Category Archives: Architecture

Women Making History: Gretchen Hall

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Gretchen HallAt the 2019 Governor’s Conference on Tourism, Gretchen Hall was named Tourism Person of the Year.  This is just the latest honor for her.  In 2017, she was the first woman to solely receive the Downtown Little Rock Partnership’s Top of the Rock Award.

As the President and CEO of the Little Rock Convention and Visitor’s Bureau, she leads a staff that not only brings conventions and tourists to Little Rock, but also creates opportunities for local residents to enjoy their city more.

From 2014 to 2016, she actively oversaw the deconstruction and reconstruction of Robinson Center Performance Hall. Taking a New Deal era assembly hall and making it into a state-of-the-art performance facility was not an easy task. Gretchen and her team have worked with the architects, engineers, designers and consultants to make it happen.

Gretchen joined LRCVB in 2001 and worked her way up through the organization.  In May 2011, she was named to her current position.  Since that time, the LRCVB has undertaken numerous efforts to enhance Little Rock including a new amphitheatre in Riverfront Park, enhanced programming at the River Market, and increased financial support of cultural organizations.  She has worked to improve not only the meeting space available for conventions, but also to enhance the dining and lodging scenes in Little Rock.  In addition, she helped lead the effort to see the additional penny of the hotel tax be dedicated to support the Arkansas Arts Center and MacArthur Museum of Arkansas Military History.

Get a Sneak Peek at QQA 55th Tour of Homes on March 30

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http://www.quapaw.com/static/images/QQA_logo.pngJoin the QQA for the start of the 55th Tour of Homes, 2019!
Attendees will party like its 1929 at the Albert Pike Hotel and get an exclusive sneak peak at the homes chosen for this year’s tour in the MacArthur Park Historic District.
Saturday, March 30, 2019 – 5:30 pm to 7:30 pm
$35.00 in advance until 11:59 pm on March 29 and $40.00 at the door.
QQA will introduce guests to the houses selected for this year’s tour, serve up some delicious food and a signature cocktail, and listen to music by local band Whale Fire.
The Spanish-Revival style Albert Pike Hotel was built in 1929 at a cost of one million dollars. It was one the best known hotels in Little Rock for many decades.

Documentary on preserving county courthouses today at 3pm at CALS Ron Robinson Theater

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Image may contain: sky, house and outdoorJoin the Ron Robinson Theater for a FREE public screening of AETN’s newest documentary, History on the Line: Preserving County Courthouses! Doors open at 2:00 p.m.  The movie starts at 3:00 p.m.

Historic county courthouses stand as iconic symbols of Arkansas’s development as a state, elegant testaments to justice and important sentries to the history of the state.

History on the Line: Preserving County Courthouses introduces unsung preservationists and architects who travel the state finding ways to rehabilitate a building or, at the very least, fix a leaky roof to save the precious records inside. Also featured are county judges who deal with the financial burden of the historic buildings’ maintenance needs.

“The state is fortunate that the Arkansas Historic Preservation Program has helped to restore 79 historic county courthouses since a grant system was put in place to support restoration needs,” AETN Executive Director Courtney Pledger said. “The community pride and local history these structures represent cannot be lost to disrepair.”

The film visits the pristine, stately and recently restored Desha County courthouse in Arkansas City, shares stories from the record room in Madison County, and follows Mississippi County’s political and legal struggle over the viability of maintaining their split judicial district and their two historic county courthouses in Blytheville and Osceola. The documentary follows their struggles while telling stories of preservation and the importance of the historic county courthouses of Arkansas.

Counties featured in the film include Desha County, Madison County, Calhoun County, and Mississippi County.

The screening is sponsored by AETN and the Arkansas Humanities Council.

“Taking the Time,”a lecture by Rick Joy, FAIA tonight

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Amangiri Resort and Spa.

Architecture and Design Network (ADN) continues its 2018/2019 June Freeman lecture series by welcoming Rick Joy, FAIA, Principal of Studio Rick Joy, a 32 person architecture and planning firm established in 1993 in Tucson, Arizona.

The lecture starts at 6pm at the Arkansas Arts Center. A reception starts at 5:30pm.

From the beginning, each of Studio Rick Joy’s works has been exhibited and published extensively and have won numerous awards.  Joy received the 2002 American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Architecture and in 2004 won the prestigious National Design Award from the Smithsonian Institute/Cooper-Hewitt Museum.  He periodically serves as a visiting professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Design.

Studio Rick Joy has realized architectural works throughout North America with extensive experience with lifestyle based projects from numerous single family residences to an ultra-lux resort and large scale master-plans.  The office has several active residential commissions in New York City, Long Island, Turks and Caicos.  Studio Rick Joy is currently completing the prestigious commission of the new Train Station and Campus Gateway Buildings to Princeton University, a luxury resort hotel with private compounds in Mexico, an apartment building in Mexico City and a new luxury boutique hotel in Austin Texas.

Architecture and Design Network lectures are free and open to the public. No reservations are required.  Supporters of ADN include the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design, the Central Section of the Arkansas Chapter of the American Institute of Architects and friends in the community.

2019 Governor’s Arts Award presented today

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Governor Asa Hutchinson and the Arkansas Arkansas Council are presenting the 2019 Governor’s Arts Awards today in a lunchtime ceremony at the Arkansas Governor’s Mansion.

This year’s recipients are:

  • Arts Community Development Award-Steve Clark, Fort Smith
  • Arts in Education Award – The Center for Children and Youth, Fayetteville
  • Corporate Sponsorship of the Arts Award – Murphy USA, El Dorado
  • Folklife Award – Oxford American, Little Rock
  • Individual Artist Award – Marjorie Williams-Smith, Little Rock
  • Judges Recognition Award – Anthony Tidwell, Hot Springs
  • Patron Award – Jim and Joyce Faulkner, Little Rock
  • Lifetime Achievement Award – Billie Jo Starr, Fayetteville

In addition to videos highlighting each of the awardees and acceptance speeches, the program will feature remarks by Governor Hutchinson, Department of Arkansas Heritage Director Stacy Hurst and Arkansas Arts Council Director Patrick Ralston.

The recipients will each be presented with a custom made earthenware jar made by Springdale artist Gailen Hudson.

 

Little Rock Look Back: Studio Gang announces plans for re-imagined Arkansas Arts Center

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South entrance of new AAC

 

On February 27, 2018, the Arkansas Arts Center unveiled design plans for a renovation that would cost $70 million.

Construction for the museum is scheduled to begin later this year, and the center is expected to open in 2022. The upgrades, led by architecture firm Studio Gang, include new exhibition areas, a children’s theater space, an expanded educational facility, a glass-enclosed walkway, a garden, and the uncovering of the institution’s original facade from 1937. The $24 million budget increase, which does not include additional costs such as architectural or consultants’ fees, will be taken care of by private funds.

Officials originally explained that $50 million in private donations would complement general obligation bonds approved by Little Rock constituents for the expansion of the museum, whose artworks are owned by the nonprofit Arkansas Arts Center Foundation. “It’s a more expensive project than we originally thought it would be,” Studio Gang owner Jeanne Gang said. “You discover things. There’s a lot to it. There’s a lot of, also, ambition for the project to make it visible, to make it really bring the institution up to the next level.”

The building is currently made up of eight different structures that were added over a period of time to the city’s Museum of Fine Arts, built in 1937. Studio Gang’s aim is to offer a more coherent layout, as well as provide additional space for the AAC’s expansive public arts programming of classes, lectures and film showings.

Among the main features of the project is the introduction of a new axis, which will cut through the center of the building. It will lead from the northern entrance facing Crescent Drive to the 36-acre MacArthur Park on the southern side.

Four glazed volumes featuring curved walls and folded roofs will join up to form the axis – a new entrance will be placed at the front with walls angled to open up to the city, while three others will trail towards the park at the rear, ending with a double-height dining room.

Around 127,000 square feet of space will be added or revamped. The enhanced location will feature an edition of British sculptor Henry Moore’s Large Standing Figure: Knife Edge, 1976, which is currently on view in the city’s Union National Plaza.

Polk Stanley Wilcox is the associate architect and SCAPE is the landscape architect.  More members of the consulting team were added throughout 2018.

Little Rock Look Back: Arkansas Arts Center celebrates with week of Grand Reopening activities in February 2000

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On February 17, 2000, over three thousand people attended the Arkansas Arts Center members preview of the new and renovated galleries as part of a week long celebration. It culminated in Big Art Weekend in which the building was open for 72 hours with around the clock programming.

Donors to the project, media, and Arkansas museum professionals had each received sneak peeks of the new facility earlier in the week. On Friday, February 18, the Big Art Weekend got underway with a gallery tour of a variety of Little Rock galleries. (This was before 2nd Friday Art Night.)  Lectures, tours, and other special events populated the building on Saturday and Sunday the 19th and 20th.  In addition, the Children’s Theatre was performing Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp..

The renovation had taken over 18 months and cost $12 million.  It added 30,000 square feet of gallery space.  The expanded gallery space featured these exhibits: Paul Signac Watercolors and Drawings: Selections from the James T. Dyke Collection; Without Parameters: Selections from the Permanent Collection; Recent Acquisitions; Prophets, Parables and Paradoxes: Recent Drawings by David Bailin; Artistic Processes: Drawing; Living with Form: The Horn Collection of Contemporary Crafts; and European Paintings and Drawings.

The latter exhibit included eight pieces that were promised gifts from the Jackson T. Stephens collection.  They were Edgar Degas’ Dance in Blue (Before the Class, Three Dancers (c. late 1880s), Pablo Picasso’s Still Life with Red Bull’s Head (1938), Claude Monet’s Apple Trees Near Vetheuil (1878), Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s Three Partridges (c. 1888-1890), Alfred Sisley’s Road on the Edge of the Loing (1891), Camille Pissarro’s The Raised Terrace of the Pont-Neuf, Place Henri IV in Morning Rain (1902), Berthe Morisot’s The Flute Player (1890) and Bertrand Redon’s Vase of Flowers (c. 1890).