Tag: 06.30.20

The World’s Most Famous Illegal Theatre Company Was Ready For The COVID Lockdown

Belarus Free Theatre — outlawed by its homeland’s dictatorship, forced to rehearse and perform in secret, and with its artistic directors living in asylum abroad — has years of experience using secure high-tech platforms to work together remotely and livestream its plays. The company has been unusually productive in the months since the pandemic arrived, and its newest production is already making news. – HowlRound

The Met Breuer: What It Achieved And Why It Mattered

“For decades, the Met’s programming has been associated with a kind of elegant classicism. The Breuer, it seemed, would allow the museum to strike a new balance between grandeur and something more outré. … But the Met didn’t follow the Whitney’s lead in that respect — most exhibitions were dark and relatively traditional in their presentation. … [But] since the opening of the Met Breuer, the Met has reoriented its modern and contemporary strategy with far better results.” – ARTnews

Surveying The Damage To Philadelphia’s Arts From Huge City Funding Cuts

The budget passed by the City Council cuts municipal support for the arts citywide by 40% to $5.84 million, and even that amount is $1 million more than the mayor proposed as he attempted to close a $750 million deficit. The city’s arts office has been eliminated entirely, as has funding to film production and historic preservation agencies, and hundreds of other organizations have taken hits. – The New York Times

Consolation: Philadelphia Arts Orgs Get $4 Million In COVID Relief

It’s a bit of welcome news after major cuts from the city government: “467 Philadelphia-area arts and culture groups plus more than a thousand individual artists are receiving a total of $4 million raised through … a multidonor fund assembled in response to the pandemic. … The fund ended up being able to make an award to every group that applied for support and met eligibility requirements.” – The Philadelphia Inquirer

Why Milton Glaser’s Iconic “I [Heart] New York” Worked

Glaser scrawled the first draft of the logo in the back of a cab, in 1976, red ink on a scrap of envelope; the sketch is now, fittingly, in the possession of the Museum of Modern Art. He made it for a marketing campaign for New York State, in 1977, which was a tricky moment for the city in particular—it didn’t seem very lovable. In the final design, the typeface is American Typewriter, friendly and approachable, with a cartoonish cast (notice the rounded bent knee of the “N”) that was Glaser’s signature, as if he anticipated the logo’s ascendance as kitsch. – The New Yorker

Our Perceptions Of The World Around Us Feel Real. They’re Not

For most people most of the time, our perception certainly feels real. But the notion that our senses capture an objective external reality can be dispelled by considering something as fundamental as colour, which can be culturally influenced and, even within a single culture, leave the population split between seeing the same picture of a dress as black-and-blue or white-and-gold. – Aeon

The presence of the absence

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