| Trump’s New Sculpture Park for “American Heroes”? Fuhgedaboudit! The Bronx Already Has that Covered As a culturally curious teenager, I had made the 20-minute hike from my Bronx apartment to the Hall of Fame for Great Americans, a once popular, now little-known pantheon for bronze busts of great men and women, some by well-known sculptors (including four busts by Daniel Chester French, two by Augustus Saint-Gaudens). – Lee Rosenbaum
Are You Paying Attention? The Mellon Foundation’s announcement that its grant-making will focus entirely on social justice is not a wakeup call. The alarm has been sounding for years. Business as usual (that is, we decide what we want to present and ‘they’ should come) is not tenable. – Doug Borwick
Rooftop Rooms Among the at-home dances I’ve seen recently, one strikes me as truly suitable to performers who have to be isolated: Anna Sokolow’s 1955 Rooms, recreated for the pandemic as Rooftop Rooms. – Deborah Jowitt
Everest If we are experts in music, we need to know about now. Imagine a scientist who said: ‘You know I only repeat the experiments of the 19th century. I’ve really worked at them. I get fantastic results.’ But is that science? – Bruce Brubaker
The New Deal, the Arts, and Race — and Today FDR’s Works Progress Administration was the closest Washington had come to emulating European arts subsidies. At the same time, the New Deal made a devil’s pact with race – and the WPA was no exception. – Joseph Horowitz
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