Tag Archives: Arkansas Arts Council

Happy 50th Birthday to the National Endowment for the Arts & National Endowment for the Humanities

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NEANEH50On September 29, 1965, President Lyndon Baines Johnson signed into law the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act of 1965 at a White House Rose Garden ceremony, attended by scholars, artists, educators, political leaders, and other luminaries.

The law created the National Endowment for the Humanities as an independent federal agency, the first grand public investment in American culture. It identified the need for a national cultural agency that would preserve America’s rich history and cultural heritage, and encourage and support scholarship and innovation in history, archeology, philosophy, literature, and other humanities disciplines.

On this occasion, President Johnson said: “Art is a nation’s most precious heritage. For it is in our works of art that we reveal ourselves, and to others, the inner vision which guides us as a nation. And where there is no vision, the people perish.”

This new law was the fruit of two presidents, several senators and representatives, and four previous pieces of legislation. Separate bills had been introduced, in previous years, into the House by Representative Frank Thompson (D-NJ), and into the Senate by Senators Hubert Humphrey (D-MN) and Jacob Javits (R-NY). Senator Claiborne Pell (D-RI) had overseen hearings on some of this preliminary legislation, beginning in October 1963, before the death of President John F. Kennedy.

Over the years, the NEA and NEH have awarded millions of dollars to Little Rock based institutions, organizations and individuals through direct appropriations.  They have also impacted Little Rock cultural life through funding of the Mid-America Arts Alliance, Arkansas Arts Council, Department of Arkansas Heritage, Arkansas Department of Parks & Tourism, and U.S. Conference of Mayors among others. These groups have either re-granted the dollars to Little Rock entities or undertaken projects which have directly impacted and improved life in Little Rock.

 

Anat Cohen kicks off Oxford American 2015-16 Jazz Series at South on Main tonight at 8

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oa jazz AnatTonight at 8pm, the Oxford American magazine welcomes Anat Cohen to the South on Main stage to kick off the OA Jazz Series!

Doors open at 6:00 PM, with dinner and drinks available for purchase at that time. This series is made possible by presenting sponsor, the UCA College of Fine Arts & Communication. Additional partners include The Summer Foundation, Arkansas Arts Council, Capital Hotel, Piano Kraft, Rosen Music Company, and FM-89.1 KUAR.

Tickets are $20 (General Admission), $30 (Reserved), and $32 (Premium Reserved). View the South on Main reserved seating map here. Please take a look at this very important ticketing and seating information before purchasing your tickets.

Clarinetist/saxophonist Anat Cohen has won hearts and minds the world over with her expressive virtuosity and delightful stage presence. Anat was born in Tel Aviv, Israel, and raised into a musical family. She began clarinet studies at age twelve and played jazz on clarinet for the first time in the Jaffa Conservatory’s Dixieland Band. At sixteen, she joined the school’s big band and learned to play the tenor saxophone; it was this same year that Anat entered the prestigious “Thelma Yellin” school, where she majored in jazz. After graduation, she discharged her mandatory Israeli military service duty from 1993-1995, playing tenor saxophone in the Israeli Air Force band.

The Jazz Journalists Association has voted Anat as “Clarinetist of the Year” eight years in a row, and she has topped both the Critics and Readers Polls in the clarinet category in DownBeat magazine every year since 2011. That’s not to mention years of being named “Rising Star” in the soprano and tenor saxophone categories in DownBeat, as well as for “Jazz Artist of the Year.” In 2009, ASCAP awarded Anat a Wall of Fame prize for composition and musicianship, among other honors.

In March 2015, Anzic Records releases Luminosa, her seventh album as a bandleader. Luminosa sees Anat play singing, dancing originals, interpret Brazilian classics by the likes of Milton Nascimento, and even re-imagine electronica as acoustica with an ingenious arrangement of a Flying Lotus tune. Luminosaencapsulates the description Jazz Police offered of Anat in full flight: “She becomes a singer, a poet, a mad scientist, laughing—musically—with the delight of reaching that new place, that new feeling, with each chorus.”

New Deputy Director for Arkansas Heritage announced

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DAH Dep DirStacy Hurst, director of the Department of Arkansas Heritage (DAH), announced today that she has named Rebecca Burkes as the new deputy director for DAH. Burkes holds an M.S. in operations management from the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, and a Juris Doctorate from the Baylor University School of Law.

“I am very happy to bring Rebecca on board to help lead and manage DAH,” said Hurst. “Her skills in managing organizations and people will be a tremendous asset to us. Our seven separate agencies, operating under the larger umbrella of Heritage, will benefit greatly from her skills.”

Burkes most recently was an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin Law School, Madison. Previous to that, she lived in Northwest Arkansas, where she practiced law in Fayetteville (1993-95), was corporate counsel at Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., in Bentonville (1995-98) and was vice president and chief counsel for the Burkes Company, a diversified real estate development, construction and brokerage company (1998-2011).

The Department of Arkansas Heritage, through its seven agencies, seeks to recognize the state’s heritage and to enhance Arkansas’s quality of life through the discovery, preservation and presentation of the state’s cultural, natural and historic resources. The agencies are Arkansas Arts Council, Arkansas Historic Preservation Program, Arkansas Natural Heritage Commission, Delta Cultural Center, Historic Arkansas Museum, Mosaic Templars Cultural Center and Old State House Museum.

Artist David Bailin at today’s Legacies & Lunch

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Legacies & Lunch: David Bailin 
Wednesday, September 2, noon – 1:00 p.m. 
CALS Main Library’s Darragh Center, 100 Rock Street
David Bailin (work pictured above) is an artist who currently works primarily in drawing, but has worked previously in painting, writing, theater, and performance. He has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Arkansas Arts Council.

At Legacies & Lunch, Bailin will discuss the artistic community he has found in Arkansas with artists Warren Criswell and Sammy Peters over the past thirty years. Their work has evolved, changed focus, and acquired new media and techniques, but has remained a central part of their lives, both individually and collectively.

Some results of those years of companionship are featured in the exhibition, Disparate Acts Redux: Bailin, Criswell, Peters, on view through Saturday, October 31 at Butler Center Galleries, 401 President Clinton Ave.

 Legacies & Lunch is free, open to the public, and sponsored in part by the Arkansas Humanities Council.  Bring a sack lunch; drinks and dessert are provided.

Mozart in A tonight

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kiril mozartaThe St. Luke’s Festival of the Senses, our parish’s arts series, is gearing up for new year packed with exciting concerts and arts events. The year kicks off Monday, August 31st at 7pm with Mozart in A, a chamber music program.

The selections will be Mozart pieces composed in A major: Piano Concerto No. 23 and the first movement of Mozart’s Symphony No. 29.musicians performing are Tatiana Roitman, piano; Kiril Laskarov, violin; Eric Hayward, violin; Katherine Williamson, viola; and Stephen Feldman, cello.

Festival of the Senses is funded by private donations, the Arkansas Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts.

BEND, examining Japanese American experience in World War II, to be presented tonight

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Bend-DrawingCloseUp72-bannerTonight at 7pm at the Ron Robinson Theater, the Arkansas Archeological Survey presents a play about the Japanese American experience during World War II.
Kimi Maeda’s solo performance, Bend, tells the true story of two men interned in a Japanese American internment camp during World War II: Maeda’s father, an Asian Art historian currently suffering from dementia, and the subject of his research, Isamu Noguchi, a half-Japanese-half-American sculptor. Weaving together live feed projections of sand drawings with archival footage from the 1940s, Maeda’s performance poses important questions about how the Japanese American internment camps will be remembered.
The Arkansas Archeological Survey is partnering with the World War II Japanese American Internment Museum, the University of Arkansas at Monticello’s Japanese Club, and the University of Arkansas in Little Rock (UALR) to help teach the public about the state’s rich history. Art, particularly the performance and active creation of art, as Maeda does, is an important way to communicate the emotion of past events. Bend will be performed in Little Rock and McGehee. Dr. Johanna Miller-Lewis, a historian at UALR, and Richard Yada, who was born at Rohwer, will participate in a talk back session following the performance.
Bend in Little Rock – Thursday, August 27, 7 PM
Ron Robinson Theater
100 River Market Avenue
Purchase your tickets now. $10.00
This project is supported by The Jim Henson Foundation, Tapp’s Arts Center, the South Carolina Arts Commission, the National Endowment for the Arts, the John and Susan Bennett Memorial Arts Fund of the Coastal Community Foundation of SC, Alternate ROOTS, the Arkansas Arts Council, the New England Japanese American Citizens League (NEJACL), the Arkansas Humanities Council, the Arkansas Archeological Survey, and the Ko Festival of Performance.

Tonight at 6 at South on Main, Clinton School & Oxford American present “Jazz: Integrated Art in Segregated America” symposium

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alvin02sm.jpg.190x140_q60_cropThis evening at 6pm at South on Main, Oxford American in partnership with the Clinton School of Public Service presents “Jazz: Integrated Art in Segregated America,” a symposium and panel discussion surrounding music and race.

The discussion will be led by Dr. Jackie Lamar, Professor of Saxophone at University of Central Arkansas’s College of Fine Arts and Communication. A jazz performance will follow the panel discussion. Thanks to sponsors Clinton School of Public Service, UCA College of Fine Arts & Communication, Piano Kraft, Rosen Music Company, and Arkansas Arts Council for helping make this event possible.

Featured panelists include Little Rock-based singer Irene Crutchfield; bassist Bill Huntington (born, New Orleans, LA); drummer Alvin Fielder (pictured), based in Jackson, MS; and bassist London Branch, also based in Jackson, MS. The symposium event is free and open to the public. South on Main’s doors open at 5:00 PM. with light food and drinks available for purchase.

At 8pm, the Oxford American presents jazz ensemble The Southeast Quartet at South on Main. This event is $10 regular, or $5 students/artists payable in cash at the doors on the night of the show.