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
Blog
Philip Kennicott: The Healing Power Of Pity
“Seeing ourselves as pitiable requires rethinking fundamental ideas about America’s history, purpose and destiny. It obliges us to do something that is intolerable, to accept our weakness, even impotence, in the face of larger forces.” – Washington Post
And Now… Drive-In Van Gogh
Art lovers will drive into the 4,000 square foot downtown industrial space and will stay inside their vehicles. It’s quite a change from the original concept, which permitted 700 people to walk inside the space at a time. – CBC
Now More Than Ever: The Social Value Of The Arts
Beyond simply creating art for art’s sake, or for school credits, many of the young people I encountered are building social movements and creative projects around a different vision for our planet. And they are calling us in. This is an unprecedented moment for intergenerational justice and we need to seize it. – The Conversation
Report: We’re Reading More In Lockdown (And Our Taste Is Changing)
According to the nationally representative sample of 1,000 adults, surveyed from 29 April to 1 May, the nation has also increased the amount of time it spends reading books from around 3.5 hours per week, to six. Just 10% of adults said they were reading less. Readers also revealed their tastes have changed since the outbreak of Covid-19. – The Guardian
Musicians Association Will Pay Musicians To Perform Online
Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada will pay musicians $150 per online performance for its members. The project is backed by $200,000 in funding every three months for the duration of COVID-19 lockdown period. Shares of royalties will go to all rights holders of the music performed. – Ludwig Van
Fall TV Is Going To Look Very Different
Now — when yearly upfront presentations would normally take place — networks are instead deciding whether to move forward with or completely scrap prospective shows, despite having barely any other finished product to consider. Some networks are requesting more scripts and approving straight-to-series orders, while others are delaying summer releases so they can be used as fresh content in the fall. – Huffington Post
Buy A Painting By This Dog And Get Free Weed
In D.C., you see, it is legal to possess marijuana but not to sell it; there is, however, no law against giving it away. So the enterprising proprietors of District Derp gallery got the idea to sell paintings by Sudo — their four-year-old mini-husky, who’s been trained to paint with a specially constructed brush — and offer purchasers, as a bonus gift, an amount of cannabis equal in value to the price of the artwork. – Business Insider
Interest In Disaster, Dystopian Stories Is Soaring. Why?
Global downloads for Plague Inc, a 2012 video game that encourages players to spread a disease around the world before a cure is found, increased by an annual 123% from January to March this year, as the spread of Covid-19 began to gather speed internationally. Its UK-based developer Ndemic Creation addressed the game’s popularity: “Whenever there is an outbreak of disease, we see an increase in players as people seek to find out more about how diseases spread, and to understand the complexities of viral outbreaks,” the company said. – BBC
Gabriel Bacquier, France’s Greatest Baritone Of The Postwar Era, Dead At 95
In addition to his triumphs in Europe, he was one of the few French singers of his time to have a big career in the U.S., notably in Chicago and Philadelphia and at the Met, where he sang for 18 seasons. Also unusually for a francophone singer of the day, he was admired internationally for his command of Italian opera as well as the French repertoire. – OperaWire