Conductors On Hold

There’s truly no way to perform the craft of being an orchestra conductor right now. So they, like most of us, are doing other things: “For conductors with steady work before the pandemic — globe-trotting and rarely home — the aftermath of cancellations has amounted to a surprise sabbatical. They have learned new languages, picked up old instruments, and composed. And they have begun to reimagine performances for the coming year.” – The New York Times

Teen Who Threw Child Off Tate Modern Sentenced To 15 Years

The Old Bailey heard how Bravery spent more than 15 minutes stalking possible targets at the art gallery viewing platform before fixing on a young visitor who had briefly left his parents’ side. The teenager, who is from Ealing, was said to have “scooped (the victim) up and, without any hesitation, carried him straight to the railings and threw him over”. – Local Guardian (UK)

Louvre To Reopen With A Fraction Of Its Usual Visitors

When the museum reopens, 70 percent will be accessible, including the large galleries of French and Italian paintings, the sculpture courtyards and the Egyptian antiquities section. But with France’s borders still closed to travelers from outside the European Union, visitor numbers will be a fraction of what they usually are in the peak summer season. – New York Times

American Nursing Homes Have Been Exposed As A Design Catastrophe

Even when there is no pandemic to worry about, most of these places have pared existence for the long-lived back to its grim essentials. These are places nobody would choose to die. More important, they are places nobody would choose to live. “People ask me, ‘After COVID, is anyone going to want to go into a nursing home ever again?’ The answer is: Nobody ever wanted to go to one.” – New York Magazine

COVID-As-Opportunity: Enough With Utopias, We Need Practical Ideas

“Maybe I’ve missed the more nuanced views, but if feels like the only people out there – in my echo chambered world at any rate – who admit that they can’t be sure are those with the most wisdom to express some degree of certainty – our epidemiologists and other medical scientists. Too many other people are using this crisis to justify their own existing view of the world’s dystopia, and already-formed hopes for a future utopia.” – Cultural Learning Alliance

How The Virus Turned This Ballet Master Into A Real-Life Phantom Of The Opera

Curtis Foley, who danced with the Royal Winnipeg ballet and Les Ballets Grandiva, was, until this year, a ballet master at the Polish National Ballet He had just arrived to coach the ballet company at the opera house in the Czech city of Ostrava when the COVID lockdown struck — and he’s ended up spending four months, much of that time alone, living inside the theater. – Dance Magazine