“As the COVID-19 disease has escalated, turning New York into a crisis epicenter, … what was once a routine monthly call among 34 arts and cultural organizations that receive significant money from the city has ballooned into a daily emergency call-in with as many as 170 anxious arts administrators and advocates,” write Peter Marks and Geoff Edgers in Tuesday’s (3/31) Washington Post. “It’s just one measure of the war-room response to the most serious threat to music, theater and art in New York since—well, no one seems to know what in history compares to this shutdown and its open-ended timeline.… A group of private philanthropies … has collaborated on a $75 million Covid-19 Response and Impact Fund for New York arts groups.… General manager Peter Gelb estimates losses for the Metropolitan Opera at $60 million; New York Philharmonic’s president and chief executive, Deborah Borda, puts the acclaimed orchestra’s losses at $10 million…. Along with all the anxiety, you hear … a restatement of faith in eternal artistic values…. ‘The arts are such a human need,’ says Henry Timms, president and chief executive of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. ‘They help us find ourselves, and they help us find other people.’ ”
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