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      Lines Never Felt So Good: Crowds Herald New York’s Reopening

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      Museums broke attendance records, movie theaters sold out and jazz fans packed clubs on a Memorial Day weekend that felt far removed from the prior year’s pandemic traumas.The line outside the Metropolitan Museum of Art trailed out the door, down the rain-swept stairs, around the trees and past the fountain and the hot-dog stands on Fifth Avenue as visitors waited under dripping umbrellas. They were among more than 10,000 people who had the same idea for how to fill a rainy Sunday in New York City, turning the holiday weekend into the museum’s busiest since the start of the pandemic.In Greenwich Village, jazz fans lined up to get into Smalls, a dimly lit basement club with a low-ceiling where they could bop their heads and tap their feet to live music. All five limited capacity screenings of Fellini’s “8 ½” sold out on Monday at the Film Forum on Houston Street, and when the Comedy Cellar sold out five shows, it added a sixth.If the rainy, chilly Memorial Day weekend meant that barbecues and beach trips were called off, it revived another kind of New York rainy-day tradition: lining up to see art, hear music and catch films, in a way that felt liberating after more than a year of the pandemic. The rising number of vaccinated New Yorkers, coupled with the recent easing of many coronavirus restrictions, made for a dramatic and happy change from Memorial Day last year, when museums sat eerily empty, nightclubs were silenced, and faded, outdated posters slowly yellowed outside shuttered movie theaters.Most museums are still requiring patrons to be masked.Lila Barth for The New York TimesFor Piper Barron, 18, the return to the movies felt surprisingly normal.“It kind of just felt like the pandemic hadn’t happened,” she said.Standing under the marquee of Cobble Hill Cinemas in Brooklyn, Barron and three friends who had recently graduated high school waited to see “Cruella,” the new Emma Stone movie about the “One Hundred and One Dalmatians” villain. Before the pandemic, the group was in the habit of seeing movies together on Fridays after school, but that tradition was put on hold during the pandemic.“We haven’t done that in a long time — but here we are,” said Patrick Martin, 18. “It’s a milestone.”In recent weeks, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo has relaxed many of the coronavirus restrictions that limit culture and entertainment, and Memorial Day weekend was one of the first opportunities for venues to try out the new rules, with a growing numbers of tourists and vaccinated New Yorkers looking forward to a summer of activity.The Met is drawing twice as many visitors as it did two months ago.Lila Barth for The New York TimesAt the Met, Saturday and Sunday each drew more than 10,000 visitors, a record for the museum during the pandemic, and roughly double what it was logging two months ago, before the state loosened capacity restrictions, said Kenneth Weine, a spokesman for the museum.Despite the near-constant rain, museum visitors and moviegoers agreed: this was much better than whatever they did over Memorial Day weekend last year. (“Nothing, just stayed home,” recalled Sharon Lebowitz, who visited the Met on Sunday with her brother.)And when the sun emerged on Monday, people did too, with the High Line in Chelsea drawing crowds that rivaled the old days.Of course, the pandemic is not yet over: an average of 383 cases per day are being reported in New York City, but that is a 47 percent decrease from the average two weeks ago. And there were physical reminders of the pandemic everywhere. At Cobble Hill Cinemas, there were temperature checks and a guarantee that each occupied seat would have four empty ones surrounding it. At the Met, a security staffer asked visitors waiting in line for the popular Alice Neel exhibition to stand further apart from each other.At the Met, visitors waiting in line to see its popular Alice Neel exhibition were asked by a security guard to stand further apart from each other.Lila Barth for The New York TimesAnd, everywhere, there were masks, even though Mr. Cuomo lifted the indoor mask mandate for vaccinated individuals in most circumstances earlier this month. Most museums in the city are maintaining mask rules for now, recognizing that not all visitors would be comfortable being surrounded by a sea of naked faces.“It’s certainly not all back to normal,” said Steven Ostrow, 70, who was examining Cypriot antiquities at the Met.“If it was, we wouldn’t be looking like Bazooka Joe,” he added, referring to a bubble gum-wrapper comic strip, which has a character whose turtleneck is pulled high up over his mouth, mask-like.And at the Museum of Modern Art, the gift shop was offering masks on sale for up to 35 percent off, perhaps a sign that the precaution could be on the way out.Smalls Jazz Club, in Greenwich Village, drew a crowd to hear Peter Bernstein on the guitar, Kyle Koehler on the organ, and Fukushi Tainaka on the drums, with the saxophonist Nick Hempton.Lila Barth for The New York TimesAlthough the state lifted explicit capacity limits for museums and other cultural venues, it still requires six feet of separation indoors, which means that many museums have set their own limits on how many tickets can be sold each hour. And some have retained the capacity limits of previous months, including the Museum of Jewish Heritage, which has capped visitors at 50 percent, and El Museo del Barrio, which remains at 33 percent.Venues that only allow vaccinated guests can dispense with social distancing requirements, which is proving a tempting option for venue owners eager to pack their small spaces. And there seems to be no shortage of vaccinated audience members: On Monday, the Comedy Cellar, which is selling tickets to vaccinated people and those with a negative coronavirus test taken within 24 hours, had to add an extra show because there was such high demand.No one was more pleased to see lines of visitors than the venue owners, who spent the past year eating through their savings, laying off staff and waiting anxiously for federal pandemic relief.Lila Barth for The New York TimesLila Barth for The New York TimesHaving Smalls back open was a relief to its owner, Spike Wilner. “It feels like some kind of Tolstoy novel: there’s the crash and the redemption and then the renewal,” he said.   Lila Barth for The New York TimesDuring the lockdown, Andrew Elgart, whose family owns Cobble Hill Cinemas, said he would sometimes watch movies alone in the theater with only his terrier for company (no popcorn, though — it was too much work to reboot the machine). Reopening to the public was nothing short of therapeutic, he said, especially because most people seemed grateful to simply be there.“These are the most polite and patient customers we’ve had in a long time,” he said.Reopening has been slower for music venues, which tend to book talent months in advance, and who say the economics of reopening with social distancing restrictions is impractical.Those capacity limits and social distancing requirements have kept most jazz clubs in the city closed for now, but Smalls, in the Village, is an exception. In fact, the club was so eager to reopen at any capacity level that it tried to briefly in February, positioning itself primarily as a bar and restaurant with incidental music, said the club’s owner, Spike Wilner. That decision resulted in a steep fine and ongoing red tape, he said.Still, for Wilner, there was no comparison between this year and last, when he was “in hiding” in a rented home in Pennsylvania with his wife and young daughter.“It feels like some kind of Tolstoy novel: there’s the crash and the redemption and then the renewal,” he said as he shepherded audience members into the jazz club. “Honestly, I feel positive for the first time. I’m just relieved to be working and making some money.” More

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      Taiwan Was a Covid Haven for Performers. Then Cases Flared.

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      One of the few places where performances continued steadily for much of the pandemic has had to shut down theaters just as they are reopening elsewhere.TAIPEI, Taiwan — For much of the past year, Taiwan has been a sanctuary for performing artists, the rare almost-Covid-free place where audiences could cram into concert halls to hear live music and sip coffee together at intermission.The island played host to modern dance festivals, full-fledged productions of “La Traviata” and “The Phantom of the Opera,” and a recital of Bach’s cello suites by Yo-Yo Ma, which was attended by more than 4,000 people.But a recent surge in cases — Taiwan’s worst outbreak since the start of the pandemic — has brought a halt to cultural life on the island, forcing performing arts centers, concert halls and museums to shutter just as they are coming back to life in the rest of the world.Performers from Taiwan and abroad have been caught in the middle, grappling with lost income and an avalanche of canceled engagements.“Everything blew up,” said the American clarinetist Charles Neidich, who recently made the 7,781-mile trip from New York to Taipei only to have his first live performance in more than 400 days canceled.Neidich, who had been engaged to play a clarinet concerto by the American composer John Corigliano with the Taipei Symphony Orchestra, endured two weeks of hotel quarantine, one of the strict measures that had helped Taiwan tame the virus. Then Taipei went into a state of semi-lockdown last week, so he packed up and went home.“This is my non-adventure,” he said.The outbreak, coming as the government’s vaccination program has gotten off to a slow start, is forcing Taipei to shut down just as other cities around the world are finally reopening. In London, the theaters of the West End brought up their curtains last week. Officials in New York announced that Radio City Music Hall would soon allow full capacity, maskless crowds back inside, as long as they have been vaccinated.The American clarinetist Charles Neidich flew from New York to Taipei to give his first live performance in more than a year, but the concert was canceled.I-Hwa Cheng for The New York TimesTaiwan’s experience is a reminder of the ongoing uncertainty of life in the pandemic, the threat posed by the virus and its power to upset even the most carefully crafted of plans. Semi-staged performances of Verdi’s “Falstaff” have been called off. The French musical “Notre Dame de Paris” has been postponed.Even though the number of cases in Taiwan is low compared with many parts of the world — 283 cases were reported on Tuesday, fewer than in New York City — the authorities are doubling down on restrictions, hoping that lockdowns can bring the virus under control within weeks or months as Taiwan tries to speed its lumbering vaccine rollout.Artists are optimistic that concerts, dances, plays and museum exhibitions will soon return.“This is a place used to earthquakes and typhoons,” said Lin Hwai-min, the founder of Cloud Gate Dance Theater, a contemporary dance troupe, which has delayed performances until later in the summer. “The crisis comes, you deal with it and you come back to restore everything.”Over the past year Cloud Gate has suffered financially from the cancellations of its planned tours to the United States and Europe. But with infections near zero in Taiwan and residents hungry for entertainment, the company has offset those losses with strong demand at home, premiering new works before sold-out crowds.“It used to be so surreal that we could perform,” Lin said. “Now for the first time we are confronting the reality of the virus, like our peers in Western countries.”Taiwan’s closing of its borders early in the pandemic and its strict public health measures, including mask mandates and extensive contact tracing, turned the island of 23.5 million into a coronavirus success story. But the emergence of more contagious variants in recent months, a relaxation of quarantine rules and a vaccine shortage gave the virus an opening.Before that, the lack of widespread transmission in Taiwan made it easier for performance venues to operate near full capacity. And theaters and concert halls enforced tough public health measures that have been adjusted depending on the number of confirmed cases.At many venues, attendees were required to provide their names and phone numbers to be used for tracing in case of an outbreak. Masks and temperature checks were required. Some concert halls barred the selling of food and drinks. Seats at some spaces were staggered to resemble flowers, in an arrangement that came to be known in Taiwan as “plum blossom seating.”Despite the vigilance, there were occasional scares. More than a hundred people were forced to quarantine in March of last year after coming into contact with the Australian composer Brett Dean, who tested positive for the virus after performing in Taiwan. The incident was front-page news in Taiwan, with some people fuming that Dean — whose “Hamlet” is scheduled at the Metropolitan Opera in New York next season — had been allowed to perform even though he had a cough.Lydia Kuo, the executive director of the National Symphony Orchestra, which collaborated with Dean, said the scare taught the orchestra the importance of maintaining strict health measures even when infections were near zero.“We were facing an unknown enemy,” she said. “We were lucky to face this reality very early.”Taiwan’s still-active cultural scene attracted talent from around the world over the past year when many artists were without stable work and confined at home. There were visits by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the German organist Felix Hell, and Ma, the renowned cellist, who chartered a flight to the island for a tour in November.Many musicians with roots in Taiwan have also returned, some for an extended visit. Ray Chen, a violinist, came back in August at the urging of his family and has taken part in about 20 live concerts, master classes and music education outreach events since then. He said he was struck by the care people showed toward one another and the widespread adherence to public health rules, even when Taiwan went months without any reported infections.“Everyone is willing to play a part,” Chen said. “Everyone values life.”Taiwan’s strict approach has not been popular in all corners of the artistic world. After the outbreak this month, some artists questioned the government’s decision to close performance venues, concerned that it would hurt performers’ income.Lang Tsu-yun, a Taiwanese actress who leads a theater troupe, provoked controversy when she suggested, in a sharply worded Facebook post, that the restrictions would be devastating to arts groups.“Do you know how long we rehearse?” Lang wrote. “Do you know how many of us are working hard?” (After coming under criticism for her comments, Lang deleted the post and apologized.)A masked crowd at a performance at the National Concert Hall in Taipei in November, when low numbers of coronavirus cases allowed for a virtually normal cultural life.Ann Wang/ReutersThe government has provided tens of millions of dollars in subsidies to arts groups during the pandemic, but some performers say the grants have not been enough to offset losses. Officials say restrictions on large gatherings are necessary to curb the rising rate of infections.But for visiting performers caught in the middle of the latest surge, the experience has been frustrating.The violinist Cho-Liang Lin was excited to arrive in Taiwan last month, his third trip to the island since the start of the pandemic. After livestreaming for months and playing in empty halls in the United States, where he lives, he had come to relish the energy of live performances in Taiwan, where he was born, despite the mandatory quarantine.Then this month, Lin’s concert with the Taipei Symphony Orchestra, with which he was going to perform Korngold’s Violin Concerto, was canceled two hours after his first rehearsal. He was also forced to cancel a summer festival for young musicians that he leads in Taipei. He was devastated, going out with friends to drink Scotch.“All that work and waiting around went for nothing,” said Lin, who returned home to Houston last week. “I can’t help but notice the irony here. The model citizen of the world now has become a bit of a problem child.”Amy Chang Chien contributed reporting. More

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      Cultural Institutions Still Waiting for $16 Billion in Federal Aid

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      The Shuttered Venue Operators Grant program has been marred by delays, but officials say some applicants could learn next week if they have been approved for aid.Five months after Congress approved a $16 billion federal aid program to help live performance venues and cultural institutions survive the pandemic, more than 12,000 applicants have sought help but no money has been disbursed yet.But some venue owners, theater producers and museum officials — eager, and in cases desperate, for financial help after more than a year of steep pandemic losses — could soon learn if help is on the way. The Small Business Administration, which runs the program, said in a statement Friday that the highest-priority applicants — those that lost 90 percent of their revenue compared to the prior year — are tentatively scheduled to receive notices about the fate of their applications beginning next week.But some business owners are wary of the promise after weeks of delay and confusion over the initiative, the Shuttered Venue Operators Grant, which many had cheered as a lifeline. Each day applicants vent their frustrations on an online forum, regularly polling one another on whether any applications have yet been officially approved or rejected.“They’re hanging on by a thread right now,” said Meredith Lynsey Schade, a theater producer and nonprofit leader who helps answer questions from grant applicants on the forum. “They’re on life support, and every day they’re told, ‘just a little bit longer.’”At a news conference on Friday in Times Square, not far from the TKTS booth that sells discounted Broadway tickets, Senator Chuck Schumer and Broadway industry leaders celebrated the program as a savior for the hard-hit performing arts sector.“Right now $16 billion is on the way to the theater district, our theater industry, our live venues and our cultural institutions in New York and across the country,” Senator Schumer said. He did not address the delays that have hampered the application process or the frustrations of those awaiting relief.In response to a question about the program’s persistent delays, a spokesman for Senator Schumer, Angelo Roefaro, said “We are urging an ASAP release of these federal dollars.”Senator Chuck Schumer spoke about the promised aid at a news conference on Friday with Broadway officials and performers.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesNow that more theaters, concert halls and nightclubs are getting the green light to reopen across the country, new expenses are starting to mount, even as organizations try to figure out how to handle the losses of the past year.Forty Broadway shows are expected to open during the 2021-22 season, Mr. Schumer said at the news conference, some of them as early as September. In recent days, tickets have gone on sale for 19 shows, he said.Grant applications from live venue operators or promoters make up more than 40 percent of the 12,213 funding applications that were submitted as of earlier this week, according to data from the Small Business Association; theatrical producers make up about 7 percent of that total. The program offers grants worth 45 percent of applicants’ prepandemic gross earned annual revenue, up to $10 million.As Broadway shows prepare for reopenings beginning in September, producers and theater owners are among the applicants waiting anxiously for funding. Broadway applicants will most likely be considered in the highest priority window to receive the grant funds because they generally lost the vast majority of their revenue when theaters shut down, said Ms. Schade, who was a producer on two Broadway shows that were running at the start of the shutdown, “Hadestown” and “The Inheritance.”Charlotte St. Martin, the president of the Broadway League, a trade organization representing producers and theater owners, said in an interview that the Small Business Administration had told the group that money would start coming in by the end of the month, and that the industry understands “how government works.” Ms. St. Martin said that the agency had to take some time to familiarize itself with the Broadway industry.“If we don’t get some money soon I may have different things to say,” she said, “but I think they’re being extremely cooperative and supportive of our industry and trying to learn it while also handing out money.”The application process for the grant money has been chaotic from the start: On what was supposed to have been day one for people to submit applications, the online system broke down and the agency’s inspector general sent out an alert warning of “serious concerns” with the program’s waste and fraud controls.In its statement on Friday, the Small Business Administration acknowledged that there continues to be “some fine-tuning of technical components of the program” but said the agency is “committed to quickly and efficiently” disbursing funds to venues and organizations in need. More

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      A Soaring Arts Scene in Los Angeles Confronts a Changing Landscape

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      Its cultural institutions, buffeted by the pandemic, will have to recover without the help of Eli Broad, the transformational benefactor who died last month.LOS ANGELES — The Los Angeles County Museum of Art is an open construction pit these days, surrounded by 12-foot-high wooden fences, with cranes rising across now open skies. Most of its midcentury modernist complex on Wilshire Boulevard was quietly demolished during the Covid shutdown to make way for a wavy $650 million light-filled building spanning the boulevard and designed by the architect Peter Zumthor.LACMA, as it is known, has long been a cultural anchor for Southern California, extraordinarily popular and as responsible as any institution for helping define the region’s cultural identity. “New Galleries. More Art. Opening 2024,” promises a sign in the courtyard. But the success of its next incarnation is hardly assured as the museum seeks to redefine its mission in a smaller building whose design, if adventurous, is not universally acclaimed.It is not only LACMA that finds itself in a moment of transition. Before the pandemic froze California in a wave of shutdowns and disease, Los Angeles had established itself as a cultural capital with its galaxy of museums, galleries and performing arts institutions, defying dated stereotypes of a superficial Hollywood with little interest in art. It now confronts uncertainty across its cultural landscape.Los Angeles institutions share many of the same challenges that their peers around the world face in trying to recover from the pandemic: bringing back wary audiences, confronting the expense and technical challenges of making their spaces safe, and raising money from philanthropists and government in the face of competing demands in a time of economic struggle. They are in precarious financial condition after a calamitous loss of revenue forced many to lay off staff members and abandon leases on theaters and galleries.But they face the added complications of recovering without the help of many of the old guard philanthropists who helped establish the civic and cultural scene here. That was underlined by the death last month of Eli Broad, 87, a billionaire philanthropist who played an outsized role in creating many of the region’s marquee cultural institutions, among them Walt Disney Concert Hall, the Broad, the Museum of Contemporary Art, and one of the buildings left standing at the LACMA complex.The next chapter for Los Angeles’s arts institutions will unfold without Eli Broad, a philanthropist who transformed the city’s cultural landscape who died last month. He is shown here in 2015 outside the Broad, a museum he financed himself to display his art collection. Kendrick Brinson for The New York TimesThere is cautious optimism that the region will return to its upward trajectory as the virus recedes.“Los Angeles, like New York, is a resilient city full of entrepreneurial creative people who will get back up on the horse,” said Ann Philbin, the director of the Hammer Museum, which was also in the midst of an expansion project in Westwood when the pandemic hit.But in many ways the challenges here are more intense and complex, in no small part because the virus hit at a time when so many things were in flux. The next steps — by cultural institutions, wealthy philanthropists, government and audiences — could well determine whether Covid will have derailed, or merely delayed, the city’s ascendance as a cultural destination.For all its wealth, Los Angeles has always been a challenging fund-raising environment. Michael Govan, the director of LACMA, struggled to raise money to build the Zumthor building. The project turned the corner after David Geffen, 78, an entertainment magnate who has become a major arts benefactor, agreed to donate $150 million.A rendering of the new David Geffen Galleries at Lacma, a wavy, light-filled building being designed by Peter Zumthor.Atelier Peter Zumthor & Partner/The BoundaryThe death of Mr. Broad has rattled a Southern California arts world already worried about whether donors will come forward to help at a difficult time. Although he stepped down from public life in 2017, leaving the field to a new generation of benefactors, Mr. Broad had a history of being there at moments of need — getting the Walt Disney Concert Hall project back on track after it stalled in the 1990s, and offering a $30 million bailout for the Museum of Contemporary Art when it was on the verge of collapse in 2008.Mr. Broad was a singular figure in many ways — part billionaire philanthropist, part civic bulldozer — and it’s hardly clear who can (or even should) step in to fill in the gap he left. “It’s a little scary to imagine Los Angeles without Eli Broad,” said Donna Bojarsky, the founder of Future of Cities: Los Angeles, a nonprofit civic group.The pandemic was economically ruinous for many cultural organizations. The Los Angeles Philharmonic slashed its annual budget from $152 million to $77 million. Museums lost millions in revenues. The Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts in Beverly Hills had to lay off 30 people.“It will probably take us 12 months to three years to get back to the same level of operation,” said Rachel Fine, the executive director of the Wallis.In addition to the challenge of philanthropy, the sheer difficulty of getting around this city — one sure sign that the recovery is at hand is that traffic has returned to roads and freeways — has long made it harder for theaters, music halls and galleries looking to draw crowds. The transit system is in the midst of a dramatic expansion, funded by a $120 billion mass transit plan. But it will be many years before it is completed.“It’s a wonderful place to live and it’s a wonderful place to work,” said Deborah Borda, who was the president of the Los Angeles Philharmonic for 17 years before becoming president of the New York Philharmonic. “And it’s truly a receptive place for the arts. But if you want be there for a 7:30 concert, you really have to leave at 6. I knew people who used to come but stopped: That would be a reason that they would give.”Los Angeles has long been a cultural magnet, and not just for the creative classes who flocked to Hollywood. It has drawn composers like Stravinsky and Schoenberg, writers like Thomas Mann and Joan Didion, architects like Frank Gehry and artists like David Hockney. It took longer for the city to establish institutions: Mr. Broad, who played a key role in establishing the Museum of Contemporary Art, recalled in a 2019 essay that while Los Angeles had long been home to brilliant artists, great art schools and leading galleries, it had lacked a modern or contemporary art museum when he got there.The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, a $482 million complex designed by Renzo Piano, is scheduled to open this year.Alex Welsh for The New York TimesAnd pandemic or not, the next three years promise to be transformative, with a series of openings of major projects that Los Angeles officials believe will dramatically expand the cultural offerings here.The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, a $482 million complex designed by Renzo Piano next door to LACMA, is scheduled to open by the end of the year. The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, a sprawling futuristic $1 billion building being financed by George Lucas, is scheduled to open in Exposition Park in 2023.“We are slowly climbing back,” Mr. Govan said. “I think the big institutions will survive. It’s been hard. But I can’t be anything other than optimistic.”Chad Smith, the chief executive officer of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, said that as recently as three weeks ago he was resigned to staging a handful of concerts this season at the Hollywood Bowl, expecting to be able to seat only 4,000 people in the 18,000-seat amphitheater. Now, the Bowl is planning 50 events and is hoping to fill 65 percent of capacity, reflecting the dramatic decline of the virus and the lifting of regulations.This is critical because the Bowl, with its diverse mixture of outdoor programming — from Beethoven to Car Seat Headrest — is a major source of revenue for the Philharmonic.“At this point, we see ourselves coming out of this, with these 40 or 50 concerts at the Bowl,” Mr. Smith said. “Our financial situation will improve. It has to improve. We have been relying entirely on contributions.”The arts scene is animated here not only by big institutions but by an estimated 500 small nonprofit arts organizations. Many were forced to abandon leases on performance or exhibition spaces over the past 14 months, and some are now in danger of fading away.The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, a futuristic $1 billion building being financed by George Lucas, is under construction in Exposition Park.Alex Welsh for The New York Times“We see a lot of the arts, especially the performing arts, as being the last to recover,” said Kristin Sakoda, the director of the Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture. “We know there is a long road to recovery.”In response, a group of philanthropists has created the L.A. Arts Recovery Fund to help theaters, music halls, museums and galleries survive the transition. “For Los Angeles to regain its prowess as a leader in the arts we need to come together,” William Ahmanson, the president of the Ahmanson Foundation, said in a letter seeking contributions.The Recovery Fund set a goal of $50 million, and has already raised $38.7 million. But even before Covid hit, cultural institutions were struggling to compete for philanthropic dollars, and there is concern that this trend will only continue.“The demand for social services and social justice funding is just ramped up so significantly, somewhat at the expense of performing arts,” said David Bohnett, a philanthropist and member of the board of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. “That was already happening. But we are coming out of this learning the value of the performing arts to social service and social justice initiatives.”Still, arts executives are hopeful that a soaring stock market has created a new class of donors. “There is enough to support both social services and the cultural sector, and we just need more people to step forward in civic-mindedness,” Ms. Philbin said.Mr. Geffen, an art collector, said he was hopeful younger people who were getting wealthy and buying art would eventually become donors, though arts professionals said that transition has been slow to happen in Los Angeles. “I would think that young people who are making incredible amounts of money in tech,” he said, “will be generous in the future.”Still, he acknowledged the difficulties LACMA had faced before he wrote his $150 million check. “L.A. deserves a world class museum,” he said. “And it didn’t seem like anyone else was stepping up to the plate.” More

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      Everything Was Canceled in 2020. What About 2021?

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      From the French Open and the Tokyo Olympics to New York Pride, a look at which global events are canceled, postponed or moving ahead (with altered plans) in 2021.Early last year, as international lockdowns upended daily life, they took with them, one by one, many of the major cultural and sporting events that dot the calendar each year. The N.B.A. suspended its season, the French Open was postponed for several months and the Tokyo Olympics were delayed a year. The future of the Glastonbury Festival and the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival were in doubt. It was a bleak time.Recently, as conditions in many places around the world have slowly begun to improve, and as countries have begun mass vaccination campaigns, some events and cultural staples have made plans to return, albeit with modifications. While few events, if any, have plans to go ahead free of restrictions this year, some are taking a hybrid approach. Others remain postponed or canceled.Here’s the status of some of the major events around the world.The Tokyo Olympics are set to start on July 23.Shuji Kajiyama/Associated PressSports: The Olympics are full steam ahead.The Tokyo Olympics, which were delayed for a year because of the coronavirus pandemic, are scheduled to begin on July 23 with an opening ceremony. The bulk of the athletic events will begin the next day. The first round of Wimbledon begins on June 28 and will run through mid-July. Officials said they were working toward a spectator capacity of at least 25 percent.The 125th Boston Marathon, which is usually held in May, is now scheduled for Oct. 11, and the 50th New York City Marathon is set for Nov. 7.The 105th Indianapolis 500 will go on as planned on May 30. Officials will allow about 135,000 spectators in — 40 percent of the venue’s capacity. The event was organized with state and local health officials and was approved by the Marion County Public Health Department, race officials said.The French Open, one of the premier tennis competitions, has been postponed one week to a new start date of May 24. The decision was made in agreement with the authorities in France and the governing bodies of international tennis, said officials, who want the tournament played in front of the largest possible number of fans.Coachella was canceled in 2020, and again in 2021.Amy Harris/Invision, via Associated PressMusic: Coachella and Glastonbury are holding off.The Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, which typically draws big headliners like Beyoncé and is an annual pilgrimage for the more than 100,000 fans who trek to Southern California, is canceled again this year.In January, organizers for the Glastonbury Festival said it would not take place this summer.The Essence Festival of Culture, which usually draws more than a half million people to New Orleans over the Fourth of July weekend every year, will host a hybrid experience this year over two weekends: June 25-27 and July 2-4.Headliners like Billie Eilish, Post Malone and ASAP Rocky will take the stage at the Governors Ball Music Festival, which is scheduled for Sept. 24-26 at Citi Field in Queens. Organizers say the event will return to its typical June dates in 2022.Burning Man, the annual countercultural arts event that typically draws tens of thousands of people to Black Rock Desert in Nevada, has been canceled again this year because of the pandemic. It will return in 2022, organizers said.After being canceled last year, the Austin City Limits Music Festival, the event in the capital of Texas, is scheduled to return to Zilker Park on Oct. 1-3 and Oct. 8-10.Lady Gaga at the Met Gala in 2019. The event this year is scheduled for September.Karsten Moran for The New York TimesCultural events: Broadway is coming back.A delayed 2021 Met Gala, the annual benefit at the Metropolitan Museum that draws scores of celebrities and fashion-industry elites, will happen on Sept. 13. A second event is scheduled for May 2022.NYC Pride 2021 will move forward in June with virtual and in-person events. The Pride March, which was canceled last year, will be virtual this time. (San Francisco Pride, also in June, is planning similar adjustments, while Atlanta Pride is planning to hold an in-person event in October.)The Lucerne Festival, which offers a range of events featuring classical orchestras, ensembles and more in Switzerland, will run from Aug. 10. In order to keep concertgoers safe, organizers said events will not have intermissions and its venue will have a limited number of available seats. Similarly, the Salzburg Festival in Austria kicks off in mid-July with modifications.The Edinburgh International Festival, a showcase for world theater, dance and music in the Scottish city since 1947, will run Aug. 7-29. Performances will take place in temporary outdoor pavilions with covered stages and socially distanced seating.E3, one of the video game industry’s most popular conventions where developers showcase the latest news and games, will be virtual this year from June 12-15.The New York International Auto Show, which showcases the newest and latest automobiles from dozens of brands, will run Aug. 20-29. The event last year was postponed and eventually canceled because of the pandemic.The Cannes Film Festival in the South of France, one of the movie industry’s most revered and celebrated events, has been postponed to July 6-17 from mid-May. The 2021 edition of the event, which was canceled last year, is currently scheduled to be in person.After more than a year of no theater performances, Broadway shows will start selling tickets for full-capacity shows with some performances starting on Sept. 14. (Some West End shows will resume as early as May 17.)After being virtual last year, New York Comic-Con will return with a physical event Oct. 7-10 at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in Manhattan. The convention will run at reduced capacity to ensure social distancing, organizers said. This year’s Comic-Con International event, which is normally held in July in San Diego, has been postponed until summer 2022. There are plans for a smaller event called Comic-Con Special Edition however, that will be held in person in November. More

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      in Music

      Cultural Venues’ Quest for Billions in Federal Aid Is Halted by Glitch

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      On the first day nightclubs, movie theaters and other arts organizations hurt by the pandemic could apply for $16 billion in federal aid, the system malfunctioned. No applications got through. As the government prepared on Thursday to start taking applications for a $16 billion relief fund for music clubs, theaters and other live event businesses, thousands of desperate applicants waited eagerly to submit their paperwork right at noon, when the system was scheduled to open.And then they waited. And waited. Nearly four hours later, the system was still not working at all, sending applicants into spasms of anxiety.“This is an absolute disaster,” Eric Sosa, the owner of C’mon Everybody, a club in Brooklyn, tweeted at the agency. Shortly after 4 p.m., the Small Business Administration — which runs the initiative, the Shuttered Venue Operators Grant program — abandoned its effort to salvage the broken system and shut down it down for the day. No applications were processed. “Technical issues arose despite multiple successful tests of the application process,” Andrea Roebker, an agency spokeswoman, said in a written statement. After discussions with the vendors that built the system, the agency decided “to shut down the portal to ensure fair and equal access once reopened, since this is first-come, first-serve,” Ms. Roebker said. “This decision was not made lightly as we understand the need to get relief quickly to this hard-hit industry.”In social media forums and Zoom calls, frustrated applicants vented and shared their anger. “It’s hard to keep hearing ‘help is on the way’ and then not be able to apply,” said Tom Weyman, the director of programing at the Columbus Theater in Providence, R.I. “I don’t think any of us thought the application process would be totally smooth, but this is life and death for our venues.” The meltdown echoed problems the agency had last year in taking applications for the Paycheck Protection Program, which it also oversees. When that program opened, the agency’s overwhelmed systems seized up — and the same thing happened again, weeks later, when a new round of funding became available. Applicants for the grant program were incredulous that the agency was not better prepared — especially because the funds are to be distributed based on the order in which people apply. Those who get their applications in early have the best chance of getting aid before the money runs out. “It pits venues against each other because we’re all mad-dashing for this,” Mr. Sosa, the Brooklyn club owner, said in an interview. “And it shouldn’t be that way. We’re all a community.” For businesses like Crowbar, a music club in Tampa, Fla., getting a grant is a matter of survival. Tom DeGeorge, Crowbar’s primary owner, took out more than $200,000 in personal loans to keep the business afloat after it shut down last year, including one using its liquor license as collateral.More than a year later, the club has reopened with a smattering of events at reduced capacities, but the business still operates in the red, Mr. DeGeorge said.“We lost an entire year of concerts in the blink of an eye, which was close to $1 million in revenue,” Mr. DeGeorge said. “That’s why we need this grant so badly.”The aid was authorized by Congress late last year after months of lobbying by an ad hoc coalition of music venues and other groups that warned of the loss of an entire sector of the arts economy.For music venues in particular, the last year has been a scramble to remain afloat, with the proprietors of local clubs running crowdfunding campaigns, selling T-shirts and racking their brains for any creative way to raise funds. For the holidays, the Subterranean club in Chicago, for example, agreed to place the names of patrons on its marquee for donations of $250 or more.“It’s been the busiest year,” Robert Gomez, the primary owner of Subterranean, said in an interview. “But it’s all been about, ‘Where am I going to get funding from?’”As it struggled to make ends meet, the Chicago club Subterranean decided to place the names of patrons on the club’s marquee for donations of $250 or more. Robert Gomez, its primary owner, said, the year has “all been about, ‘Where am I going to get funding from?’”Lyndon French for The New York TimesEven before Thursday’s fiasco, the opening of the shuttered venue program was riddled with complexity and confusion.The Small Business Administration posted a 58-page guide for applicants late Wednesday night, then quickly took it offline. A revised version of the guide was posted just minutes before the portal opened on Thursday. (An agency spokeswoman said the guide had to be updated to reflect “some last-minute system changes.”)And less than two hours before the agency was supposed to start accepting applications, its inspector general sent out an alert warning of “serious concerns” with the program’s waste and fraud controls. The Small Business Administration’s current audit plan “exposes billions of dollars to potential misuse of funds,” the inspector general wrote in a report. Successful applicants will receive a grant equal to 45 percent of their gross earned revenue from 2019, up to $10 million. Those who lost 90 percent of their revenue (compared to the prior year) after the coronavirus pandemic took hold will have a 14-day priority window for receiving the money, followed by another 14-day period for those who lost 70 percent or more. If any funds remain after that, they will then go to applicants who had a 25 percent sales loss in at least one quarter of 2020. Venues owned by large corporations, like Live Nation or AEG, are not eligible.The application process is extensive, with detailed questions about venues’ budgets, staff and equipment.“They want to make sure you’re not just setting up a piano in the corner of an Italian restaurant and calling yourself a music venue,” said Blayne Tucker, a lawyer for several music spaces in Texas.Technical glitches marred the beginning of the first day of submitting applications for the grant program. Empty chairs were seen in Crowbar.Zack Wittman for The New York TimesEven with the grants, music venues may be facing many dry months before touring and live events return at anything like prepandemic levels. The grant program also offers help for Broadway theaters, performing arts centers and even zoos, which share many of the same economic struggles.The Pablo Center at the Confluence, in Eau Claire, Wis., for example, was able to raise about $1 million from donations and grants during the pandemic, yet is still $1.2 million short on its annual fixed operating expenses, said Jason Jon Anderson, its executive director.“By the time we open again, October 2021 at the earliest, we will have been shuttered longer than we had been open,” he added. (The center opened in 2018, at a cost of $60 million.)The thousands of small clubs that dot the national concert map lack access to major donors and, in many cases, have been surviving on fumes for months.Stephen Chilton, the owner of the 300-capacity Rebel Lounge in Phoenix, said he had taken out “a few hundred thousand” in loans to keep the club afloat. In October, it reopened with a pop-up coffee shop inside, and the club hosts some events, like trivia contests and open mic shows.“We’re losing a lot less than we were losing when we were completely closed,” Mr. Chilton said, “but it’s not making up for the lost revenue from doing events.”The Rebel Lounge hopes that a grant will help it survive until it can bring back a full complement of concerts. And if its application is not successful?“There is no Plan B,” Mr. Chilton said. More

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      in Movies

      ‘Wojnarowicz’ Review: A Revolutionary Provocateur

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      A documentary on the artist David Wojnarowicz shows the ways that the rebel was a prophet, and honors him appropriately.The artist David Wojnarowicz escaped one American hellscape to find himself smack-dab in the middle of another. In a 1985 short film he made with Richard Kern, “You Killed Me First,” Wojnarowicz, then in his early 30s, portrays a version of his own alcoholic, abusive father. The grindhouse-style underground movie depicts a real event — that father feeding his children’s pet rabbit to them for dinner.Directed by Chris McKim, this exemplary documentary on the artist (which is also a mini-chronicle of the East Village art scene of 1970s and ’80s New York) takes advantage of Wojnarowicz’s penchant for self-documentation, drawing on the cassette journals he began keeping even before he was a fully formed creator. The documents Wojnarowicz maintained in this period, during which his art became inextricable from his activism, guide the viewer into the second American hellscape Wojnarowicz experienced: the AIDS epidemic.Wojnarowicz’s insistence that the Reagan administration was practically gleeful in ignoring the disease while simultaneously stigmatizing its victims provoked a number of controversies, over arts funding and more. The work he produced, often in collaboration with or under the influence of the photographer Peter Hujar, his mentor, is still bracing and fiercely clear-eyed on political and moral issues that persist to this day. Wojnarowicz died of AIDS in 1992, at age 37.The movie eschews contemporary talking-head interviews, instead showing speakers such as Fran Lebowitz, a close friend of Wojnarowicz and Hujar, as they were in the late ’70s and early ’80s. This is a strategic move, designed to make the movie’s final scene — in which several survivors of the artist and the era, now much older (a couple more frail than others), are shown attending a 2018 Whitney retrospective of Wojnarowicz’s oeuvre — more powerful. It works. Shatteringly.WojnarowiczNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 48 minutes. Watch on Kino Marquee. More

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      in Television

      Alex Newell Finds Inspiration in Whitney Houston, Billy Porter and ‘Dreamgirls’

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      The “Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist” star talked about the performers he recognizes himself in, coming full circle with Mariah Carey and his signature banana pudding.It’s the line repeated every awards season — that it’s an honor just to be nominated.But Alex Newell sounded pretty convincing last month as he discussed his Critics Choice nomination for “Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist,” which returns to NBC on March 28.“I was like a toddler seeing Christmas for the very first time,” he said of his best supporting actor recognition for Mo, the self-embracing, gender nonconforming building manager whose serious pipes reverberate through Zoey’s apartment wall. And sometimes in her head.“When you’re in front of the camera, you don’t get instant gratification like you do on a stage, where you can control how the audience feels,” Newell, 28, said. “You just have to hope that what you’re doing is brilliant and resonates and makes somebody feel something.”Alas, Newell didn’t win. But he has been making people feel a sweeping range of emotions since his performance on the reality competition show “The Glee Project” led to a guest spot that morphed into a recurring role (and for a season, a main cast credit) on “Glee” as Wade/Unique Adams, a transgender teen.But by his early 20s, Newell had determined that life in Hollywood “was going to be just about my appearance,” he said. So he moved to New York in search of greater acceptance and not long after raised the roof in his Broadway debut as Asaka in the revival of “Once on This Island.” Jesse Green, the chief theater critic of The New York Times, proclaimed him “ferocious.”Newell has since found a support system among his idols — some of whom, like Billy Porter and Tituss Burgess, grace his list of cultural essentials, which he elaborated on in a call from Vancouver, where “Zoey’s” is shot. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.1. Whitney Houston She was my all-time icon. She is the voice of a generation and those to come after her. She is a hot topic right now in my friend group with how we idealized the Fairy Godmother [in “Cinderella”] for so long. Her take on that role with such beauty and grace and vocal prowess was just wonderful. Even having that behind-the-scenes moment of her nurturing a talent like Brandy, when she was so young, was just everything that I strive to be for the generation coming after me as well.2. “The Preacher’s Wife” That movie was such a staple in my household — with my mom and my dad and I watching for as long as I can remember — every holiday season. Seeing the Black church in such a palpable way, and the hardships of keeping a small church open in tough times. Also, my love of gospel and the Georgia Mass Choir that Whitney was singing with was amazing. I remember listening to them every Sunday with my dad as he was driving the church van. I lost him when I was six, and that heart of the memory is still topical with who I am.3. “Dreamgirls” I am talking about the good old Broadway version with Jennifer Holliday, Loretta Devine, Sheryl Lee Ralph and Cleavant Derricks. I first discovered that musical right around the time that they were announcing the movie, and it really shaped who I am today. We all know the Supremes story that the musical is loosely based on. But when I read the synopsis and listened to the music, Effie White rang true to who I am. You see this beautiful Black woman who was passed over because she was not as thin or as commercial as her friend who she grew up with. And I’ve gotten passed over for a lot of things because I’m not as thin or not as commercial. I’ve had people tell me that I was too big to play a role. I’ve been cut out of scenes in musicals because I didn’t fit the costume plot. And it does take a toll on you. You do get very angry and jaded and spiteful because you see all of your own self-worth, but nobody else is seeing it. And then you feel that everybody’s turning on you. It’s one of those things that I watched in Effie — how you have to jump over the mental hurdle of that and find solace in yourself and the beauty in life.4. Family Cookouts I loved family cookouts because it was when I got to see everybody for a good amount of time. To see family and to have so much food and laughter and love and joy around, even if it were just for one day — even the drama of it all — was always something fun to do to reset the year.5. “The Watsons Go to Birmingham — 1963” by Christopher Paul Curtis I remember reading the book as a kid and just being so intrigued by it. My mother is from Birmingham, and she was a child around the time that the book took place. In reality, she was at a church down the street from the church that was bombed on that Sunday. And to think that that could have been her church, or that I personally couldn’t have been here had anything happened to her, is something that as an adult rings so much truer.6. “Charmbracelet” by Mariah Carey The first album that I bought with my own money. Don’t ask me why it was that one, but I played that CD until I lost it. I think my mother took the CD and broke it. I still hold in the back of my mind that I sang Mariah Carey to Mariah Carey. I sang “Hero.” I don’t tell people because I hated the performance. But my mother has a picture of me and Mariah Carey after with her with this big smile and me being me. It was the whole full-circle moment.7. Banana Pudding It’s this random connection that me and my mom have. Any time there’s a function where food will be made, banana pudding is what people ask both of us to make. I remember my mother making banana pudding from actual scratch in the kitchen, and I’d be like, “I don’t have the time to sit here and stir the pot for 20, 30 minutes while it’s on the stove.” If I told anybody I wouldn’t be famous anymore, but mine is the same exact recipe.8. Billy Porter and 9. Tituss Burgess I remember when I heard Billy Porter’s voice eons ago when Billy was in “Grease” as Teen Angel, singing “Beauty School Dropout.” And I was first introduced to Tituss Burgess when he was doing “The Little Mermaid” on Broadway as Sebastian. The first time that you see someone that sounds like you and reminds you so much of who you are, you obsess and fawn over them and you learn how they sing and how they perform and how they act. And when you meet them and they’re all that you could have wanted and still human at the end of the day — and they lift you up and praise you — I say, “Thank you.” It’s just this mutual respect. I appreciate and adore both of them so much. They keep me wanting to strive for more daily.10. Nell Carter My mother cultured me a lot by putting me in front of the television and letting me watch all of these old shows that she grew up with, countless hours of PBS performances. And I remember the replay of “Ain’t Misbehavin’,” which I had seen at my local theater a couple of years prior. Seeing this plus-size woman being phenomenally talented at singing and how light on her feet she was and her acting beats and the chops that she had. And how she could hold an entire audience in the palm of her hand with such confidence and control. And how she was just so self-aware of her body and who she was. The love that you could see that she had for herself was amazing. More