Commentary
There are many reasons to worry about the future of arts venues in America. In the boom times before lockdowns, they had grown accustomed to putting on display every eccentricity. Funding was plentiful and audiences over time learned to put up with it. After all, everyone knows that the world of high-end art and music is full of eccentrics.
Everyone knew the rules. You go for Titian and Manet and put up with Jean-Michel Basquiat and Damian Hurst. You pay the ticket for Haydn and Mahler and suffer through Milton Babbitt and John Cage.
The symphony would preen in its modernity by putting on “world premiers” before the intermission that humankind would never hear again, in exchange for which they get to hear Modest Mussorgsky….