“The real estate company that whitewashed graffiti works at 5Pointz in Queens will still have to pay millions in damages to the affected artists, the United States Supreme Court decided on Monday, October 5. … The [justices] declined G&M Realty’s petition to review the case, upholding a 2018 federal court ruling that awarded $6.7 million in damages to 21 artists at the site.” – Hyperallergic
Author: Matthew Westphal
With Big, Flexible Spaces, Several New York City Venues Insist They Can Reopen Safely
“The Park Avenue Armory’s vast drill hall has nearly 40,000 square feet of unobstructed open area. The Shed’s central performance space has a 115-foot-high ceiling. St. Ann’s Warehouse has 10 big double doors and a new air ionization system. … They are pressing state regulators to consider a series of architectural advantages that they say should make their buildings easier to adapt for safety than the glorious but cramped houses that symbolize New York’s theater district.” – The New York Times
A Veteran Broadway Dancer Laments What May Be The End Of His Career
“I wondered, but didn’t ask, if, like mine, my castmates’ bodies had already grown thicker and felt shorter and moved slower. I wondered if, like me, they didn’t recognize themselves without choreography to move through and other people to move with; if, like me, they were hoping this wasn’t the moment they’d always known would come: the moment they would have to redefine who they are and who they’re going to be.” – Dance Magazine
Walt Disney Co. Restructures Its Entire Entertainment And Content Operations
“Under the new structure, Disney is creating a Media and Entertainment Distribution group responsible for both the dissemination and ad sales for all of its content, including across streaming services including Disney+. … The newly created group will be responsible for the profits and losses for the entirety of Disney’s media and entertainment businesses and will oversee distribution, operations, sales, advertising data and technology for all of Disney’s content arms.” – The Hollywood Reporter
Soprano Erin Wall Dead At 44
A finalist at the 2003 BBC Cardiff Singer of the World competition, she went on to perform with symphony orchestras and major opera houses throughout Europe and North America. She was diagnosed with cancer in 2018. – CBC
England Gives £257 Million In Rescue Funding To Museums And Performance Venues
The money, distributed by Arts Council England, is part of the £1.57 billion Culture Recovery Fund announced last week by the UK government. In addition, £103 million has been given to heritage sites, with another £650,000 divided between 42 cinemas. Grants to larger organizations that asked for more than £1 million in aid have yet to be announced. – The Guardian
Reddit’s ‘Am I The Asshole?’ Is Addictive. It May Also Be Making The World A Better Place.
“You start reading AITA posts before bed instead of doomscrolling the news because here, at least, it feels like your opinion matters. … It’s a place where accountability actually exists, even if only in the form of branding someone right or wrong in one absurd situation. It’s also a place for growth: Sometimes posters return to talk about how their lives changed — almost always for the better — because of the advice they got from thousands of anonymous strangers. … AITA might [now] be the largest public forum for conflict resolution on the planet. ” – The Ringer
John Luther Adams On What Makes His Music Tick
“Musically, I came of age in a time when there was this ongoing war between smart music and pretty music. And one of the things that I discovered was that it’s a false dichotomy. … The construction of the music, the intellectual care, the mathematical rigor, the algorithmic detail — all that is essential, even if you don’t hear it or you choose not to listen to it. … Music can be intellectually airtight and still sock you in the belly or grab you by the ears or seduce you, ravish you.” – The Nation
What’s The Right Classic Movie For The Fall Of 2020? ‘A Face In The Crowd’
Jake Tapper: “The 1957 film … tells the story of Larry ‘Lonesome’ Rhodes (Andy Griffith), a charismatic, populist entertainer with a dark side, who uses the new medium of television to rise to the pinnacle of American power. … As Trump’s first term comes to a close, A Face in the Crowd is worth revisiting — less for what it reveals about the president than for what it says about the rest of us.” – The Atlantic
Maynard Solomon, Founder Of Vanguard Records And ‘Psychobiographer’ Of Great Composers, Dead At 90
“A musicologist and record producer best known for influential, lucidly written biographies of Beethoven and Mozart as well as a hotly debated scholarly article on Schubert’s sexuality,” he was, as Donal Henahan once put it in a review, “one of the most persuasive voices on behalf of the perilous intellectual voyage known as psychobiography — or, less kindly, ‘psychobabblography’.” – The New York Times