June 2021

Dear Friends,

It's newsletter time again! Another month has zoomed by (and I literally mean Zoomed). For the last 15 months, Caltech has had limited access to campus for most students, faculty, and staff, and so, like many of you, we have been primarily connecting via Zoom. Agents and managers have also been reaching out to us for Zoom meetings to initiate conversations about how their artists can fit into our schedule once we reopen.

Later this summer, we expect to be able to announce our return to Beckman Auditorium with the next CaltechLive! series. We will give you plenty of time to mark up your calendars with the dates that artists will once again be gracing our stage. Because of the long lead time needed to book and promote performing arts programs, we don't expect to be hosting any of our in-person programs any earlier than January 2022. We are also closely monitoring the directives coming from the Pasadena Public Health Department, which sets the standards for gatherings in our city. By Labor Day, though, we do expect to share information about the artists and their dates with you.

I also want to thank, once again, the many among you who have continued to join the Friends of Beckman Auditorium. Though we have not been bringing school children to campus for our Science Journey presentations since the beginning of the pandemic, we offered more programs in the 2020-21 academic year than in the previous year, achieving audience numbers that exceeded the capacity of the auditorium and expanding our reach into homes far beyond our typical Pasadena-area audience. Even when we are able to invite schools to bring students to campus once again, we intend to continue to webcast these presentations because of their value in encouraging young people to follow their curiosity and consider the sciences as a career. Your support of FoBA has enabled us to keep this valuable program going and will continue to allow us to offer it, along with our school-oriented performing arts programs, for free to students online.

Best wishes,

Michael