Category: issues

“Led by the National Symphony Orchestra and the Washington National Opera, the Cartography Project will create an unspecified number of new works from artists of color that promote healing and understanding, Kennedy Center [CEO] Deborah Rutter said Thursday. The project is named for its intention to become a kind of musical map, tracing events that have sparked marches and activism across the nation. Shorter orchestral pieces may be presented digitally as soon as this fall, while opera commissions will take much longer, Rutter said.” – The Washington Post

The announcement by UK culture secretary Oliver Dowden (which does not apply for Scotland, Wales, or Northern Ireland, whose regional governments will make that decision) means that — with sanitary and social distancing procedures in place — the summer season may start at such venues as Shakespeare’s Globe in London, the Minack Theatre in Cornwall, and the Glyndebourne Opera Festival, where a special outdoor program has been developed. – The Guardian

The test events will feature the London Symphony Orchestra at St Luke’s Church, as well as performances at the London Palladium and Butlin’s holiday parks. “This is an important milestone for our performing artists, who have been waiting patiently in the wings since March,” Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden said. – BBC

“We were going to do two sittings each night and the shows sold out straight away. We knew there was an appetite among audiences to come back. But when restrictions weren’t relaxed, we had to cancel. This is our business now – planning with enough flexibility and contingency so that you can shift or delay if you have to. We’re having to delve deep into our reserves of resilience as well as our creativity.” – The Guardian

The letter—whose endorsers included everyone from Noam Chomsky to Gloria Steinem to Margaret Atwood to Salman Rushdie to Wynton Marsalis—applauded “powerful protests for racial and social justice [and] police reform, along with wider calls for greater equality and inclusion across our society.” But it also decried “a new set of moral attitudes and political commitments that tend to weaken our norms of open debate and toleration of differences in favor of ideological conformity.” – The New York Times

Never heard of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation? It’s the body that manages Berlin’s Museum Island complex and all the other state-run museums in the German capital, along with the Berlin State Library and archives. It is notoriously big, slow, cumbersome, and inflexible — and it can be stingy with building maintenance, too. A German federal government commission is now recommending that the Foundation be broken into four separate parts and its funding be overhauled. – Deutsche Welle

“The restriction of debate, whether by a repressive government or an intolerant society, invariably hurts those who lack power and makes everyone less capable of democratic participation. The way to defeat bad ideas is by exposure, argument, and persuasion, not by trying to silence or wish them away.” – Harper’s

Justin Davidson makes the case that New York City’s overburdened, underinvested-in school buildings simply can’t fit students in at a COVID-safe distance, but the currently-dark performance venues (and sports arenas and deserted malls, for that matter) can. – New York Magazine