When Britain announced its first lockdown, the art collector, curator, and dealer Michael Hue-Williams was at his 50-acre estate in Little Milton, Oxfordshire. “I was sitting in my office, looking at this incredibly beautiful garden,” he tells me on the phone, “and thought, God, I could put it to use.” But what use? Obviously, an art park! READ ON

If you’ve never heard of the woman in the title—and most haven’t—The Passion of Mary Cardwell Dawson could spark an infatuation with a larger-than-life heroine who stood barely five feet tall in heels and fancy hats. Premiering at the Glimmerglass Festival on August 5, Sandra Seaton’s new “play with music” celebrates a classical soprano who, when her own dreams were dashed, made a bigger dream come true for her people. READ ON