Category: AJBlogs

FDR’s Works Progress Administration was the closest Washington had come to emulating European arts subsidies. At the same time, the New Deal made a devil’s pact with race – and the WPA was no exception. – Joseph Horowitz

From early March on, there have been increasing demonstrations of the jazz community taking care of itself and its own. – Howard Mandel

I regret that I can only offer you my camcorder’s sound complete with audience noise. But there is enough spirit and inspiring artistry to make up for that, I think. – Michal Shapiro

Sotheby’s “LIVE GLOBAL AUCTION EVENT” was, per yesterday’s post-sale press release, “an unprecedented live-streamed event, with banks of telephone-bidding colleagues beamed in from around the world.” This complicated set-up worked well enough, but at the expense of “auction fever,” the contagion that can spread when bidding happens the old-fashioned way: concentrated in one salesroom packed with live attendees. – Lee Rosenbaum

I don’t know how I’ve managed to survive the simultaneous losses of my beloved spouse and the art form to which I have devoted more than a decade and a half of my life. But I’m still here, and if Hilary’s death and the closing of America’s theaters didn’t kill me, then I figure I’m in it for the long haul. I hope you are, too. – Terry Teachout

In January I made the difficult decision to leave The New School when my current contract ends. My heart and mind have been calling me to other lands, to other ways of being and living in the world, and to center work that has been squeezed into the margins the past few years. – Diane Ragsdale

Whenever someone of visibility in the music industry proclaims that what the pandemic lock-down world needs now is this (whatever that is), the chances are good that it’s here already. – David Patrick Stearns

I knew that my contrarian suggestions about what to do with the controversial sculptures of Confederate leaders on Richmond’s Monument Avenue would provoke some pushback, but I hoped for the constructive critiques that I’ve come to expect from my knowledgeable, insightful readers. That’s exactly what I got. – Lee Rosenbaum

A tribute to the brash, quick-talking, brilliant, no-nonsense scholar, writer, colleague, and friend whom I once taught, worked with, and learned from. – Deborah Jowitt

Sotheby’s has quietly upped its charges for purchasers of its offerings: An “Overhead Premium” of 1% of the auction hammer price will supplement its buyer’s premium, effective Aug. 1. – Lee Rosenbaum