In a normal season the Hancock Shaker Village, which was founded sixty years ago near Pittsfield, is open from April through December. With spring planting and the birth of livestock this is a busy time of year. The annual Baby Animals Festival draws some 20% of annual visitation and 15% of earned revenue. We spoke with director Jennifer Trainer Thompson about strategies to function during the pandemic.

A unique asset of Jacob's Pillow is its bucolic setting in the Berkshire woods. This week, on line, you can celebrate both dance and Earth Day. Here is an invitation from executive and artistic director, Pamela Tatge.

Stage shows are going on – maybe not live, but via live streaming and through other means. Since the world is in the midst of a pandemic, theater lovers are not able to experience the vitality and immediacy that comes with truly live theater. However, that doesn’t mean theater can’t be a part of your life under quarantine.

Robert Ward's Pulitzer-Prize winning opera, The Crucible, is streaming live from Opera Santa Barbara. It is a terrific production with a cast of first-rate singing actors conducted by Kostis Protopapas.

Tony nominated Broadway actor, Nick Cordero, is recovering after having his right leg amputated following Coronavirus complications.

Jennifer Trainer Thompson, the director of Hancock Shaker Village, has a letter for friends and neighbors. It's spring and the lambs have been born. Soon it is time to plant the traditional gardens. Trying times call for creative solutions.

For decades artist, curator, installer James Manning has covered Boston's emerging artists and alternative galleries. Other than when Bill Arning was at MIT List nobody has made a greater effort to interact with emerging artists and their galleries. He had his own gallery Art Vigor in East Boston and was director of Gallery FX, a pioneer of the SOWA art district. This activity was rarely covered by the mainstream media. This is an attempt to document a vibrant era . From 2008 until his death in 2018 Manning worked with curator Joe Ketner at Emerson College.

Today the two time, Tony winning, character actor Brian Dennehy died of natural causes. He was 81. During what was then the annual Williamstown Film Festival he joined Steve Larson for a talk back at Images. In 2012 we saw him in Chicago's Goodman Theatre production of Eugene O'Neill's "The Iceman Cometh." With an all star cast his performance was indelibible in an evening of theatre from which you never recover.

From 1987 to 1993 Alan Shestack was director of the Museum of Fine Arts. He followed Jan Fontein who was director from 1975 to 1987.

Then 27 the Institute of Contemporary Art was the first of many boards that Sydney Roberts Rockefeller joined. Director Andrew C. Hyde quit not long after the beginning of his second term. Left in the lurch was a planned conference on public art. When she stepped up to rescue the conference the board made her director. She was on site during the renovation of 955 Boylston Street. It was designed and largely funded by the architect Graham Gund.

Shakespeare & Company is postponing its 2020 Summer Season to next summer due to the COVID-19 pandemic (coronavirus).

Tuning Meditation is presented by Ione, who lived with the composer, and Music on the Rebound. Participants from 30 countries joined on Zoom to listen for their own notes and others. Find a pitch that no one else is sounding. Tod Machover, America's most wired composer, was there. So too, quietly, piano and composing phenom Conrad Tao. The celebrated and willing joined together in unique sounds.

The gifted Mozart-specialist Orli Shaham is offering excerpts from her soon to be released album of Mozart Sonatas. She and her husband, conductor David Robertson, perform Clapping for the Health Workers. The New York Phil chimes in with Bolera and Heartbeat Opera off Bernstein's "Let Your Garden Grow." What a gift basket.

The internet is full of wonderful concerts and operas, some streamed-live and others are reprisals of deserving performances you'll want to hear if you missed them live or appreciate an opportunity for a reprise.

Critics Association's new play committee has picked six finalists for new play award. The top prize is $25,000, while runners-up receive $7,500 each. The American Theatre Critics Association (ATCA) began honoring new plays since 1977. The Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust has funded the Steinberg/ATCA honor since 2000. Past honorees have included playwrights such as August Wilson and Arthur Miller.

There is a line from the movie “Tombstone,” spoken by Doc Holliday to Wyatt Earp: “There is no normal life, Wyatt. There is just life.”

Shortly after the exhibition Words & Images Allan Rohan Crite 1910 – 2007 opened the private St. Botolph Club was closed because of the pandemic. There is however a link to a video that provides a virtual tour of the exhibition. Crite is regarded as a leading Boston artist of his generation. He was a graduate of the Museum School. The Museum of Fine Arts is remiss in not planning a major exhibition of this remarkable and widely influential artist.

The pleasures of streaming music are revealed in this delightful meeting with Jeremy Denk in his country home. He focuses on the C sharp Prelude and Fugue and dips into two others. What a joy!

Many of us sense that coming out of lockdown we will find ourselves in a very different world. Ideas that have emerged from isolation suggest ways in which a wider group of people, worldwide, can connect. Music is a universal language. Organizations like the International Contemporary Ensemble have led the way into a musical future unimaginable before the most recent technology revolution. Gathered to discuss subjects like how to make an audience out of disparate listeners and platforms available for cooperation and sharing, many other organizations offered insights.

“This virus might get to tell us what we cannot do but it does not get to dictate what we can do,” Mandy Greenfield said. “The voices of these artists will be heard. Through this alliance with Audible, we keep artists and the generative artistic process centered and steady through this unspeakably difficult moment when public gathering simply isn’t possible"

The 35th annual issue of Provincetown Arts Magazine is ready to go to press. The pandemic, however, has created uncertainty about the coming season. There may not be enough crucial advertising revenue to publish the issue. This is an appeal for support.

Responding to the pandemic the MFA has issued this letter to its patrons.

This was to be the breakout season for Berkshire artist Ricky Darell Barton. This week was to be the launch of a solo exhibition at Real Eyes Gallery in Adams. Three other solo and group shows by Barton are scheduled to follow throuth the summer. Social distancing, which is likely to extend for the coming months, changes everything. For now a single painting by Barton is displayed in the window of the gallery with more work available for on line viewing on the Real Eyes website.

An Intimacy Director/Choreographer is responsible for creating and setting moments of intimacy onstage in a convincing, safe manner. The relatively new theatrical field of Intimacy Direction/Choreography is growing. Some see the field as vital in a post-pandemic world. South Florida theater companies are among those nationwide employing Intimacy Directors/Choreographers.

Shakespeare saw the theatres closed two times in as many years due to the plague, and he subsequently must have viewed the world through the lens of what the epidemic wrought.