Tag Archives: National Endowment for the Arts

Arkansas Heritage Month – Robert Hupp

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HuppRobert Hupp is in his final months of his seventeenth and final season as producing artistic director of Arkansas Rep.  In recognition of all of his service and artistic excellence, in 2013 he was the Individual Artists recipient of the Governor’s Arts Awards.

During his tenure in Little Rock, Hupp has overseen continued growth and development at The Rep. Since he assumed the producing artistic director’s position in 1999, the theatre has tripled its budget (currently at $4 million annually), increased contributed income by 100%, completed a successful capital campaign, and broadened the company’s artistic and economic base through co-productions with other nonprofit theatres and partnerships with institutions of higher education and community organizations. Under Hupp’s leadership, the theatre and actor housing apartments underwent a complete renovation in 2011. The Rep also renovated a new downtown scenic construction facility and recently opened The Annex, a black box theatre and education space, in Main Street’s Creative Corridor.

Hupp’s artistic stewardship at The Rep has been marked by seasons that reflect the great diversity of the theatrical canon. Shakespeare and American classics join new and contemporary works, and seasons always include musicals or plays with music. The current season contains the regional theatre premiere of The Bridges of Madison County, a new adaptation of The Little Mermaid, as well as a new comedy, Windfall, directed by Seinfeld’s Jason Alexander. The theatre also recently produced a new musical, Because of Winn Dixie, by Duncan Sheik and Nell Benjamin. Hupp has directed 28 productions while at The Rep, including The Grapes of Wrath, God’s Man in Texas, Les Miserables, August: Osage County, and all of The Rep’s recent Shakespearean productions.

In addition to his duties at The Rep, Hupp has shown a strong commitment to serving the central Arkansas community. He has served on numerous civic committees in Little Rock, including Little Rock’s Arts and Culture Commission, the Advisory Board of the ACANSA Arts Festival, and Vision Little Rock. He has collaborated with the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra, Wildwood Park for the Arts, and the Arkansas Arts Center.  In 2012, he was named “Nonprofit Executive of the Year” at the Arkansas Business of the Year Awards, and also received the Arkansas Public Relations Society of Arkansas (PRSA) Diamond Award. Hupp has also been a panelist and on-site evaluator for the National Endowment for the Arts and has served in various capacities for the Theatre Communications Group, including a term as vice president of the Board of Directors. Hupp has taught and directed at several Arkansas colleges and universities, including Hendrix College, University of Central Arkansas, and University of Arkansas at Little Rock where he also served as the Interim Chair of the Department of Theatre in 2005.

Arkansas Heritage Month – Townsend Wolfe of the Arkansas Arts Center

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wolfe

Continuing with a focus on Little Rock recipients of the Governor’s Arts Awards, today’s focus is Townsend Wolfe, who led the Arkansas Arts Center for 34 years.

Though not the founding director of the Arkansas Arts Center, Townsend Wolfe was the director for well over half of the institution’s 53 year history. Hired in 1968 at the age of 32 (making him one of the youngest art museum directors in the US at the time), he retired in 2002.  That year he was honored with the Governor’s Arts Award for Lifetime Achievement by the Arkansas Arts Council.

A native of South Carolina, Wolfe holds a bachelor’s degree from the Atlanta Art Institute and a master’s degree from the Cranbrook Academy of Art. He also received a certificate from the Harvard Institute of Arts Administration, and honorary doctoral degrees from two other institutions.  He was recruited to the Arkansas Arts Center by Governor and Mrs. Winthrop Rockefeller.

During his tenure at the Arts Center, he first was responsible for creating financial stability. After drastic cost-cutting measures, he refocused programming which led to the creation of the current Museum School, a focus of works on paper for the collection, cultivating a thriving collectors group, establishment of a children’s theatre, expansion of statewide services, and several additions to the physical plant.

In addition to serving on the National Council of the Arts, Wolfe was a member of the National Museum Services Board and the board of the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts in New York. He was curator for an exhibition in the First Ladies’ Sculpture Garden at the White House in 1995, and was the recipient of the 1997 Distinguished Service Award (outside the profession) by the National Art Educators Association.

Over the years, Wolfe has served in a variety of capacities for the Association of American Museums, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Institute of Museum and Library Services.

AN ILIAD takes stage at Arkansas Rep in Black Box

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Rep IliadAudience favorite Joe Graves returns to The Rep for Lisa Peterson and Denis O’Hare’s production, An Iliad. This one-man production adapts Homer’s Trojan War epic into a compelling monologue that captures both the heroism and horror of warfare, and answers the question: “What has really changed since the Trojan War?”

Performances are February 24 through March 5. Showtimes are 7pm Wednesdays through Sundays with 2pm matinees on Sundays.

This production makes the western world’s oldest extant work of literature not only intelligible, but immediate, relevant and eerily fascinating—as if a storyteller were telling the oldest story in the book and making you believe it is being told for the very first time. Gods and goddesses, weak-tendoned heroes and the face that launched a thousand ships…it’s all just another (incredibly engrossing) yarn in O’Hare* and Peterson’s one-man adaptation, developed at the Sundance Theatre Institute.

Willamette Week calls Graves’ performance one “that can honestly be described as spellbinding.”

Sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts, An Iliad will include Arkansas Stories of War, a series of six talkbacks featuring local service members and their families who will share their personal stories of war.

Grants for Rep, ASO, Oxford American announced by National Endowment for the Arts

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nea-logo-960Three Little Rock based cultural institutions were among the eight Arkansas recipients of National Endowment for Arts grants recently announced.

These were Art Works and Challenge America grants. Art Works grants supports the creation of art that meets the highest standards of excellence, public engagement with diverse and excellent art, lifelong learning in the arts and the strengthening of communities through the arts. Challenge America grants offer support primarily to small and mid-sized organizations for projects that extend the reach of the arts to underserved populations whose opportunities to experience the arts are limited by geography, ethnicity, economics or disability.

The Arkanas Repertory Theatre received $15,000 to support a production of An Iliad by Lisa Peterson and Denis O’Hare.  The playwriting team has adapted Homer’s Trojan War epic into a compelling monologue that captures both the heroism and horror of warfare. A key theme is the personal cost of war. The theatre will continue and deepen its ongoing partnership with the Little Rock Air Force base and will engage with the service members and their families during the project. During the performance run, veterans returning from service overseas will share their personal stories as part of a post-performance community conversation. Activities will occur in the theater’s newly constructed second stage and center for community engagement on the Main Street Creative Corridor.

The Arkansas Symphony Orchestra received $10,000 to support performances and educational workshops that will culminate in the world premiere performance of a composition by D.J. Sparr, featuring guitarist Ted Ludwig.  The composition is inspired by Ludwig’s flight from New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina. In addition to performances, electric guitarists Ludwig and Sparr will lead workshops for student musicians and community members from central and southeastern Arkansas, including a high percentage of low-income residents.

The Oxford American received $20,000 to support the publication and promotion of the magazine.  Exploring the complexity and vitality of the American South, the magazine publishes poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, and criticism by emerging and established authors. The magazine will be promoted through social media, the magazine’s website, a weekly e-newsletter, and events throughout the South.

In addition, TheatreSquared in Fayetteville received $25,000 for its Arkansas New Play Festival. This is presented in Fayetteville and Little Rock. The Little Rock performances are in conjunction with the Arkansas Rep.

Other Arkansas recipients were the Walton Arts Center, Sonny Boy Blues Society (for the King Biscuit Blues Festival), Ozarks Foothills Film Festival and John Brown University.

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.

 

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.