” This complicated set-up worked well enough, but at the expense of “auction fever,” the contagion that can spread when bidding happens the old-fashioned way: concentrated in one salesroom packed with live attendees. – Lee Rosenbaum
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India Bans Chinese Social Media Apps
India has banned video-sharing social network TikTok and messaging platform WeChat along with 57 other Chinese developed apps over national security and privacy concerns, as tensions between the two countries continue to rise. – The Hollywood Reporter
Why This Medical School Is Using Artworks To Teach Diagnostics
Stephen Russell at the University of Alabama at Birmingham developed the course “Prescribing Art: How Observation Enhances Medicine” to teach students to slow down and observe without worrying about the pressures of the examination room (it turns out that Mary Cassatt was excellent at capturing the symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis), but also to spot students’ own biases and teach them (as Russell puts it) “the tolerance of ambiguity.” – Artnet
Study: The Ideal Numbers Of Students For Online And In-Person Classes
Laurence Tomei and Douglas Nelson say that, as mentioned, online undergraduate classes should have no more than 12 students. In person, on campus classes should be no larger than 18 students and hybrid models should be only 17 students. Undergrad classes should likewise have an upper limit of 18, while graduate classes should have no more than 14 students and doctoral classes should be just nine or fewer students, though Tomei advised more research around that doctoral level finding. – Forbes
Addressing Dancers’ Biggest Worries About Coming Back From Coronavirus
Natalia Boesch: “Living-room ballet has always been a big part of my life, whether I was working out choreographic ideas or just giving myself barre. But, as I write this, living-room ballet is all we’ve had for weeks. That changes everything. I know that, for my students and other young dancers, fears about what they might lose due to the COVID-19 shutdown may be overwhelming. Below are some big-picture thoughts addressing those concerns, and a few suggestions for making the best of a frustrating situation.” – Pointe Magazine
How A Girls Choir Pivoted And Is Thriving Online
Amazingly, not only has the group continued the girls’ education online, it has used the constraints to its advantage by bringing in guest artists for master classes and increasing one-on-one instruction. At a time when many of the girls are deeply moved, not to mention upset by recent events, the continuation of study has doubtless been a lifeline. – San Francisco Classical Voice
The World’s Most Famous Illegal Theatre Company Was Ready For The COVID Lockdown
Belarus Free Theatre — outlawed by its homeland’s dictatorship, forced to rehearse and perform in secret, and with its artistic directors living in asylum abroad — has years of experience using secure high-tech platforms to work together remotely and livestream its plays. The company has been unusually productive in the months since the pandemic arrived, and its newest production is already making news. – HowlRound
The Radicalism Of Current Black Playwrighting
Something is palpably different among playwrights of the millennial generation, who are envisioning, demanding and conjuring into existence a new and more diverse spectatorship. Their relationship with audiences, rather than operating in the quid pro quo manner of our commercial theater or the insider code of the avant-garde, is charged with protest, clarifying anger and targeted love. – Los Angeles Times
The Met Breuer: What It Achieved And Why It Mattered
“For decades, the Met’s programming has been associated with a kind of elegant classicism. The Breuer, it seemed, would allow the museum to strike a new balance between grandeur and something more outré. … But the Met didn’t follow the Whitney’s lead in that respect — most exhibitions were dark and relatively traditional in their presentation. … [But] since the opening of the Met Breuer, the Met has reoriented its modern and contemporary strategy with far better results.” – ARTnews
Rudolfo Anaya, Founding Father Of Chicano Literature, Dead At 82
“Literary critics say [that Bless Me, Ultima,] Anaya’s World War II-era novel about a young Mexican-American boy’s relationship with an older curandera, or healer, influenced a generation of Latino writers because of its imagery and cultural references that were rare at the time of its 1972 publication.” – AP