Jill Robinson, CEO of TRG Arts, said that in North America there is an active “engine of income” from new subscription purchases and philanthropy that has limited some of the financial impact of COVID-19. – Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Blog
What Other Governments Are Spending To Save Their Nations’ Arts Sectors From COVID Collapse
From prosperous Germany (a €1 billion rescue package) to destitute Madagascar (distributing bags of rice to out-of-work artists), here’s what ten countries are doing to mitigate the damage that the pandemic and shutdown have done to cultural institutions and arts workers. – The Guardian
Turns Out There Are Benefits To Teaching Harp Online
“With most of the room cut out, there are fewer distractions. When three dimensions collapse into two, there’s a weird intimacy. You can get up close, like ballroom dance partners. You can demonstrate without replacing students in the chair. And you can take copious notes while they play, marking the music like an over-caffeinated octopus. They can’t see that.” – WBUR
How I Co-Wrote An Opera About A Black Policeman’s Son Shot By Another Policeman
Tazewell Thompson, creator, with composer Jeanine Tesori, of Blue, which the Music Critics Association of North America has named best new opera of the year: “I wrote it from an obsessive need and sense of responsibility to tell an intimate story behind the numbing numbers of boys and men who are killed. But here we are now: art imitating life, life imitating art. Unfortunately, the themes in Blue have no expiration date. … Our eyes will never be free of tears.” – The New York Times
How Dallas Opera Became A Facebook Star
“Basically,” he says, “we needed to create something like ESPN or The Food Network.” You mean, I ask, you talk to chefs about the politics of food, but you don’t do the cooking? “Exactly, that was the premise.” – Art and Seek (KERA)
Has Somebody Really Figured Out How To Decipher The Voynich Manuscript This Time?
“Any attempts to decipher the manuscript’s unique text, made up of a mixture of handwritten Latin letters, Arabic numbers, and unknown characters, have so far failed. … Now, after three years of analysis, the German Egyptologist Rainer Hannig … believes he has cracked the code to translating the work, and found the manuscript’s language to be based on Hebrew.” – The Art Newspaper
Relieved Yet Wary, Customers Start Returning To London’s Bookshops
This week book retailers in England have reopened to the public (with limits on how many people may be on the premises at a time) for the first time since the pandemic-induced shutdown began three months ago. Alex Marshall visited half a dozen bookstores around the capital to check on the mood. – The New York Times
Here’s The Group That Created The Google Spreadsheet Showing How Much Museum Employees Actually Make
“Founded at the end of May 2019 by a ‘nonhierarchical group of arts and museum workers who are friends and colleagues,’ Art + Museum Transparency prefers to answer questions collectively. ARTnews contacted the group to inquire about what it took to put the spreadsheet together, and the good they believe it can do.” – ARTnews
Audiences For Children’s Theater Are Quite Diverse. The Creators, Not So Much.
“A new study finds that about 80 percent of the shows presented around the country are by white writers, and 85 percent of the productions are led by white directors. Also of concern: Much of the industry’s diversity is concentrated in a small number of productions about people of color, while the shows that dominate the industry’s stages, generally adapted from children’s books and fairy tales, have overwhelmingly white creative teams.” – The New York Times
Organizers Of Woodstock 50 Sue Investors That Yanked Funding And Caused Event’s Collapse
“Woodstock 50 organizers are suing their former financial partner Dentsu Group and several of its affiliates, accusing the company of ‘destruction of the festival’ and ‘sabotage.’ … The [event, planned for last August,] was marred with a number of publicly aired setbacks and legal battles, including Dentsu and the festival legally severing ties last April, when Dentsu pulled its financial backing and also initially canceled the festival, which festival organizers argued Dentsu did not have the legal right to do.” – Rolling Stone