What Comes Next?

I fear that the rampaging growth of income (and most other) inequality is going to be a raw wound on the other side of this crisis and that the nonprofit arts industry could be caught up in a widespread reaction against it. This post and others that follow will explain the fear. – Doug Borwick

Viewing from Home

What has interested me right now are online videos in which dancers, sequestered in their homes, keep in shape. Their charm lies in how the dedicated, witty performers interact with their locations. When did you last see a crackerjack dancer toss off a high kick between her refrigerator and her stove? – Deborah Jowitt

‘Darkness Residencies’: Four Writers Spend Hours In Completely Blacked-Out Rooms

Artist Sam Winston, as part of his project A Delicate Sight, invited Bernardine Evaristo (co-winner of last year’s Booker Prize), Raymond Antrobus (winner of last year’s Folio Prize for poetry), Don Paterson, and Max Porter, “to spend hours in blackout before writing something inspired by heightened senses, identity, imagination, sensory reduction and rest.” – The Guardian

How Did The Last Pandemic Affect Music In The U.S.? Not That Much

“The [Spanish] flu did not transform the American cultural scene, as the new coronavirus threatens to; when the outbreak eased, in 1919, musical life returned swiftly to normal. A columnist … estimated that the financial damage to music from the influenza outbreak amounted to around $5 million nationwide, the equivalent of approximately $85.5 million today. In 2020, the Met alone stands to lose that much, or more.” – The New York Times