Before the coronavirus crisis, the drive-through had been fast losing status, often deployed as a symbol of obesity and the worst of car-dependent urban design. In many cities, it had been subject to outright bans. The drive-in, meanwhile, is nearly extinct, with just a few still operating in Southern California. But during the pandemic, drive-throughs have become a weird sort of societal glue. And the drive-in has been reconsidered. – Los Angeles Times
Tag: 05.07.20
New Rule: Oscar Nominees Can’t Be Eligible For Emmys
The Television Academy ruled in March that effective in 2021, programs that have been nominated for an Oscar will no longer be eligible for the Emmys competition.” says the TV Academy in a statement this morning. – Deadline
Shakespeare’s Work Was Repeatedly Interrupted By The Plague. Where Is It In His Plays?
The theatre historian J. Leeds Barroll III, who carefully sifted through the surviving records, concluded that in the years between 1606 and 1610—the period in which Shakespeare wrote and produced some of his greatest plays, from “Macbeth” and “Antony and Cleopatra” to “The Winter’s Tale” and “The Tempest”—the London playhouses were not likely to have been open for more than a total of nine months. It is all the more striking, then, that in his plays and poems Shakespeare almost never directly represents the plague. – The New Yorker
An Opportunity To Reinvigorate The Public University
That’s what happened in the depression. “What prompted this public investment in higher education was neither sentimentality about the poor nor a noblesse oblige of good works. It was a vision of culture and social wealth, derived from the activism of the working classes and defended by a member of Britain’s House of Lords.” – The New Yorker
MoMA Slashes Budgets, Staff, Exhibitions
Before the shutdown, the museum had around 960 staff members, director Glenn Lowry said. Through a combination of voluntary retirement packages and general attrition, the new staff count will be about 800. “We will learn to be a much smaller institution,” he said. The museum administration also took what Lowry described as a “chainsaw” to its exhibition budget, cutting it from $18 million to $10 million for the fiscal year that begins July 1 and runs through June 30, 2021. It also cut its publications budget by about half. Overall, the museum will have slashed its annual budget to about $135 million, from close to $180 million. – Bloomberg
Massive Interpol Stings Recover 19,000 Stolen Antiquities
Two international operations culminated last fall in the arrest of 101 suspects and seizure of trafficked objects in Spain, Argentina, Latvia, and Afghanistan. Among the items were ancient ceramics, coins, and weapons as well as a Roman limestone sculpture, three Roman columns, and hundreds of rare pre-Columbian items, including a gold Tumaco mask. – The Guardian