Vox: All Posts by Lavanya Ramanathanhttps://cdn.vox-cdn.com/community_logos/52517/voxv.png2023-05-05T22:26:46-04:00https://www.vox.com/authors/lavanya-ramanathan/rss2023-05-05T22:26:46-04:002023-05-05T22:26:46-04:00The Kohinoor diamond isn’t on display at the coronation. Colonialism still is.
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<figcaption>The Kohinoor diamond is on the front of the crown of the late Queen Mother, where it was first set for her coronation. Queen Camilla will not wear the stone at coronation events. | Tim Graham Photo Library via Getty Images</figcaption>
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<p>Camilla chose not to wear the Queen Mother’s crown, but its ill-gotten jewel is still worth talking about. </p> <p id="0EEH1W">When King Charles III and Queen Camilla are officially crowned at Westminster Abbey on Saturday, the Duchess of Sussex won’t be the only thing missing. </p>
<p id="dnD7X3">The controversy-stirring Kohinoor diamond — the 105-carat sparkler at the center of the violet crown Camilla was expected to wear — <a href="https://www.npr.org/2023/05/04/1173260412/kohinoor-diamond-coronation-charles-camilla-crown">won’t make an appearance</a>. The royals have good reason to want to keep the gem out of Saturday’s coronation festivities. The crown jewel of the crown jewels is widely considered an ill-gotten spoil of Britain’s colonial conquests, and calls for the British to return the stone to India have grown increasingly loud since the death of Queen Elizabeth II last year. (The current Indian government, under Narendra Modi, <a href="https://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-news-india/kohinoor-diamond-government-uk-supreme-court-2761150/">has vacillated</a> on whether it wants the diamond back, but many others do.) The British have yet to heed them.</p>
<p id="Ss3Lng">Flashing the Kohinoor (also sometimes spelled Koh-i-noor) might have attracted the wrong sort of attention, but attempting to simply hide away a colonial past doesn’t work when it comes to the royals: With the death of the queen last year came <a href="https://www.vox.com/world/2022/9/13/23349267/queen-elizabeth-british-empire-colonialism-violence">a massive reassessment of the symbolism of British royalty</a> and the moral and cultural wrongs of colonialism it has perpetrated and continues to condone explicitly and implicitly, particularly by keeping plundered artifacts. Even in trying to avoid one controversy, they’ve stepped into another one. The Cullinan diamonds, chipped off a massive diamond taken from South African mines, will be part of the coronation, and sure enough, <a href="https://time.com/6277123/south-africa-royals-diamond-king-charles-iii/">South Africans want those back, too</a>. </p>
<p id="i0uNPZ">The <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/true-story-koh-i-noor-diamondand-why-british-wont-give-it-back-180964660/#:~:text=For%20the%20British%2C%20that%20symbol,for%2C%20now%20more%20than%20ever.">Kohinoor landed in British hands</a> in the 1840s, when the colonial British East India Company wrested it, and other property and land, from an Indian boy-king — a Sikh emperor who was just 10 or 11 at the time — in the cruelest of ways. The British imprisoned his mother, leaving him no choice but to turn over the gem. </p>
<p id="DHmARo">It was no accident: Vox has reported that the British plundered an estimated <a href="https://www.vox.com/world/2022/9/13/23349267/queen-elizabeth-british-empire-colonialism-violence">$45 trillion</a> (in today’s currency) from India during its reign. It took art, artifacts, property, and lives. The Kohinoor, found in a mine in what is today the city of Hyderabad, had a storied history, having been set in the bejeweled throne of Shah Jahan (of Taj Mahal fame) and plundered by the Afghans at some point (the Kohinoor is also claimed by Afghanistan). The British had been angling for the famed stone for years, simply waiting for the right mark. They found it in a prepubescent boy. </p>
<p id="ViLvYu">The British have been hanging on to the stone — even slicing away at it until it shined and glittered in a way that appealed to distinctly Western tastes — ever since. After making an appearance as a brooch worn by Queen Victoria, it eventually landed on the purple-flecked crown of the Queen Mother. </p>
<p id="zJlmQx">Objects snatched up in the age of empire, as well as during the Nazi regime, have become cultural hot potatoes in recent years: Under pressure from other governments to return what is rightfully theirs, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/13/arts/museums-looted-art-repatriation.html">museums in the US and Europe have begun sending back</a> (also known as repatriating) Nigeria’s <a href="https://www.npr.org/2022/12/21/1144666811/germany-nigeria-returns-benin-bronzes-looted#:~:text=during%20the%20ceremony.-,Germany%20has%20returned%2022%20historic%20bronze%20sculptures%20to%20Nigeria%20as,its%20%22dark%20colonial%20past.%22&text=She%20added%20that%20Germany%20and,and%20work%20toward%20making%20reparations.">Benin Bronzes</a>, the Italian <a href="https://www.getty.edu/news/getty-museum-to-return-objects-to-italy/"><em>Orpheus and the Sirens</em></a><em>, </em>and Cambodia’s <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/08/arts/us-cambodia-looted-antiquities.html">Khmer art</a>, among other antiquities. </p>
<p id="ViYn16">But the British remain unapologetic holdouts, arguing to Greece that <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/17/arts/design/parthenon-sculptures-elgin-marbles-negotiations.html">the Elgin Marbles</a> were gainfully acquired, having been stripped from the Parthenon with permission from the Ottomans (colonizers themselves). Egyptians have <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/egypt-calls-return-rosetta-stone-200-years-after-it-was-deciphered-2022-10-05/">lobbied for the return of the Rosetta Stone</a>, which has sat in the collection of the British Museum since 1802. No dice there, either.</p>
<p id="zMUYVT">The words of Rudyard Kipling’s <a href="https://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/poem/poems_burden.htm">“The White Man’s Burden”</a> come to mind when trying to understand why the British don’t want to return precious artifacts to countries that would like to have parts of their culture back. The country’s actions<strong> </strong>suggest it doesn’t believe a poor brown nation is a capable steward of its own people or its own rich culture. </p>
<p id="2WRyO7">The British, for all we can figure, loved empire, and still do today. The Kohinoor diamond has long been “a symbol of potency rather than beauty,” Anita Anand, who with historian William Dalrymple wrote the definitive book on the Kohinoor, told <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/true-story-koh-i-noor-diamondand-why-british-wont-give-it-back-180964660/#:~:text=For%20the%20British%2C%20that%20symbol,for%2C%20now%20more%20than%20ever.">Smithsonian Magazine</a>. The Kohinoor will stay with the British for at least a while longer; they’ve already made plans to display it late this month <a href="https://thewire.in/history/new-tower-of-london-display-to-explain-kohinoors-story-as-a-symbol-of-conquest">at the Tower of London</a>, as a “symbol of conquest.”</p>
<p id="W1AYiq">That an effectively looted jewel is set in a crown is highly symbolic — symbolic of the British Empire’s legacy of bloody conquest, of subjugating brown and Black people, and of<strong> </strong>having made off with the artifacts that help carry on a culture. Simply hiding it away on coronation day doesn’t change that. </p>
https://www.vox.com/2023/5/5/23712978/kohinoor-diamond-king-charles-coronation-camilla-colonialismLavanya Ramanathan2022-07-26T06:55:03-04:002022-07-26T06:55:03-04:00A Black rodeo rewrites the story of the West
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<figcaption>Juanita Brown, left, and her granddaughter Iyauna Austin don African print skirts in this 2018 photo. The women wore the skirts for the Black Cowboy Parade and later for the Bill Pickett Invitational Rodeo. “They get to see the hard work you put into your horse to make you look good,” Austin told photographer Gabriela Hasbun. “What you wear also helps your horse.” | Photos by Gabriela Hasbun</figcaption>
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<p>At the Bill Pickett Invitational Rodeo, Black riders and fans bring a sense of swaggering cool to a culture overlooked by the history books.</p> <p id="6RSz7B"></p>
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<p id="2fbhqA"><em>Part of the </em><a href="https://www.vox.com/23178787/highlight-july-2022-issue"><em><strong>July 2022 issue</strong></em></a><em><strong> </strong></em><em>of </em><a href="https://www.vox.com/the-highlight"><em><strong>The Highlight</strong></em></a><em>, our home for ambitious stories that explain our world.</em></p>
<p id="bTHZHC">The tale of Bill Pickett, a legendary Black cowboy often barred from competing in largely white rodeos, stuck with Lu Vason. A Denver entrepreneur, Vason had first heard of Pickett — who invented the skill known as “bulldogging” to subdue wayward steers — on a chance visit to Denver’s Black American West Museum. </p>
<p id="4gd70N">Historians estimate that <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/lesser-known-history-african-american-cowboys-180962144/">one-quarter</a> of American cowboys were Black, but Vason felt that Pickett and other turn-of-the-century Black figures who were part of the fabric of America’s Western expansion had been all but written out of history books. So, in 1984, Vason started the Bill Pickett Invitational Rodeo, a Black rodeo that he saw as a way to challenge and broaden the narrow lore of the West. Today, the rodeo crisscrosses the US, serving as an inclusive gathering place for Black rodeo fans and budding Black rodeo stars alike. </p>
<p id="4mxMaQ">San Francisco-based photographer Gabriela Hasbun was invited to tag along with friends to a Bill Pickett rodeo stop in 2007 at Rowell Ranch Rodeo, east of Oakland, California. Captivated, she returned a year later with a medium-format camera and a bag of film. For a decade, Hasbun captured what she saw: an age-old tradition infused with pride, highly modern fashion, and personal expression. A Bill Pickett rodeo is a place you might meet a horse named after <a href="https://dapperdanofharlem.com/">Dapper Dan</a>, catch a glimpse of a saddle emblazoned with the Louis Vuitton logo and artisan metalwork, or marvel at all the hair (horse), the nails (human), and the swagger (everyone). </p>
<p id="kU6QI3">Like Vason, Hasbun didn’t think the community was getting its due. “I couldn’t believe there was this huge Black community — very family-driven — having a wholesome event, and the media was overlooking it,” she told Vox. </p>
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<figcaption>Prince Damons and cowboys Sam Styles and Jonathan Higgenbotham parade through the grand entry of the Bill Pickett Invitational Rodeo in 2019. The touring rodeo, which launched in 1984 in Denver, attracts fans across the nation. “These kids are cool. They look cool,” says Hasbun. “They reek of cool. It’s this crazy attraction they have with the whole sport.”</figcaption>
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<p id="72buyb">“These kids are cool. They look cool,” says Hasbun. “They reek of cool. It’s this crazy attraction they have with the whole sport.”</p>
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<figcaption>Rodeo attendee Deidre Webb of Washington state shows off her manicure at the California Bill Pickett rodeo in 2019. “My first day there, Pam let me ride her horse, and she had one of the other cowgirls walk me around that whole big back area on the horse,” she told Hasbun. She has since become a rodeo regular.</figcaption>
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<p class="caption">From top left, an attendee of the rodeo shows off his style in this undated photo; longtime rider and rancher known as Mr. Theus, for whom decking out himself and his horse — he has saddles, he says, by the saddle maker for Roy Rogers and Gene Autry — has earned him many fans at the rodeo.<em> </em>Bottom, from left: Harold Williams Jr. (in chaps) and Lindon Demery, two junior rodeo champions, captured in 2018; and Adrian Vance and Ronnie Franks, left, in red, who are mother-daughter cowgirls from Atlanta. The two sit with other contestants to watch the races in this 2008 photo. Many cowgirls compete in the rodeo’s barrel-racing competition.</p>
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<p id="vlpoQ2">Hasbun’s new book, <em>The New Black West</em>, captures the horsey set as a colorful whirl of activity and flash amid the faded, sun-washed backdrop of the dusty beiges of the drought-ridden country and the denim blue of the clear sky. </p>
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<figcaption>Ronald Jennings III, a Texas teenager active in the rodeo, visits the Bay Area Rodeo in 2019 with his family. “I had to take care of all the steers and bulls at the rodeo and on my parents’ ranch,” he told Hasbun. “Having horses is a big responsibility.”</figcaption>
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<figcaption>Joseph “Dugga” Matthews (far right), a horse trainer and veterinarian, is pictured with a group of riders from Stockton, California, in this 2008 photo. The parking lot, Hasbun writes, regularly turns into a social scene, allowing riders to interact, and fans to try riding — sometimes for the first time.</figcaption>
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<p id="8MHgGO">Images like her striking shot of Juanita Brown and her granddaughter Iyauna Austin atop their horses, with their African print skirts draped across their horses, and their dusty, worn lace-up boots peeking out from the stirrups, Hasbun believes, will help rewrite the story of the West, and of cowboy culture. </p>
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<figcaption>Prince Damons, a recording artist, tends his horse, Jesse James. “I know pretty much every time I get on my horse’s back, I’m breaking the stereotype out on the trails,” he told Hasbun.</figcaption>
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<figcaption>A detail of Prince Damons with Jesse James. “I see people and a lot of them give me the same kind of look,” he told Hasbun. “Just like, ‘Oh, look! There’s a real-life Black cowboy?! I can’t believe it.’”</figcaption>
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<p id="InThNf"> “No one,” Hasbun says, “can ignore a Black woman on a horse.”</p>
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<p id="zZqEVE"><em>The </em><a href="https://www.chroniclebooks.com/products/the-new-black-west-hc">New Black West</a><em> was published by Chronicle Books in 2022. Gabriela Hasbun is a photographer specializing in portraits; her work highlights marginalized and under-explored communities. </em></p>
<p id="8N2GvV"><em>Lavanya Ramanathan is the editor of the Highlight. </em></p>
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https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/23178769/gabriela-hasbun-bill-pickett-black-rodeoLavanya Ramanathan2022-02-06T16:00:00-05:002022-02-06T16:00:00-05:00Why Lata Mangeshkar was an Indian music icon
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<figcaption>The iconic Indian playback singer Lata Mangeshkar, pictured in 2009 in Mumbai. She died after a month’s hospitalization with Covid-19. | Prodip Guha/Getty Images</figcaption>
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<p>For seven decades, she gave voice to the nation’s burgeoning film industry — and fought for better pay for the singers who powered it. </p> <p id="EAwX3c">Lata Mangeshkar, the Indian playback singer who loaned her coy, girlish voice to the heroines of Indian film for more than seven decades and became one of Bollywood’s most powerful figures in the process, died Sunday in Mumbai. The singer, 92, had been hospitalized since early January with Covid-19. </p>
<p id="K1pJyf">Indian cinema is so intertwined with its music — just watch any classic Bollywood film — that a film can be a hit or a bomb depending solely on the catchiness of its songs. So directors chased Mangeshkar to breathe life into their Busby Berkeley-esque song-and-dance numbers with her impossible high notes and emotive delivery. The singer, whose voice could stretch an impressive four octaves (for comparison, Mariah Carey’s range is five), is believed to have recorded thousands of songs in more than 30 languages from Hindi to Urdu to Tamil to Bengali, as well as her native Marathi. </p>
<p id="56fWjf">Upon news of Mangeshkar’s death, the actress Kajol, who lip-synced to Mangeshkar’s mellifluous voice in the film <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zxgvob1Ew0c"><em>Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge</em></a>, shared a tweet that suggested just how prolific the singer’s career was. “If we play her songs one by one,” the <a href="https://twitter.com/itsKajolD/status/1490218915854979077">actress wrote</a>, “we could hear her for a month and never hear the same song again.” </p>
<p id="8JBk7r">Mangeshkar’s death was also met with the announcement of a national two-day mourning, and her star-studded state funeral in Mumbai on Sunday drew political and Bollywood royalty, from Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to beloved film star Shah Rukh Khan. </p>
<p id="vPT9hv">The term “playback singer” refers to a background player who sings the songs penned by composers and lip-synced on-screen by actors, but along with a few other high-profile South Asian singers, Mangeshkar managed to defy the rules of the role. Though her songs appeared across Indian film, her rise to fame came largely in tandem with the explosion of Bollywood into a <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/235837/value-of-the-film-industry-in-india/">more than $2 billion industry</a> with a global audience, a fact of which Mangeshkar seemed keenly aware. Though her singing voice could be famously coquettish, Mangeshkar was loud about singers’ right to cash in on the songs they’d helped to make famous, leading a battle for singers’ royalties that stretched for much of her career. </p>
<p id="b2u8cN">“What do I get from this? I don’t get any royalty. Now there is internet and the MP3 format,” she lamented in 2012 after her songs, owned not by her but by publishing companies, began appearing on various albums. In 2018, thanks in part to Mangeshkar’s decadeslong cry for change, Indian singers began receiving royalties, and Mangeshkar was dubbed a feminist for her calls for fair pay and her ambition. </p>
<p id="0ILfgr">Mangeshkar, whose father was a classically trained singer, entered films at age 13 in an effort to support her family after her father’s death. Nicknamed “Lata Didi” — elder sister — and “Nightingale” or “Melody Queen” in the media and by many fans, Mangeshkar quickly became India’s own songbird, its answer to Edith Piaf. Mangeshkar, however, stands apart from the Western musical canon as much for her longevity as for her prodigious output: She appeared on hit albums for four decades, and is reported to have sometimes recorded several songs in a single day. “I recorded two songs in the morning, two in the afternoon, two in the evening and two at night,” she <a href="https://theprint.in/pageturner/excerpt/how-lata-mangeshkar-had-to-fight-for-song-credit/511629/">would say</a>. </p>
<p id="yAbV07">Her voice rang out (and still does) from India’s movie theaters and television sets, from cars and wedding halls. Though her face only appeared on-screen a few times in her career — she told reporters she hated acting — she was featured on <a href="https://www.indiatoday.in/magazine/cover-story/story/19810215-lata-mangeshkar-the-incredible-singing-machine-772672-2013-11-28">magazine covers</a> as “The Incredible Singing Machine” and interviewed widely. After the end of colonial British rule, she proudly performed for the nation’s new leaders, including Jawaharlal Nehru.</p>
<p id="tXZ4x5">Directors declared her a chameleon distinct among the sea of Indian playback singers, which happened to include her sister, Asha Bhosle. Love songs, such as her 2006 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ikZtcgAMxo">Luka Chuppi</a>, about a mother mourning her son’s death, were rendered a little more heartbreaking, and romantic songs, like her famous <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFr6G5zveS8">Lag Jaa Gale</a>, a smidgeon more stirring in Mangeshkar’s hands, while seductive <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETyzbcajHUI">numbers</a> betrayed a unique vulnerability as the singer dialed into each character. </p>
<p id="voDaMv">This weekend, Amitabh Bachchan, the legendary Bollywood actor whose films regularly featured Mangeshkar’s voice, <a href="https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/magazines/panache/voice-of-a-million-centuries-has-left-us-big-b-pays-respect-to-lata-mangeshkar-visits-the-singers-home-with-daughter-shweta/articleshow/89386592.cms">took to his blog</a> to acknowledge the value of Mangeshkar’s sacrifices. “The voice of a million centuries has left us … her voice resounds now in the Heavens.” </p>
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https://www.vox.com/2022/2/6/22920720/death-lata-mangeshkar-singer-indian-music-icon-bollywoodLavanya Ramanathan2021-08-24T08:00:00-04:002021-08-24T08:00:00-04:00How Martha’s Vineyard became a Black summertime sanctuary
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<p>For generations, forces worked to curtail Black freedom and joy. The Vineyard proved a safe place. </p> <div class="c-float-left"> <figure class="e-image">
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<p id="Zzw2ZJ">Part of the <a href="https://www.vox.com/e/22392894">Leisure Issue</a> of <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-highlight">The Highlight</a>, our home for ambitious stories that explain our world.</p>
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<p id="js9Rw0">The Inkwell, as one of Martha’s Vineyard’s famed beaches is known, stretches hardly 100 yards between jetties on the north shore of the island. To see it, it amounts to just a sliver of sand, but on a sunny day, the sea is vast and the precise color of jade, beckoning swimmers whose families have descended on the island in the summertime for generations. </p>
<p id="A1SkHC">Since the 1800s, Martha’s Vineyard (and the Inkwell) has been a renowned getaway for these Black families. The elite mingle with middle-class families on the island: Former President Barack Obama is rumored to have celebrated his birthday this month in his seven-bedroom mansion on Martha’s Vineyard. The island’s regulars over the years have included Henry Louis Gates Jr. and the late Vernon Jordan; Maya Angelou once described the town of Oak Bluffs, which includes Inkwell Beach, as “a safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.”</p>
<p id="gHMA9K">“I don’t have to catch my breath here,” says <a href="https://www.skipfinley.com/">Skip Finley</a>, an author and former broadcaster whose family has vacationed on the island for five generations. “It’s the freest place I’ve ever been.” </p>
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<p id="QEVkGT">Vox sent photographer Philip Keith to Martha’s Vineyard, and to Oak Bluffs specifically, to capture the joy and community travelers find on the island today. The freedoms of Martha’s Vineyard highlight a truth about leisure in America: Lazy days in the sun, miles of coastline, and even the gut-churning and rickety climb up a monster roller coaster have not always been within the grasp of Black people. </p>
<p id="p6vmZD">Through the first half of the 20th century, segregationists masquerading as public officials across the country drew literal lines in the sand, parceling less desirable beaches to people of color; shunning Black children from <a href="https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=90213675">public pools</a>; shuttering <a href="https://www.nps.gov/glec/learn/historyculture/summer-of-change.htm">amusement parks</a> to anyone but those with fair skin. Postal worker Victor H. Green penned <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2017/06/01/life-or-death-for-black-travelers-how-fear-led-to-the-negro-motorist-green-book/"><em>The Negro Motorist Green-Book</em></a> to guide African American travelers to safe, hospitable places, but the subtext was that the threat of violence could mar even the most benign of pursuits: For Black people in America, neither rest nor relaxation would come easily. </p>
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<p id="X14Jc6">Among the safe spaces listed in <em>The Green Book</em> was Shearer Cottage, a Black-owned inn in the town of Oak Bluffs, on the north shore of Martha’s Vineyard. </p>
<p id="vbc822">Massachusetts was the first state to abolish slavery, and well-off African Americans had already built thriving lives and businesses in the state. “Martha’s Vineyard was part of the underground railroad, so it was known as a safe and welcoming community for African Americans,” says Nancy Gardella, executive director of Martha’s Vineyard Chamber of Commerce. “They didn’t feel entirely welcome in other beach enclaves.”</p>
<p id="91GKmr">Along with the ferry that regularly deposited travelers right in Oak Bluffs, and the legions of Black families who began to visit beginning in the 1800s and then built dollhouse-like summer cottages in town, the inn helped spread word of Martha’s Vineyard’s comforts to families in Philadelphia; DC; Hartford, Connecticut; New York; and Boston. </p>
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<p id="S0hetV">Finley, who for years authored a column about Oak Bluffs, estimates that during the offseason, there are only 700 black people who call Martha’s Vineyard home, and, he says, “most of us are retired.” In the summer, the numbers swell markedly, till, he guesses, 30 to 35 percent of the summertime population is people of color. </p>
<p id="cbQLEW">“That doesn’t mean that bigotry and discrimination doesn’t exist. Whatever happens in the world happens on Martha’s Vineyard,” says Gardella. At the time of <em>The Green Book</em>, few inns on the island accepted Black travelers, and the image of Martha’s Vineyard in popular culture remains one of whiteness and privilege. </p>
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<p id="aXTKkI">But the reality challenges any notions of the island as an exclusive place. </p>
<p id="DhbLcu">On Martha’s Vineyard, “I can be who I want, when I want. Which is not necessarily true of the rest of the country,” says Finley. “When we get on a boat or plane to leave here, we call it ‘going to America.’”</p>
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<p id="MzzV6d"><em>Philip Keith is a photographer born and raised in Boston. He graduated from the Boston Arts Academy. His last assignment for the Highlight was photographing </em><a href="https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/22556296/emily-oster-covid-schools-expecting-better-cribsheet"><em>economist Emily Oster</em></a><em>. </em></p>
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https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/22627047/marthas-vineyard-black-tourism-oak-bluffs-inkwellLavanya Ramanathan2021-03-26T10:30:00-04:002021-03-26T10:30:00-04:00Welcome to the Money Issue of The Highlight
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<figcaption>Doug Chayka for Vox</figcaption>
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<p>A struggling town versus Amazon; inheritance and the middle class; the “Black tax” and more.</p> <div class="c-float-left"> <figure class="e-image">
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<p id="QMDQqY">As 2020 came to a close, unemployment plateaued at an unsettling 9.8 million jobs, 40 million Americans were on the <a href="https://www.vox.com/21569601/eviction-moratorium-cdc-covid-19-congress-rental-assistance-rent-crisis">precipice of eviction</a>, and the leaders of the nation’s business juggernauts were gloating over their <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/business/50-biggest-companies-coronavirus-layoffs/">unusually prosperous year</a>. </p>
<p id="mFVIvT">With every spike and lull of Covid-19 in the past year, the seams of the American economy split apart a little more. The rich — including nearly all of the nation’s 50 most successful companies, according to the Washington Post — became exponentially richer. Everyone else became more unemployed, more economically unstable, more afraid, more poor. <br><br>The Highlight’s Money Issue is not about Covid-19, necessarily. It is, however, about everyone else — those for whom debt is an oppressive force, those whose only option to stay employed was to risk their health, those whose only shot at not slipping further down the economic ladder is government intervention, and barring that, luck. </p>
<p id="QRtfSb">Their instability is all the more stark set against the phenomenal wealth generated during the pandemic. The American economy today feels like obscene wealth and debilitating debt and nothing in between. </p>
<p id="iJm7W5">It’s at the center of this tension that The Highlight’s March issue finds itself. </p>
<p id="Ty2jem">With a keen understanding of the growing inequity, the workers at Amazon’s Bessemer, Alabama, fulfillment warehouse quietly began to organize last year, during the pandemic. For <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/22320009/amazon-bessemer-union-rwdsu-alabama">our cover story</a>, labor reporter Kim Kelly traveled to Bessemer to meet with workers to understand why this spiritual Southern town is the first to get this far in its organizing effort — a battle that the e-commerce Goliath is fighting mightily. Workers and organizers told Kelly that a $15 or $16 wage is not what moves them — though Amazon founder Jeff Bezos made $75 billion in 2020 — but morality. Unions, however, have a tendency to keep wages higher; towns like Bessemer desperately need the stability. In just a week, their votes on whether to unionize will be tallied; if they are successful, it will be a landmark moment for workers, likely to set off similar efforts among tech workers across the nation. But for now, there is just Bessemer. </p>
<p id="xySLKC">The word “inheritance” sounds like something for the very rich, but the truth is that for a fifth of Americans, a small gift of $10,000 or $20,000 from a loved one is all that’s helping them maintain a tenuous grip on their economic status. With the boomers aging, that number could grow; trillions of dollars are expected to be passed from one generation to the next in the coming years in what’s widely been referred to as <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/22320272/inheritance-money-wealth-transfer-estate-tax">“the Great Wealth Transfer.”</a> But who stands to inherit all of that cash, and what’s in store for them? Vox’s Meredith Haggerty spoke with several people who’ve inherited wealth (or expect to) on the emotional and economic costs of coming into money. </p>
<p id="CsQq6h">The flipside of inheriting money, of course, is knowing there’s no such wealth transfer coming, no generational wealth to speak of, no familial assistance at all. In a personal essay, Lynette Khalfani Cox, a writer and money coach, explores the struggle of being the first in her family to generate wealth and her <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/22323477/personal-finance-black-tax-racial-wealth-gap">own relationship to the so-called “Black tax”</a> — the money that Black Americans must often set aside to assist family members. For many African Americans, she writes, the cycle of low wealth, low income, and familial dependence continues to present hurdles on the path to prosperity.</p>
<p id="gMpS3x">For many people of color, that path begins with taking on student loan debt. It’s one of the reasons some are lobbying the Biden administration to forgive some or all federal student debt, so the economic futures of tens of millions of people don’t begin so deep in the hole that they’ll never dig themselves out. “The scale of the problem, and its effect on lives, has made student debt forgiveness a much more salient conversation in mainstream politics,” writes Vox’s Emily Stewart. But will those drowning in tens of thousands of dollars in student debt <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/22324143/student-debt-forgiveness-loan-cancelation-economy">truly benefit if it is wiped out en masse</a>? And does forgiveness mean more money to funnel into home-buying, family life, or entrepreneurship? The answers, economists of all stripes tell Stewart, are surprisingly complex. </p>
<p id="pCtEIV">And finally, Joyce Rice and Kevin Moore look closely at <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/22327700/debt-prison-debtors-unpaid-bills">how debt can unravel a life in harrowing ways</a>, including putting debtors into the prison pipeline. The founding fathers purposefully tried to end the “debtors’ prisons” of old, but a new, more virulent version of them has sprung up anew, and Rice and Moore’s comic explains how. </p>
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<cite>Andi Rice for Vox</cite>
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<h3 id="jzZArC"><a href="https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/22320009/amazon-bessemer-union-rwdsu-alabama">An unholy union</a></h3>
<p id="BeKdvs">With a struggling economy and few work prospects, Bessemer, Alabama, has been called an “unlikely” place for an epic union battle with Amazon. They don’t know Bessemer.</p>
<p id="Mwnu9K">By Kim Kelly</p>
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<cite>Francesco Ciccolella for Vox</cite>
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<h3 id="O1OWCT"><a href="https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/22320272/inheritance-money-wealth-transfer-estate-tax">The impact of inheritance</a></h3>
<p id="sIqeHZ">As the boomers age, a “great wealth transfer” may be on the horizon. Will a gift from grandma save the middle class?</p>
<p id="NJC39l">By Meredith Haggerty</p>
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<cite>Hélène Baum-Owoyele</cite>
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<a href="https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/22323477/personal-finance-black-tax-racial-wealth-gap">Here’s what the “Black tax” does to so many families — including mine</a><em> </em>
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<p id="m64OFp">As a money coach and a Black woman, I’ve seen the racial wealth disparity firsthand.</p>
<p id="HCO5zG">By Lynnette Khalfani-Cox</p>
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<img alt="A diverse group of people are pictured at varying levels of underwater in this illustration about student debt." data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/DrPaClkDQDRQ0yw1g78pcrnPVIY=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22365711/Student_Loan_Forgiveness_Final_Kondrich.jpg">
<cite>Michelle Kondrich for Vox</cite>
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<h3 id="tpG72S"><a href="https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/22324143/student-debt-forgiveness-loan-cancelation-economy">There are no easy answers on canceling student debt</a></h3>
<p id="88GJzN">From mental health to home-buying, there are myriad ways education loans can affect lives. That’s why it’s so difficult to find a one-size-fits-all solution, economists say. </p>
<p id="FCY8Cj">By Emily Stewart</p>
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<cite>Joyce Rice</cite>
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<h3 id="izOO7X"><a href="https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/22327700/debt-prison-debtors-unpaid-bills">How an unpaid bill can lead to prison</a></h3>
<p id="Nk1Z1S">Debtors’ prison might sound arcane. But this comic explains how forms of them exist in America today.</p>
<p id="ZJxVts">By Joyce Rice and Kevin Moore </p>
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https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/22338907/money-issue-the-highlightLavanya Ramanathan2020-12-24T12:00:00-05:002020-12-24T12:00:00-05:00The Highlight’s best reads of the year
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<figcaption>An illustration from “The Haunting of Girlstown.” | Illustration by Will Staehle for Epic and Vox</figcaption>
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<p>These stories have a remarkable richness — not in spite of the pandemic, but because of it.</p> <div class="c-float-left"> <figure class="e-image">
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<p id="zYbVy4">The Highlight was young, not even a year old, when the <a href="https://www.vox.com/coronavirus-covid19/">coronavirus</a> pandemic descended in the spring. If we had been padding along unsteadily, looking for footing like any ambitious toddler, our balance was entirely shaken by the seismic developments of 2020: the lockdowns and masks, the bizarrely mysterious and gravely dangerous virus, a summer of protests and the retaliatory federal response we felt in the rattling of our windows, a democracy and an election so fragile that some sounded alarms of an <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/trumps-coup-attempt-isnt-over">impending coup</a>.</p>
<p id="wHGm43">All these months later, looking over the body of work that writers from Vox and across the country produced for The Highlight amid the year’s fear and uncertainty, one thing is quite clear to me. The pandemic spawned an American existential crisis, a productivity slump, a small-business cataclysm. It provided the kindling for an incendiary — and <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/21308236/cleveland-indians-washington-redskins-name-racism-aunt-jemima-dixie-chicks-fair-and-lovely">at times</a> strikingly <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/316106/two-three-americans-support-racial-justice-protests.aspx">effective</a> — reckoning with American racism. But as difficult as 2020 was, each collective experience further distilled The Highlight’s mission, revealing new stories worth telling, new questions worth asking, and new narrative escapes worth exploring.</p>
<p id="Lmq6St">Some of the best pandemic coverage that The Highlight published already feels encased in amber, relics of a time when the nation stood at the precipice of catastrophe — and nonetheless fell victim to its citizens’ instinct to preserve personal liberty above all. Other stories, like that of trans pastor Junia Joplin (who was fired after coming out) or the chronicles of young people of color’s first experiences with police, will echo for years to come.</p>
<p id="IC1vxf">Below, find some of the best work The Highlight published this year. Because of the pandemic, and not despite it, 2020’s most engrossing tales have a distinct richness. They’re full of mystery, faith, ambition, truth-telling, and self-understanding — precisely why they resonated with readers. I hope you enjoy them, too.</p>
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<cite>Illustration by Will Staehle for Epic and Vox</cite>
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<h3 id="EtPNEc"><a href="https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/21242299/outbreak-girlstown-chalco-world-villages-villa-de-las-ninas">The Haunting of Girlstown</a></h3>
<p id="KPztxM">A mysterious outbreak. Hundreds of stricken schoolgirls. Was it an illness, or was something darker to blame?</p>
<p id="x8qSG1">By Daniel Hernandez</p>
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<cite>Jah Grey for Vox</cite>
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<h3 id="jZFyFv"><a href="https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/21292242/trans-christian-minister-transgender-junia-religion-coming-out">A trans Christian minister came out in a sermon. Now, she’s bracing for what comes next.</a></h3>
<p id="HHhkFF">The church has not embraced those like Junia Joplin easily. She only wants to keep her job.</p>
<p id="0WhahS">By Emily VanDerWerff</p>
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<cite>Photo Illustration by Christina Animashaun/Vox; James Phifer/Rodeobum.com, Getty Images</cite>
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<h3 id="YaStyT"><a href="https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/21354248/rodeo-bull-riding-sports-pcra-pbr-maggie-parker">The bull rider</a></h3>
<p id="0IM6FR">She wanted to ride with men in one of the world’s most dangerous sports. She had a lot more than her competition to be worried about.</p>
<p id="yYpOic">By Steven Leckart</p>
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<cite>ilovedust for Vox</cite>
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<h3 id="JoSlL7"><a href="https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/2020/3/18/21182018/financial-independence-retire-early-fire-early-retirement-mr-money-mustache-pete-adeney">Inside FIRE, the implausible millennial movement to save, invest, and quit the American workplace</a></h3>
<p id="kHlaI9">“Financial Independence Retire Early,” with its emphasis on extreme frugality, grew in popularity after the last financial crisis. But can the movement prepare its followers for the next one?</p>
<p id="kwhQrD">By Stephie Grob Plante</p>
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<cite>Sergio Flores/Getty Images</cite>
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<h3 id="MUFdcQ"><a href="https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/2020/3/24/21191184/coronavirus-masks-social-distancing-memorial-day-pandemic-keep-calm-carry-on-fauci">A likely culprit in Covid-19 surges: People hell-bent on ignoring social distancing orders</a></h3>
<p id="Jmd1oN">Turbulent reopenings and partisan mask wars highlighted the nation’s preoccupation with personal liberty above all.</p>
<p id="BXKS4m">By Eleanor Cummins</p>
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<cite>Nolwen Cifuentes for Vox</cite>
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<h3 id="KOJRAQ"><a href="https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/21400151/police-george-floyd-breonna-taylor-black-lives-matter-blm-arrests-brutality">“They didn’t see me as innocent”</a></h3>
<p id="Awv3oR">Can you remember your first experience with the police? For these nine Black and brown people, the encounters would shape their sense of safety forever.</p>
<p id="Fdfe0P">By Kiana Moore</p>
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<cite>Marcus Russell Price for Vox</cite>
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<h3 id="Ivsgtz"><a href="https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/21320361/small-business-closing-covid-coronavirus-ppp-entrepreneur-economy-stimulus-loans">The end of the American dream</a></h3>
<p id="Vz58DW">Small businesses were once pillars of communities, but economic and systemic forces left many fighting for survival. Then came the pandemic.</p>
<p id="QpyY4Z">By Laura Entis</p>
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<cite>Photo Illustration by Christina Animashaun/Vox; Getty Images</cite>
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<h3 id="drHJz7"><a href="https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/2020/5/15/21252544/coronavirus-covid-19-hustle-work-productivity-ambition-loss">Is this the end of productivity?</a></h3>
<p id="qqxTdy">Amid the pandemic, workers whose jobs once defined their lives are questioning what it was all for.</p>
<p id="vfA2Tf">By Sam Blum</p>
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<cite>Annie Tritt for Vox</cite>
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<h3 id="GmsN5j"><a href="https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/2020/2/19/21124189/nonbinary-gender-fluid-adults">Life in between: Nonbinary adults, in portrait</a></h3>
<p id="mjkS7G">Five people on finding the words — and the strength — to be themselves.</p>
<p id="9ay9Eb">Interviews and photography by Annie Tritt</p>
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<cite>Photo Illustration by Christina Animashaun/Vox</cite>
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<h3 id="Jupr3W"><a href="https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/21749376/marijuana-expungements-biden-harris-conviction-drug-war">He was arrested for marijuana 17 years ago. Now it’s legal. So why is he still guilty of a crime?</a></h3>
<p id="lD5T9i">As the drug hits a cultural tipping point, states face an urgent call to expunge, or erase, minor pot convictions — a move even the Biden-Harris campaign supported. This is one man’s quest to clear his name.</p>
<p id="kvRKh3">By John Washington</p>
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<cite>Aude White for Vox</cite>
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<h3 id="kM34S9"><a href="https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/2020/6/17/21287889/best-friends-dating-love-story-friendship-comic">Best friends, a love story</a></h3>
<p id="fstyoR">“Wanna hear something super bitchy?” is a kind of love language.</p>
<p id="y7X3S0">By Alanna Okun and Aude White</p>
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<cite>Party of One for Vox</cite>
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<h3 id="F0jYxl"><a href="https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/21430892/defund-the-police-funding-abolish-george-floyd-breonna-taylor-daniel-prude">The financial case for defunding the police</a></h3>
<p id="3onwnK">It’s time to ask why we continue to spend millions of taxpayer dollars on police misconduct lawsuits and billions more on policing that yields poor outcomes.</p>
<p id="yYHORL">By Sean Collins</p>
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<cite>Barry Lewis/InPictures via Getty Images</cite>
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<h3 id="PD7u98"><a href="https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/21405900/germany-holocaust-atonement-america-slavery-reparations">The German model for America</a></h3>
<p id="qSRxHG">The long and public reckoning that followed the Holocaust shows a path forward for a United States that desperately needs to confront its racist past.</p>
<p id="r03gH1">By Mattie Kahn</p>
<p id="G8b4Ca"><em>Lavanya Ramanathan is the editor of </em>The Highlight<em>.</em></p>
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https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/22175853/the-highlight-best-of-2020-longformLavanya Ramanathan2020-11-18T07:19:30-05:002020-11-18T07:19:30-05:00Welcome to the Museums Issue of The Highlight
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<figcaption>Scott Gelber for Vox</figcaption>
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<p>Museum leaders grapple with a crisis like none other, plus striving for diversity, what it feels like in an empty Met, and more.</p> <div class="c-float-left"> <figure class="e-image">
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<p id="Z5yEaY">In 2016, a new Smithsonian museum opened on the National Mall in Washington, DC. Perched on a prominent corner of Constitution Avenue, with a view of the White House, everything about the Museum of African American History and Culture announced its position in the fabric of the city and in the pantheon of the federal museums that dot Washington. </p>
<p id="6xgBJX">But nothing said more about the museum’s significance than the line — the pair of grandmothers who had ridden busses together from afar just to be there, the young couples clutching hands, the whole families willing to wait hours in the late-summer heat — stretching down the thoroughfare to the Washington Monument and beyond. The museum was a reflection of them; what hung in the galleries was their history, and the things that they alone knew and understood. They longed to see it recognized, finally, and they longed to share it. The museum’s opening-day buzz never seemed to wear off; the crowds never let up, that day or any day afterward. In 2019 alone, more than 2 million visitors came through the glass doors. </p>
<p id="8uXJke">Visiting a museum is an experience unlike any other. To those who frequent them, and even to those who only occasionally stop in for a Yayoi Kusama show or a “Bodies” science exhibition, museums are a cultural amenity and a destination, a place to learn and to see one’s self and to be wowed. In many cities, tourism depends on them (and vice versa).</p>
<p id="ryvxXN">In March, as the global <a href="https://www.vox.com/coronavirus-covid19/">coronavirus pandemic</a> swiftly shuttered institutions, these truths became all the more glaring. The African American History Museum sat dormant for half the year, as did the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Broad museum, the Museum of Modern Art, the Please Touch Museum, and countless others. Thousands of staffers were laid off. According <a href="https://www.aam-us.org/2020/11/17/national-snapshot-of-covid-19/">to a survey of museum directors</a> released this week from the American Alliance of Museums, nearly a third of the nation’s museums remain closed, and among those that have opened (armed with sanitizer and prepared for incessant cleanings), it’s all for just a third of their former visitorship.</p>
<p id="eTx4ri">In the midst of the crisis, and perhaps because of it, museums are being taken to task over their commitments to diversity in hiring and collecting, as well as their reticence to show difficult work at a time of wider racial reckoning. The frustrations run so deep, some are calling for the end of the institution itself.</p>
<p id="8aB1cD">In this issue of The Highlight, we look at museums at this crossroads, a point at which financial and social failures loom in every direction. <a href="https://www.vox.com/e/21310034">How are the leaders of some of the nation’s top museums meeting the challenges? What do they fear?</a> </p>
<p id="seKAaY">We also look at the <a href="https://www.vox.com/e/21306082">diversity battles</a> brewing in the museum world; <a href="https://www.vox.com/e/21319997">how children’s museums are surviving</a> the pandemic (or not); go deep on the meditative, and worrisome, <a href="https://www.vox.com/e/21298895">experience of museum-going in a pandemic</a>; and ask <a href="https://www.vox.com/e/21322115">why museums are struggling to attract broader visitorship</a> and lagging behind other, newer ways of reaching audiences. </p>
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<cite>Santi Visalli/Getty Images</cite>
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<h3 id="u4vAsC"><a href="https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/21545993/broad-museum-african-american-coronavirus">Plight at the Museum</a></h3>
<p id="oRSiZK">Facing twin American crises, four museum leaders share their vision and hopes for the future.</p>
<p id="CYq5np">By Victoria L. Valentine, Constance Grady, and Jen Trolio</p>
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<cite>Bodo Marks/picture alliance/Getty Images</cite>
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<h3 id="BHhZEL"><a href="https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/21542041/museums-guston-national-gallery-diversity-hiring">If museums want to diversify, they’ll have to change. A lot.</a></h3>
<p id="DiRcMn">2020’s racial reckoning has rocketed through elite cultural institutions. Undoing old patterns means untangling nearly everything.</p>
<p id="LA6sWd">By Constance Grady</p>
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<cite>Haruka Sakaguchi for Vox</cite>
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<h3 id="x66UlJ"><a href="https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/21534854/the-joy-and-uneasiness-of-an-empty-museum">The joy and uneasiness of an empty museum</a></h3>
<p id="CFvgUv">With tourists nowhere to be found, this is the eerie new reality of New York’s cultural institutions.</p>
<p id="95Jlnk">By Alissa Wilkinson</p>
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<cite>Carl Court/Getty Images</cite>
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<h3 id="65vrp0"><a href="https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/21558074/museums-kara-walker-subtlety-diversity-visitors">Who are museums for?</a></h3>
<p id="k3RqYp">When the marble corridors feel like fences.</p>
<p id="gVJhN5">By Lavanya Ramanathan </p>
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<h3 id="F9sFN6"><a href="https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/21555956/please-touch-museum-covid-coronavirus-childrens-museums-closures-financial">The Please Touch Museum and children’s museums everywhere wonder: What now?</a></h3>
<p id="zNiECv">Once tactile and crowded, interactive spaces for families must re-imagine what “hands-on” will look like now.</p>
<p id="wfy8SF">By Lindsey Norward</p>
https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/21557286/museums-issueLavanya Ramanathan2020-11-18T07:18:41-05:002020-11-18T07:18:41-05:00Who are museums for?
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<img alt="A woman sits on a bench looking at a wall of photographs at the Tate Modern museum in London." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/Jy3Dsolo23WT0-8efjK3R-EkSUw=/280x0:4892x3459/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/67774904/GettyImages_621754614.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>The Tate Modern museum in London in 2017. | Carl Court/Getty Images</figcaption>
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<p>When the marble corridors feel like fences.</p> <p id="9crbAM"></p>
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<p id="bSeTLe">Part of <a href="https://www.vox.com/e/21321327"><strong>The Museums Issue</strong></a> of <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-highlight"><strong>The Highlight</strong></a>, our home for ambitious stories that explain our world.</p>
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<p id="RPs69C">Even in the brutal heat of summer 2014, the line to enter one of the biggest artistic and cultural happenings of the past decade stretched for blocks. </p>
<p id="elyFRG">In all, <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/BL-SEB-82114">130,000 people visited</a> Kara Walker’s “A Subtlety,”<em> </em>a sprawling, much-Instagrammed sphinx forged from more than 150,000 pounds of sugar<em>. </em>Uncomfortably evoking the worst stereotypes of women of color — as well as a history of slave labor and capitalism that many people would prefer to ignore — Walker’s 35-foot-tall sugar baby left some viewers<strong> </strong>awestruck with its bittersweet message, and others happy to simply snap a selfie and move along. But everyone had to see it.</p>
<p id="bXVXYz">Years later, as museums find themselves in the midst of a crisis of confidence, it’s easy to see “A Subtlety”<em> </em>for what it also was: a subversion of the whole idea of a museum. Walker’s sculpture was installed in a former factory — or rather, a doomed-for-demolition “syrup shed” once used by Domino Sugar. But there was also something different about the crowds. Diverse in race, age, and gender, they were undeterred by the conceptual and confrontational nature of Walker’s work, which was commissioned by the public art organization Creative Time.</p>
<p id="YY8AZi">That the installation was in Williamsburg, a Brooklyn neighborhood full of hipsters and hedge-fund investors, further unbound visitors from the culture of museums. There were no guards to occasionally step forward to declare, “No photography,” no longtime<strong> </strong>patrons to turn up their noses at how a different generation interacted with art and history.</p>
<p id="Ewl1Dm">Of course, “A Subtlety” wasn’t the first experiment in what’s possible outside the marble halls of a traditional<strong> </strong>museum, and it won’t be the last. The late artist <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/01/arts/design/christo-appraisal-gates.html">Christo</a> splashed Central Park with <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/09/arts/art-review-christo-s-feat-25-years-work-for-16-days.html">flame-colored vinyl “gates.”</a> Anish Kapoor’s massive, mirrored <a href="https://theculturetrip.com/north-america/usa/illinois/articles/brief-history-of-the-chicago-bean/">“Cloud Gate”</a> (better known as “the Bean”) has become a symbol of Chicago as recognizable as the former Sears Tower<em>. </em>Art Basel Miami and the nearby<strong> </strong>street-art-focused <a href="https://thewynwoodwalls.com/">Wynwood Walls</a> teem with influencers and celebrities and socialites and garden-variety art fans. </p>
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<cite>Andrew Burton/Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>Kara Walker’s “A Subtlety” featured a 35-foot-tall sphinx cast of sugar. It drew 130,000 visitors in two months.</figcaption>
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<p id="7HLk7Y">That populism — from who shows to who goes — even now contrasts markedly with the long-held ideals of most museums, which still feel like ivory towers, hushed and opaque institutions for the leisure class. I remember seeing a <a href="https://artblart.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/andy-freeberg-sean-kelly-art-basel-miami-2010-web.jpg">Kehinde Wiley <strong>painting</strong></a><strong> </strong>at Art Basel ages ago; massive and unfurled to fill the length of a gallery’s booth, it was <em>the</em> thing to behold. It took five more years for a big Wiley exhibition<strong> </strong>to open at the Brooklyn Museum in 2015, and a handful more before he<strong> </strong>was in the national eye, when his painting of Barack Obama in a glorious thicket of flora was unveiled at the National Portrait Gallery in 2018. It seemed obvious that Wiley’s work, which references an expanse of art history, belonged in museums; only the museums didn’t seem to see it.</p>
<p id="bl45PB">I loved museums in my 20s, and admittedly, I still love them. But I now find it impossible to ignore their vanilla sameness. Have you ever walked into a gallery and realized everything in it is placed just so around perfectly lit Campbell’s Soup cans and abstract expressionist splatters — all the work of long-dead white men? Or recoiled at admission prices that now all seem to hover at $20 or even $30? Or,<strong> </strong>for maybe both those reasons, found yourself the only person of color in the room?</p>
<p id="KX7DTR">Just one generation removed from India, my motherland and a horrifically exploited former colony, I personally never fail to notice that the halls of some museums are lined with treasures nicked from the East and from Indigenous peoples — from my people. They have always looked to me like the spoils of some war in which we never stood a chance.</p>
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<p id="8bJQi1">Keenly aware of the racial reckoning happening across the culture and concerned about their dwindling base, museums are trying<em> </em>to<em> </em>court a younger, less fusty, more online and social-media-aware audience. They began allowing photography on a wide scale about a decade ago, and started revisiting the language they use around nonwhite and non-Western work, as well as work made by women. They are beginning to collect outside of the usual old guard.</p>
<p id="FTVOWX">But in 2020, the crises of racial representation and white elitism and a failure to change with the times have only become more glaring. We all ought to be asking: What should it cost? Who gets to go? What deserves to be seen? And who is the museum for, anyway? </p>
<p id="0Ip609">“It’s a longstanding challenge we have faced,” says Agustín Arteaga, director of the Dallas Museum of Art, the community of which is heavily Latinx. “How can we make museums inviting, inclusive, and accessible to everyone?”</p>
<p id="HDvfcL">“We have to start by being free,” he says. “But that’s not the only barrier. Just because you don’t have to pay doesn’t mean someone feels comfortable coming in the door. We’re talking about race, social status, and economics,” and a sense of belonging that is often passed down by parents who introduce their children to museums early.</p>
<p id="hm4Vhw">Justine Ludwig, executive director of Creative Time and a former museum curator herself, is consumed by the question of “Who is the museum for?”</p>
<p id="Z4tWEQ">“The challenges museums are facing in this moment do come from a historical lineage,” Ludwig says. “Museums have been intended to feel like hallowed ground, which inherently makes certain people feel at ease and others not.”</p>
<p id="sFW5ei">Museums also have to contend with their own histories of collecting, Ludwig says, which were built upon cultural hierarchies that we might now find “grossly problematic.”</p>
<p id="5BQwPO">Confronting that legacy has meant redefining what we treasure and letting go of what no longer holds cultural value. And that has meant opening the gates to a new kind of museumgoer, one who museums and experts on the subject told me is unlikely to become a member or regular visitor.</p>
<p id="g9yEJ9">The shift at times has been tense, triggering a classist backlash over who “understands” art, how art ought to be consumed, how museumgoers should conduct themselves, and how what’s on the walls might influence who feels welcome in the space.<strong> </strong>A decision this fall by the <a href="https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/baltimore-museum-deaccessioning-controversy-explained-1234575222/">Baltimore Museum of Art</a> to sell works by Andy Warhol, Clyfford Still, and Brice Marden — with the intent to use the money for new acquisitions and diversity initiatives — caused a war among the museum’s benefactors, board members, and director.</p>
<p id="qOEsDS">The sale <a href="https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/baltimore-museum-of-art-deaccession-called-off-sothebys-1234575295/">was called off</a> in October, but only after the battle had become personal and ugly. It resulted in the <a href="https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/adam-pendleton-amy-sherald-baltimore-museum-board-resignations-1234574980/">resignations</a> of people of color on the museum’s board, including renowned painter Amy Sherald, whose depiction of Michelle Obama is one of the <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2019/02/obama-effect-national-portrait-gallery/582457/">most popular works</a> in the National Portrait Gallery.</p>
<p id="eY9LMN">So museums are trying, until they aren’t. But they also no longer have a monopoly on how we see our history, our art, or our future. Walker’s sugar-baby success story, like that of Christo’s in Central Park, <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/why-ai-weiwei-breaking-into-alcatraz-180952742/">Ai WeiWei’s at Alcatraz</a>, and other<strong> </strong>artists who thrive outside of museums, confirms it.</p>
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<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/mbBdQjmJT-9aY99NJOFnijFB770=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22029931/GettyImages_451917212.jpg">
<cite>Robert Nickelsberg/Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>An audience at 2014’s “A Subtlety.”</figcaption>
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<p id="IN5lYf">Change isn’t happening only because of “A Subtlety”<em> </em>and other large-scale works, but also with the growing popularity of street art and murals — small interventions that allow artists without the usual museum pedigree, many of whom are people of color, to be seen. There are outdoor installations, too,<strong> </strong>like those featured at New York’s famed <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/09/arts/design/storm-king-reopens.html">Storm King</a>. The death of the buttoned-up and bespectacled stereotype of the Establishment Museum is coming because the kids don’t see themselves within it. But that’s also because they have a handy tool with which they can appreciate art and share it on their own terms: their cellphone cameras.</p>
<p id="z95exW">I’m reminded,<strong> </strong>a bit, of a story the New York Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) revealed when it held its first <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/travel/finding-yoko-onos-new-york/2015/05/07/26b0668e-ea9f-11e4-aae1-d642717d8afa_story.html">retrospective of Yoko Ono’s artworks</a> in 2015.</p>
<p id="q7tFax">In 1971, Ono was a respected conceptual artist, so well known that a certain Beatle had been wooed by her work and not the other way around. But she was nonetheless an outsider at esteemed institutions. She wasn’t<strong> </strong>Rodin or Pollock. She was a woman of color and an immigrant.</p>
<p id="D6cdyS">But she was determined to have an exhibition at the MoMA, the beating heart of American contemporary art. So Ono simply took out an ad in the Village Voice promising one. When opening day arrived, so did news of her gag to the MoMA’s ticket vendors, who reportedly taped the Village Voice ad to the window with the words, “<a href="https://www.wmagazine.com/story/yoko-ono-museum-of-modern-art/">This is not here</a>.”</p>
<p id="f66lih">People who came eventually learned what the “show” really was. Ono claimed to have released flies bearing her scent into the sculpture garden. She called the piece “The Museum of Modern [F]art.”</p>
<p id="E9bChy">Here’s what mattered: People came to see it, whatever <em>it </em>was. And Ono had made her point about museums, which were as welcoming as a Trumpian border wall.</p>
<p id="vyEUNv">The odd thing is, all these years later, they still are.</p>
<p id="ImTsbD">But there’s hope in this moment. Hand-wringing among museum leadership has been met with the message sent by those who have no use for Paul Gauguin but will line up to see Kara Walker, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/27/arts/design/jacob-lawrence-metropolitan-museum.html">or Jacob Lawrence</a>, or Yayoi Kusama, or Kehinde Wiley — because they tell stories that museums failed for years to tell. Those are the people museums must acknowledge. That’s who the museum ought to be for.<strong> </strong></p>
<p id="e5JPn2"><em>Lavanya Ramanathan is the editor of The Highlight by Vox. She was formerly a features writer for the Washington Post.</em></p>
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https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/21558074/museums-diversity-kara-walker-subtlety-visitorsLavanya Ramanathan2020-08-19T07:18:42-04:002020-08-19T07:18:42-04:00Is this the end of clubs?
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<img alt="People dance in a London nightclub." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/-7qwxNvHjB8xhsPaaKv6-dMsso8=/295x0:4922x3470/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/67194400/GettyImages_sb10063389bn_001.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>Goodbye. | Dario Mitidieri/Getty Images</figcaption>
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<p>Farewell (for now) to dark rooms, flashing lights, sweaty bodies, and escapism.</p> <p id="wHFAwA"></p>
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<img alt="The Highlight by Vox logo" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/Ie75EmJnc3ktmEH0UWh38RdT0oA=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/15986155/Vox_The_Highlight_Logo_wide.jpg">
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<p id="m6KwEf">Part of <a href="https://www.vox.com/2020/8/19/21373762/escape-issue">the Escape<strong> </strong>Issue</a> of <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-highlight"><strong>The Highlight</strong></a>, our home for ambitious stories that explain our world.</p>
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<p id="6ajznX">Fairly early in the <a href="https://www.vox.com/coronavirus-covid19">pandemic</a>, when it was becoming clear that the coronavirus would change our lives in myriad ways for the long term, an LA creative studio called Production Club unveiled an invention for our times: a full-body <a href="https://www.dezeen.com/2020/04/29/ppe-suit-production-club-micrashell-coronavirus-design/">protective suit for clubgoers</a>. </p>
<p id="t84tOd">Dubbed the Micrashell, it is a human prophylactic, enveloping wearers’ heads, fingers, and feet. The helmet is the crowning touch, surrounding the face with the sort of soft, clear plastic your grandmother might cover her furniture with. What it lacks in sexiness, it makes up for in utility, allowing wearers to vape and drink through a sealed canister system<strong> </strong>and even charge their phones. </p>
<p id="9OgdtD">In the brief optimism of spring, the protective Power Ranger suit seemed premature, silly, and, at worst, a little macabre. Social distancing had made clubgoing unfathomable in the short term, but hanging on to a concert ticket for a few months or imagining a night out — after it all blew over, of course — didn’t seem out of the realm of possibility. </p>
<p id="Vze0Qr">The hazmat suit felt like<strong> </strong>a downer, a self-fulfilling prophecy that the party was over.</p>
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</div></a> <p style=" margin:8px 0 0 0; padding:0 4px;"> <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/B_ffhg6gbqv/?utm_source=ig_embed&utm_campaign=loading" style=" color:#000; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; font-style:normal; font-weight:normal; line-height:17px; text-decoration:none; word-wrap:break-word;" target="_blank">With other brilliant minds working on medical-focused measures to prevent the spread of Covid-19, we wanted to leverage our experience in event production to propose a solution for the events industry. Introducing Micrashell, a suit that allows you to safely socialize in times of pandemic. For features and more, click the link in our bio!</a></p> <p style=" color:#c9c8cd; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; line-height:17px; margin-bottom:0; margin-top:8px; overflow:hidden; padding:8px 0 7px; text-align:center; text-overflow:ellipsis; white-space:nowrap;">A post shared by <a href="https://www.instagram.com/productionclub/?utm_source=ig_embed&utm_campaign=loading" style=" color:#c9c8cd; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; font-style:normal; font-weight:normal; line-height:17px;" target="_blank"> Production.Club</a> (@productionclub) on <time style=" font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; line-height:17px;" datetime="2020-04-27T17:05:59+00:00">Apr 27, 2020 at 10:05am PDT</time></p>
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<p id="9c3NYM"><strong>Club people are fickle, </strong>always chasing shiny, loud, boozy, and, frequently, regrettable fun to the next new place. I have been to so many music clubs I can’t count them, to raves in cavernous warehouses, to a lounge decorated to look <a href="https://www.fgormand.com/lounge-bar-apt.html">like an apartment</a>, to an illegal venue I was asked to approach from the shadows so the police wouldn’t find it, and to an underground lair outfitted to look remarkably like the <a href="https://www.yelp.com/biz/fly-lounge-washington">inside of a plane</a>, replete with bottle servers dressed as flight attendants. I have even bartended in a club, pouring rail vodka into plastic cups and snatching pleasant bits of conversation with regulars till it was time to hobble home, ears still ringing with EDM, at 5 am. </p>
<p id="N99AAW">After all of it, I understand this: Sure, each light flash and drumbeat and bottle price is calculated to excite, to create a mood, but people — ideally lots of them — are what fill venues with energy; without them, clubs are just cold, dark rooms. </p>
<p id="qqJdjr">Some clubs are known for expensive cover fees, strict dress codes, and racist bouncers. But many others have served historically as gathering grounds for artists and safe havens for gay patrons. They have their own cultures: Some are joyous Black spaces; some, catering to electronic music fans in particular, are places where body positivity thrives. </p>
<p id="w3JheN">You can hate them for their velvet ropes and callous door guys and sticky floors and Human Centipede-like throngs. At some point, I submitted to their pleasures, to the anonymity and the ecstatic good time. </p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/0OAq4poz2XQgtFGF5qus0MKX_pc=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/21728495/GettyImages_1227844207.jpg">
<cite>AFP via Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>An employee walks inside Hi nightclub in July in the partiers’ haven of Ibiza, Spain, where clubs have been allowed to open with just 300 capacity — and a requirement that clubgoers stay seated. So most have simply chosen to stay closed this season.</figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="rQAOuW">During a months-long illness five years ago, I regularly escaped my apartment on Friday nights to visit Washington, DC’s famed Eighteenth Street Lounge, a Euro sort of den of sofas and chandeliers that attracted what I like to call going-out people — industry types, those who thrive on the social interaction, those secure enough to come alone, fist-bump the DJ, and enjoy wherever the night goes. In the dark, among the cash-strapped international aid workers and suits and old house-music heads, nobody seemed to be able to tell that my body had turned on me, or how tired and scared I was. Maybe they noticed and didn’t care. They just wanted to dance, and I am still grateful for it. </p>
<p id="E3sK3R">Eighteenth Street Lounge closed for the coronavirus shutdown, then announced this summer that it was shuttering for good after 25 years. As the pandemic continues to rack up losses, clubs increasingly seem like yet another casualty, with some wondering if they’ll ever return: In a survey this summer of independent music venue operators and bookers, <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/06/09/873196748/americas-independent-music-venues-could-close-soon-due-to-coronavirus">90 percent</a> said they would close imminently if no additional aid arrives.</p>
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<p id="wMGJpC"><strong>Calling it quits when crowds </strong>eventually grow tired of the mojitos and the bass drops is part of the nightclub circle of life. Even Studio 54 lasted just three good years before changing hands, which seems about right for a disco-and-coke-fueled scene<strong> </strong>of 1970s Manhattan. </p>
<p id="uHhxEz">But this moment isn’t that. The virus has shown itself to be persistent. It is <a href="https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2020/7/13/21315879/covid-19-airborne-who-aerosol-droplet-transmission">airborne</a> and able to aerosolize; it has a higher likelihood of transmission indoors and less likelihood with distancing — none of which bodes very well for nightclubs and music clubs, whose very business model depends on squeezing as many bodies as possible into a room. </p>
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<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/uFuFZzQMaAno3bURHsLwQlrLSXY=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/21729710/GettyImages_1227893291.jpg">
<cite>Geoffroy Van Der Hasselt/AFP via Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>North of Paris, forests have become the scene of underground techno parties, intended to replace clubs and their culture during the pandemic. The gatherings have drawn rebukes from authorities.</figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="2PRCvd">In May, South Korea had nearly quashed its outbreak when it identified a new cluster of cases that authorities could trace right back to a Seoul nightclub district, where thousands continued to party. In Spain, too, authorities last month attempted to crack down on a new uptick in cases by <a href="https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-07-25/french-infections-rise-spain-cracks-down-on-nightclubs">shuttering nightclubs</a> again. But in France, nightlife workers and owners <a href="https://www.thelocal.fr/20200713/in-pictures-french-nightclub-workers-stage-protest-over-closures">have held demonstrations</a> to demand they be allowed to reopen.</p>
<p id="vRjTk0">These days, my friends who worked in nightlife before the pandemic look hollow-eyed and stoic, like mourners at a funeral; they know there is no foreseeable “phase” of reopening that is safe for them; they know travel restrictions will stifle touring acts; they know that some clientele won’t ever again want to return to a room that’s packed, body to dancing body. Trying to imagine what’s next is like staring into the abyss.</p>
<p id="MZKeCc">In the interim, some have tried to innovate. In Berlin, a capital of nightclubs, owners and DJs launched a livestream of performances, called <a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/04/18/833068482/clubbing-in-the-time-of-covid-19-berlin-clubs-are-closed-so-djs-are-livestreamin">United We Stream</a>, that’s reached tens of millions of music fans. Some have tried <a href="https://wwd.com/fashion-news/fashion-scoops/susanne-bartsch-welcomes-all-to-thursday-night-virtual-parties-1203623714/">virtual parties</a> using Zoom. And in France and America, secret dance parties and concerts have sprung up, much to the chagrin of authorities. </p>
<p id="1u0kK1">And all these months later, the Micracell seems prescient, maybe even a symbol of another industry adapting to a scary new reality. Club culture is fighting; it isn’t yet ready to turn the lights off for good. </p>
<p id="olh0dH"><em>Lavanya Ramanathan is the editor of the Highlight. She’s a former features reporter for the Washington Post. </em></p>
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https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/21363908/coronavirus-nightclubs-music-venuesLavanya Ramanathan2020-06-24T07:00:00-04:002020-06-24T07:00:00-04:00Virtual weddings were no gimmick for these couples
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<figcaption>Amanda Trocola and Jason Castellente married with just two guests in person at their socially distant, virtual wedding in Washington. In DC, couples can self-officiate. | Adam Mason/Mason Photography</figcaption>
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<p>Stripped-down ceremonies, no families and no open bar, but these newlyweds loved the intimacy. It “boiled it down to what was most meaningful to us,” says one groom.</p> <p id="q7Qyzt"></p>
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<p id="D4npMk"><em>Part of </em><a href="https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/21296156/romance-issue"><em>the Romance Issue</em></a><em> of </em><a href="https://www.vox.com/the-highlight"><em><strong>The Highlight</strong></em></a><em>, our home for ambitious stories that explain our world.</em></p>
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<p id="6WPfoM">For Amanda Trocola and Jason Castellente of Washington, DC, the regretful cancellation calls from wedding guests were the first clue that their April nuptials, set to take place amid the picturesque cliffs of Malibu, were in peril. </p>
<p id="Ethwu5">“It was awful,” says Mel Sulaver of New York, who was due to wed Rob Sulaver in mid-March barefoot on a Mexican beach before a small crowd of 50 guests — before they, too, started calling, one by one, to bow out. </p>
<p id="Fy1KOo">As the coronavirus became a global pandemic that would halt daily life and work, separate families, and put an end to gatherings joyful and otherwise, these couples were among a sea of would-be brides and grooms forced to postpone — or reimagine — their nuptials. They wondered whether weddings were even weddings without siblings or parents or grandparents, and, more importantly, what good it was to bring together loved ones if it also endangered them. “I went from crying hysterically,” says Sulaver, “to canceling the wedding.” </p>
<p id="L5Wgl6">Jillian and Joshua Ogundele were set to marry in Savannah, Georgia, in a multi-day March affair, before calling it off, an intensely painful decision for Jillian. “I was too hurt to write a cancellation notice,” she says, “so my dad wrote it for me.” </p>
<p id="qd43P1">But once the tears subsided, long days in quarantine reminded the couples of precisely whom they wanted to be stuck with for the long haul. “My, oh my, [relationships] sure step up a level when you’re spending 24 hours a day, seven days a week with anyone,” says Trocola. </p>
<p id="pq7LNd">By chance, Trocola and Castellente had already lined up their marriage license; the Ogundeles, who live in the Atlanta suburbs, had already been feted at bachelorette and bachelor parties and a bridal shower. And for Mel Sulaver, the idea of planning an entire wedding again sounded miserable: “There’s no way that I am going to go through this process again,” she realized. “There are other things we want to do next year.”</p>
<p id="MYYiku">“What are we waiting for?” they all began to wonder.</p>
<p id="BDTw8f">It was Jillian Ogundele who landed on the idea of a virtual wedding, an idea she got from viral posts on Facebook Live, Instagram Live, and Zoom that began from the first days of lockdown. “I told Josh, and he was like …”</p>
<p id="PqwOM5">“... Mm-mm,” Josh Ogundele recalls saying skeptically. “On the internet?!” </p>
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<img alt="A computer screenshot of the couple marrying as friends and family watched on Zoom." data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/sOiF5mAbC61Pd8cc5adi9TrINWU=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/20036792/IMG_0989.jpg">
<cite>Jillian and Joshua Ogundele</cite>
<figcaption>Nearly 100 people attended the Zoom wedding of Jillian and Joshua Ogundele after their Savannah, Georgia, nuptials were canceled by the pandemic.</figcaption>
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<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/tTHXuAG5tOGRQ0zbq2bp__Yxnks=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/20036269/065FD4CC_6799_4D85_BFE3_35E0785BF9C2.jpg">
<cite>Josue Rafuls</cite>
<figcaption>David Bouvier, left, and his partner, Sean, are pictured prepping for their Zoom wedding. The pair had planned a courthouse ceremony, followed by a party in Miami. </figcaption>
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<p id="L4BF7x">Though he has plenty of followers on social media, “we never imagined that our wedding was going to be broadcast. We’re private about this stuff,” says Rob Sulaver. But on the<strong> </strong>morning of their wedding, Rob, a founding member of the boutique boxing gym <a href="https://www.doyourumble.com/workout/boxing">Rumble</a>,<strong> </strong>taught a workout on Instagram Live that was viewed by thousands — and let slip that he would be married later that day. When they aired their wedding for friends and family that evening, not only were exercise enthusiasts watching, he says, but also “random people who ended up finding the broadcast, and watching and commenting on it in real time.”</p>
<p id="KQNWp9">Trocola and Castellente asked photographer Adam Mason, a friend who runs Mason Photography, to attend in person<strong> </strong>and capture their moment; he “popped on a long lens” to maintain social distancing and self-quarantined for two weeks, then helped set up the Zoom. “It was a lot fewer hugs and handshakes” than he’s used to, Mason says. </p>
<p id="Ju6qXf">With quarantine weddings come snags, naturally. Parents had to be taught to how to use Instagram and Zoom. The wedding photos, so often a treasured record of the big day, are largely empty, or simply blurry shots of computer screens. Glamorous white wedding dresses, stuck in purgatory with locked-down tailors, or safely stored by quarantining mothers of the bride, had to be replaced with online finds. Trocola ordered a simple cream-colored, lace replacement dress and hoped for the best. Mel Sulaver had to don the fairy-like sparkly nude-colored gown she’d set aside for the night before her wedding. Jillian Ogundele doesn’t even usually wear makeup, so her friends FaceTimed her with tips for a bridal look. “I wouldn’t consider myself at my wedding-day best,” she says now, “but we got it done.” </p>
<p id="oDISVB">Sean Bouvier, who wed his longtime love, David, in a ceremony in their Astoria, New York, apartment, was luckier: “Our outfits were here — two matching suits,” he says. They also managed to land a wedding license with New York’s “Project Cupid” online licensing system, launched in May to help couples waiting to marry during the pandemic; currently, the wait for documents is <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/24/us/coronavirus-new-york-marriage-licenses-trnd/index.html">estimated to be months</a>. But their rings were still being made by Cartier when New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo ordered <a href="https://ny.curbed.com/2020/3/20/21187022/coronavirus-new-york-shutdown-shelter-in-place">businesses to close</a>. In the end, a kindly employee stepped up to help the couple, and the rings arrived by mail in time for their big day.</p>
<p id="JYMKCx">Friends, too, dispatched deliveries: flowers, meals, “bottles and bottles of Veuve Clicquot,” much to Bouvier’s joy. Maybe it was too many bottles, actually — so many well-wishes arrived on their wedding day that they threatened to interrupt the ceremony, Bouvier says. “We left a note on the door: ‘Don’t ring the bell.’”</p>
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<img alt="A photo of Sean and David Bouvier at their wedding, with a screen displaying a slew of friends watching via Zoom." data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/FFnT-MlUi7FAA2iaP6f9oiLGQi8=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/20035319/IMG_7196.jpg">
<cite>Josue Rafuls</cite>
<figcaption>From left, Sean and David Bouvier, who wed in their New York apartment with a handful of friends watching on Zoom, and their two “corona buddies” present in person.</figcaption>
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<p id="kmI1tD">Across the East River, Mel Sulaver walked down an “aisle” from the bedroom to the living room of their Manhattan apartment. Rob read his vows in verse. “It felt like we were getting married,” she says, “and that’s what you want.” </p>
<p id="TlkJh5">It felt very real for Joshua Ogundele, too, right down to his very, very cold feet. “I went through the emotions I would have had. At one point, I deleted half my vows,” he says. “I actually did have a breakdown.” But he says, “Jill, she was like ‘Get it together. We have goals here. I’m not buying into what you have got going on.’ ” </p>
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<cite>Joshua and Jillian Ogundele</cite>
<figcaption>The “guests” on Zoom got an eyeful when Joshua Ogundele slipped in champagne — on camera.</figcaption>
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<p id="RudGGV">In the end, there were no dessert spreads, no open bars, no sweetheart tables, no dance floors, no awkward speeches. (Though Joshua Ogundele scored some laughs from the “crowd” when he spilled champagne, slipped on it, and tumbled to the floor on his own wedding day.) </p>
<p id="FQZ8NJ">“I wouldn’t trade it for the world,” says Sean Bouvier, whose ceremony paid a nod to the five-year anniversary of the legalization of same-sex marriage. “It was super intimate. It’s a joyous moment in a negative time.”</p>
<p id="RgJCQX">“You think about what marriage has become,” says Mel Sulaver — characterizing it as a series of negotiations over guests and budgets rather than a pure display of love.<strong> </strong>A quarantine wedding, adds Rob Sulaver, “strips away a lot of the other things that traditionally go along with weddings. It sort of boiled it down to what was most meaningful to us.”</p>
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<img alt="In this photo, Amanda Trocola and Jason Castellente pose a kiss for the cameras." data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/BHuMb69B--V1ofGH-o6gEsW9el8=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/20038009/couple_1_cropped.jpg">
<cite>Adam Mason/Mason Photography</cite>
<figcaption>Amanda Trocola and Jason Castellente had just nine people in “attendance” at their Zoom wedding in Washington.</figcaption>
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<cite>Rob and Mel Sulaver</cite>
<figcaption>Rob and Mel Sulaver kiss after taking their vows. Rob wrote his in verse; they shared the event on Instagram Live.</figcaption>
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<p id="BVdYIA">For Trocola, that sense of having to please no one but themselves and a handful of guests transformed every aspect of their nuptials. “We were able to write these really vulnerable and intimate vows knowing we weren’t writing them for an audience,” she says. </p>
<p id="GRJi1d">After the ceremony, Castellente and Trocola turned off the camera and slipped outside to their backyard. Castellente hit play on Johnnyswim’s <a href="https://youtu.be/paH-A3wwwcw">“Take the World”</a> on his cellphone, stuck it in the pocket of his suit, and reached for his bride. A few raindrops shook from the trees as they danced their first dance. Castellente chokes up slightly when recalling it. “It was like the world stopped around us.” </p>
<p id="B7k8FU"><em>Lavanya Ramanathan is the editor of The Highlight. She’s a former features reporter for the Washington Post.</em></p>
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https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/21290886/coronavirus-covid-19-weddings-virtual-wedding-zoom-quarantineLavanya Ramanathan