“Long was the right man at the right time in 1957, when he came to Houston to establish Meredith Long & Co. With less than a million residents then, the city had two art museums, three galleries and a core group of culturally ambitious oil, real estate and financial tycoons who could build important collections.” – Houston Chronicle
Blog
Dancers Speak Out About Racism In The Dance World
A handful of dancers have taken to Instagram to directly call out the problems they’ve seen in their own companies. – Dance Magazine
Krumping Right In The Faces Of The LAPD — And Getting Thanked For It
“[Even] as krump has journeyed from the streets to screens and stages, it remains a protest art,” writes Sarah Kaufman. That’s why, at a demonstration on Sunday in Santa Monica, Jo’Artis Ratti, one of the founders of krump (nom de danse Big Mijo), “used it to improvise on a lifetime of rage and despair within a few feet of a police line. The result is one of the most poignant images to come out of the past week of protests over the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police — and the story behind Ratti’s dancing, and what followed, is just as poignant.” – The Washington Post
One Thing: Recording Labels Could Help Black Artists By Fixing Inequitable Contracts
“If the music industry wants to support black lives, labels and platforms can start with amending contracts, distributing royalties, diversifying boardrooms, and retroactively paying back all the black artists, and their families, they have built their empires on.” – Rolling Stone
How American Movies Strenuously Avoided The Issue Of Racist Policing
“The entertainment industry has generally followed the official line: blithe ignorance and denial giving way to grudging admission of a problem, but only as far as the ‘bad apple’ theory. And while it is safe to say the majority of law-enforcement personnel are not racist, the existence of institutional racism is repeatedly denied.” Except, of course, by Black filmmakers. – The Guardian
Jane Goodall: COVID Is A Warning From The Natural World
“We have brought this on ourselves because of our absolute disrespect for animals and the environment,” she said. “Our disrespect for wild animals and our disrespect for farmed animals has created this situation where disease can spill over to infect human beings.” – The Guardian
Another Knotty COVID Mess The Art World Has To Untangle: Exhibition Planning
“Museum exhibitions take an exceptional amount of planning — from curatorial conception to filling out loan forms and insurance, to shipping, hanging, and displaying works. Getting a show on a museum’s calendar is no simple feat, let alone getting it on the gallery walls. So what happens when a global pandemic puts exhibitions and their scheduling on an indefinite pause?” – Artsy
Classical Music In The UK Is In Mortal Danger. Why Aren’t People With Clout There Publicly Fighting For It?
As the novel coronavirus spread, the machinery of live classical performance ground to a halt months ago, putting thousands out of work; the industry will be one of the last to return to full activity, and no one can yet agree on how or when that can happen; unlike continental Europe, Britain doesn’t provide nearly enough public funding to see classical music through the crisis. Many famous theatre folk are sounding the alarm for their art form, writes Charlotte Higgins; why aren’t well-known classical lovers doing the same? – The Guardian
Second City Co-Owner And Executive Producer Says He’ll ‘Step Away’ From Company Following Accusations Of Institutional Racism
Andrew Alexander, who helped launch the careers of dozens of prominent performers since he purchased Second City’s Toronto outpost in 1974 and the Chicago flagship in 1985, issued an apology saying, in part, “The Second City cannot begin to call itself anti-racist. That is one of the great failures of my life.” Second City artistic director Anthony LeBlanc, who is Black, has been named interim executive producer. – Chicago Tribune
When Public Libraries Reopen, Things Will Be Different (And Very Hard On Librarians)
Not only will library staff have to deal with a raft of new safety procedures and protective equipment, they will be faced with enforcing mask-wearing and distancing rules on potentially recalcitrant patrons. “And all of it will be done under the threat of job cuts, a potential second wave of Covid-19 infections, immense budget pressure, and worsening political dysfunction.” – Publishers Weekly