Hardship grants available to American critics
Critical Minded is offering £500 hardship grants to US-based critics of colour or critics from underrepresented communities in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The condition for the grant is that writers on culture, dance, film and television, food, literary arts, music, theatre or visual art must have published at least three articles this year in English or Spanish. Critical Minded was founded by the Nathan Cummings Foundation and the Ford Foundation to support the widening of voices within cultural commentary.
Lonnie Bunch: ‘The state of our democracy feels fragile and precarious’
Smithsonian secretary Lonnie Bunch (formerly director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture) has issued a rare public statement in response to the US protests over the murder of George Floyd. Bunch said that he hoped the moment would ‘compel America to confront its tortured racial past, and that this moment becomes the impetus for our nation to address racism and social inequities in earnest.’ Bunch goes on to write: ‘History is a guide to a better future and demonstrates that we can become a better society – but only if we collectively demand it from each other and from the institutions responsible for administering justice’. You can read the statement here.
The Brooklyn Museum has become a pop-up food bank
The museum is working with nonprofit The Campaign Against Hunger to turn its biergarten into a pop-up food bank, running across this week. While the museum (as with other arts institutions across New York) remains closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it will offer free food distribution for those suffering from insecurity. More information can be found here.
Met Opera cancels all 2020 performances
After furloughing its orchestra, chorus and other staffers, the Metropolitan Opera has announced that all its remaining performances will be canceled for 2020. The Met hopes to return with a gala on New Year’s Eve. But many of its artists have not been paid since March. ‘It’s transparently obvious that social distancing and grand opera cannot go together,’ general manager Peter Gelb told the New York Times.
Alister Warman, 1946–2020
Alister Warman, the former director of the Serpentine, has died. Warman headed the Serpentine Gallery from 1984, where his programme included exhibitions by Maggi Hambling, Frank Bowling and Tess Jaray, as well as inviting Paula Rego to stage her first London institutional show. In 1991 he was appointed principle of the Byam Shaw in London in 1991, overseeing the art school’s merger with Central St Martins in 2003, which brought the college into the University of London. He retired in 2011. He also acted as a trustee to the Triangle Arts Trust and Peer.
South Korea’s museums close again
Of the four venues that make up South Korea’s National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, three are to go back into lockdown following an increase in COVID-19 infection rates. The Seoul Museum of Art and Gallery Hyundai have also closed having reopened on 6 May. Commercial galleries in capital are likely to follow suit. Last Thursday 79 new infections were reported in the country with 67 of them from the Seoul area. The new lockdown measures will be in place through 14 June.
New Zealand arts get multimillion aid package
The arts in New Zealand are to receive a NZ $57 million (£28.6 m) bailout, as part of the country’s $50 billion COVID-19 Recovery Fund. $25 million will go to Creative New Zealand, the national arts agency while Te Papa Tongarewa, New Zealand’s national museum in Wellington is receiving $18 million. The museum will also administer a $2m Museum Hardship Fund. The Antarctic Heritage Trust will receive $1.4m. The country is beginning to emerge from lockdown having recorded just 1,504 COVID-19 infections and 22 deaths. The national museum opened last week with visitors required to provide identity on entry in case contact tracing was required.
Goldsmiths staff refuse marking to protest cuts
Teaching staff at Goldsmiths, University of London, will refuse to return assessment grades until the art college engages in negotiation with associate lecturers and graduate trainee teachers. The industrial action is in response to a hiring freeze for the lowest paid teachers, a move which effectively makes up to 472 employees on short-term/termly contracts redundant, says the activist body Precarious@Gold. The college is also accused of ‘withholding of payments for additional hours worked responding to the lockdown’ and not utilising the government furlough scheme. College management say they agreed on 21 April to pay the additional hours worked but these must be agreed in advance, something that lecturers say was not possible during the initial period of the COVID-19 lockdown.
