It has not been an easy sell, coming at a time when many pillars of the economy, from airlines to restaurants to public transportation, are facing existential crises and needing handouts themselves. But it is a fight the country’s museums and performing arts groups are used to waging. – The New York Times
Blog
How Theater In America Handled It Last Time There Was A Pandemic
To find out, you have to go back 102 years to the 1918 influenza epidemic. “Even when people knew in advance the closures were imminent and that deaths were surging, they didn’t relinquish theatregoing easily.” – American Theatre
Arts Council England Pledges £160 Million To Arts For Virus Response
The money is intended to prevent artists and arts organisations from going bust, but is also designed to help them come up with creative responses “to buoy the public” during the lockdown. – The Guardian
Museums And Art Handlers Are Giving Their Masks And Gloves To Hospitals
“Art spaces … are doing their part to meet the needs of medical professionals, packing up crates of gloves typically used to protect artworks from oil and dust on the hands of those touching artworks and sending off coveted N95 respirators that protect front-line health care workers from the virus.” – ARTnews
What Dancers Are Doing To Maintain During Lockdown
The recently interrupted tours, canceled premieres, locked studios and social distancing requirements have hit the financially fragile, socially enmeshed dance world hard. When your life revolves around lifting, leaping, catching, jumping and otherwise spending time (often literally joined at the hip) with your dance partners, how do you deal with solitary confinement? – Washington Post
Librarians: If We Can’t Lend Books During Lockdown, Let’s Make Our Buildings And Bookmobiles Wi-Fi Hotspots
“The [American Library Association] urged the FCC to waive E-rate restrictions so libraries could not only offer [free] Wi-Fi access via local libraries, but could also provide broadband service to disconnected communities via bookmobiles and mobile hotspots without running afoul of FCC rules.” – Vice
Remembering Terrence McNally
Perhaps the most important comic voice in theater since Neil Simon, McNally wrote to amuse and awaken. Laughter for him was the greatest survival tool ever invented. Humor was his shield against the homophobia he experienced as a Catholic boy growing up in Texas, against the losses that rained down on him and his community during the worst days of the AIDS crisis and against the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune — which in showbiz is even more outrageous than usual. – Los Angeles Times
Albert Uderzo, Co-Creator Of Astérix The Gaul, Dead At 92
“Born colorblind and with six fingers on each hand, [he] became one of the world’s most acclaimed cartoonists, known for drawing characters that ranged from the sword-wielding Astérix — with his winged helmet, bulbous nose and horseshoe mustache — to the roly-poly Obélix, a stonemason who joins Astérix in defending their village from Roman legionaries.” – The Washington Post
What Will America’s Arts Economy Be Like After COVID? How Can Artists Survive? (It’s Not A Pretty Picture)
Zach Finkelstein does not sugar-coat the situation: “The tragic irony of this crisis is that, in the post-COVID era, the person most likely to have a performance career will be the one that can last the longest without performing. … The most effective route to survival in the post-COVID word will require artists to build another set of marketable skills, with training to start immediately.” – The Middle-Class Artist
Yvonne Rainer Creates An At-Home Dance For Coronavirus Quarantine
Brian Seibert: “She calls it Passing and Jostling While Being Confined to a Small Apartment. It’s a dance history exercise [for Seibert’s class at Yale], but it occurred to me that it might double as a diversion for people now cooped up at home; it’s something that anyone can attempt, carefully. Ms. Rainer agreed. So here I can present her first dance for the socially isolated.” – The New York Times