Displaying items by tag: performing arts

New York City's Park Avenue Armory has announced that the Thompson Family Foundation has donated $65 million towards a programming endowment.

The endowment allows the Armory to increase the number and frequency of performing and visual arts presentations. More importantly, the money increases the reach of its arts education initiatives for underprivileged public school children.

The Arkansas Arts Center, the state's premiere center for visual and performing arts, presents "30 Americans," on view April 10 through June 21, 2015, in the Jeannette Edris Rockefeller and Townsend Wolfe Galleries.

"This exhibition presents a sweeping survey of artwork by many of the most influential African-American artists of the last four decades," said Arkansas Arts Center executive director Todd Herman. "For years, I've searched for an exhibition of this kind but couldn't quite find what I was looking for – an exhibition with powerful interpretations of cultural identity and artistic legacy. When I came across '30 Americans,' I knew this was exactly what I wanted patrons and visitors of the Arts Center to experience. These themes are universal in nature and speak to the larger human experience."

A mecca for the arts, New York City has also become one of the most multicultural cities in the country, with no single dominant racial or ethnic group and residents who speak more than 200 languages, according to the Department of City Planning.

Whether its cultural institutions reflect those demographics is another issue.

To find out, the city’s Department of Cultural Affairs is embarking on its first effort to measure diversity at the city’s many museums and performing arts groups. The aim is to help cultural organizations connect with New York’s increasingly polyglot population.

More than $110-million will be poured into ‎a major “facelift” of Canada’s National Arts Centre, an iconic performing venue in the nation’s capital constructed half a century ago.

The renovation adds a 21st century twist to the 1969 building, known for its brutalist architectural style, which features exterior and interior walls clad with concrete.

A significant portion of this upgrade is installing a glass and metal enclosure on multiple floors around a significant portion of the existing building, creating new wings with views and greatly expanding the venue’s capacity for meetings and events.

Over the last few years, Culture Shed, the visual- and performing-arts institution planned for the Far West Side of Manhattan, has been nurtured by prominent designers (Elizabeth Diller and David Rockwell); substantial city support ($75 million); and influential advocates (former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and his deputy, Daniel L. Doctoroff). Hanging over the project was always a question: Who is going to run it?

Now there is an answer: Alex Poots has been named artistic director and chief executive. 

In the year 2015, the Walker Art Center will celebrate the 75th anniversary of its founding as a public art center with a series of WALKER@75 exhibitions and programs beginning with "Art at the Center: 75 Years of Walker Collections." The exhibition launched October 16, 2014 with an opening-night party and weekend-long Walktoberfest celebration. Curated by the Walker’s executive director Olga Viso and guest curator Joan Rothfuss, the exhibition looks at 75 years of collecting at the Walker—a history distinguished by bold and often prescient acquisitions that challenge prevailing artistic conventions and examine the social and political conditions of the day. Many of the works collected breach the boundaries of media and disciplines and reflect the Walker’s multidisciplinary programming, which includes film and video, design, visual art and performing arts. Art at the Center also traces how the collection was shaped by the respective visions and collecting philosophies of its five directors as well as the generosity of the Walker family and key patrons.

The board of the performing arts center planned for ground zero has scuttled the design for the building by Frank Gehry, the project’s original architect, and will instead select a design from a field of three finalists.

“We’re in the process of selecting a new architect,” said John E. Zuccotti, the real estate developer who is the chairman of the arts center’s board. “Three architectural firms are being considered.”

Officials at the Performing Arts Center at the World Trade Center said they were not ready to name the finalists but confirmed that the list did not include Mr. Gehry.

A study conducted by the National Endowment for the Arts showed that the number of people attending arts events in the United States continues to decline. In 2012, approximately 33% of adults, or 78 million individuals, visited an art museum or gallery, or attended at least one performing arts event. In 2008, the last time the NEA conducted its survey, 34.6% of adults attended arts events. The NEA began tracking arts attendance in 1982 and found that turnouts have been on a steady decline since 1992.

The advocacy group, Americans for the Arts, recently conducted a similar survey called the National Arts Index. The organization’s findings were on par with the NEA’s, showing that the health and vitality of the arts in the U.S. has been on a downward slope since 2011.

BRIC, a Brooklyn-based not-for-profit organization that presents contemporary art, performing arts and community media programs, will open a 40,000-square-foot complex in the borough on October 3, 2013. The $35 million project transformed the historic Strand Theatre into a contemporary art gallery, a performance space with seating for 240-400 patrons, a public access TV studio, a glass-blowing studio and more.

BRIC’s new building will also include the BRIC House Fireworks Residency, an initiative aimed at facilitating collaborative projects by artists working in different media; the program is backed by the Rockefeller Foundation’s Cultural Innovation Fund.The exhibition Housewarming: Notions of Home from the Center of the Universe will inaugurate the building’s brand new, 3,000-square-foot gallery. The group show will present works that explore the concept of home.

Leslie G. Schultz, BRIC’s president, said in a statement, “Since 1979, BRIC has used many wonderful spaces in Brooklyn to present artistically excellent and highly accessible programming. The essence of this building’s design – an inviting public cultural space and a welcoming home for the artists in Brooklyn – is entirely consistent with, and indeed was inspired by, the mission of our organization to serve artists and the public in a welcoming and informal environment.”