After one member of the chorus tested positive following the Sept. 13 performance, more than 40 other members and their close contacts went into isolation, the chorus said. Since then, at least 30 singers have tested positive, the Sallent municipal government said. – Seattle Times (AP)
Tag: 09.24.20
Uncertainty Can Be A Good Thing
The examined human life reflects, we suggest, a new kind of relationship with our own expectations and uncertainty. Yet it is one that we have somehow constructed within the inviolable bounds of a biologically bedrock drive to minimise long-term prediction error. How is this neat trick possible? – Aeon
BAFTA Overhauls Its Awards System To Make It More Diverse
“[The package of changes] includes adding 1,000 new members to its committee and limiting the amount that studios can spend campaigning for nominations, in a bid to recognise more diverse talent. The wide-ranging changes … are the result of a seven-month review process, which was triggered by heavy criticism over the lack of diversity in its major awards earlier this year.” – The Guardian
Uffizi Gallery Says TikTok Has Doubled The Number Of Its Young Visitors
“Since moving onto multiple social media channels, including TikTok, during the lockdown, the Uffizi’s online presence has exploded. In an apparently related trend, young visitors (as a proportion of the total) have nearly doubled since the museum [in Florence] reopened over the summer.” – The Art Newspaper
Ford Foundation: Record $160 Million Lifeline For The Arts
The Ford Foundation this week is announcing an unprecedented $160 million-and-growing initiative called America’s Cultural Treasures, with substantial grants going to BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and people of color) organizations across the country. The grants are, in most cases, the largest ever for the 20 recipients in the first round. – Washington Post
Could A Drive-In ‘Nutcracker’ Work This Christmas? This Company’s Trying It
“For five nights [Atlanta Ballet] will construct a pop-up drive-in movie theater on its surface parking lot, and will welcome patrons at $100 a carload ($150 for the front-row parking spaces). … The film will feature the new staging of The Nutcracker, with its outsize sets and startling video projections, introduced to Atlanta audiences in 2018 by artistic director Gennadi Nedvigin.” – Atlanta Journal Constitution
Lost Arts: What New York Would Have Had This Weekend If There Were No Pandemic
“We look at the toll the shutdown is taking through data (jobs vanished, revenues gone), visuals (picturing the season that isn’t) and personal stories (22 arts workers who should have been working this weekend, and what they’re doing instead). One weekend, lost, but also, so much more.” – The New York Times
‘Enormous Upsurge’ In Complaints Of Racist Behavior To UK Equity
“‘In a period of time [during the lockdown] when nothing was happening, we were receiving dozens of complaints from groups and artists, and we’re still receiving them now,’ said [union general secretary Paul] Fleming. ‘There has been a huge amount of dignity issues around hair and makeup through to reports of casual racism in dressing rooms and racist language in casting processes when people are at their most vulnerable.'” – The Guardian
Harold Evans, 92, Investigative Journalist, Magazine Founder, Author, Publisher
Over a seven-decade career, Evans exposed major political and business scandals (above all, Kim Philby’s hidden career as a Soviet spy and the abandonment of children deformed by thalidomide by the drug’s manufacturers), edited The Sunday Times and The Times of London (which he left after a battle with Rupert Murdoch), wrote several books, founded Condé Nast Traveler magazine, and served as president of Random House; he became a Reuters editor-at-large at age 83. In a 2002 British Journalism Review poll, he was voted “the greatest newspaper editor of all time.” – Reuters
How Academia Has Changed In Britain
The key factor is tuition fees – currently £9250 per annum for full-time study – which in 2012 replaced most direct funding of universities. Today half of UK universities’ £40 billion annual income comes from fees. Universities are businesses forced to think commercially, regardless of any humane virtues traditionally associated with academic life. Academic heads of department – otherwise known as ‘line managers’, some of whom control their own budgets – are set aspirational admissions targets which often prove unachievable due to the vicissitudes of an unstable market. – London Review of Books