Detroiters who turned out for the Town Hall meeting on the Knight Arts Challenge last week received lots of tips on how to best present their ideas. Here’s what Knight Foundation Arts Associate Tatiana Hernandez shared with the crowd, many of whom are preparing their applications for the challenge offering a share of $3 million [...]
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Miami has never really developed a serious, and secure, African-American art scene. We have black artists, and artists steeped in urban American culture, but it can’t compare to a place like Houston. That city has one of the most thriving and exciting African-American art scenes today, grounded in a long-rooted black community and bolstered by [...]
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One interpretation of Easter traditions is that they reflect a point where the rising tide of Christianity incorporated the preexisting rites of pagan culture and other religious solstice and fertility celebrations. Though the oldest existing remnants of pysanky or “Ukranian Easter eggs” (pronounced “pih-son-kih” with all short vowels) date back to the early 1700s, and therefore [...]
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When Akron Symphony Orchestra (a Knight Arts grantee), approached GroundWorks DanceTheater (also a Knight Arts grantee), things started clicking. ASO wanted to perform Igor Stravinsky’s “The Rite of Spring” while adding a visual element to its aural connection through dance. Maestro Christopher Wilkins met up with David Shimotakahara, artistic director of GroundWorks, and asked him [...]
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As National Poetry Month swings into gear, the O, Miami Poetry Festival, with support from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, returns with the goal of delivering a poem to all 2.6 million Miami-Dade residents. This is a giant task, but poetry has enormous
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In Center City, James Oliver Gallery (JOG) has just opened a solo show entitled “Colossal The Small,” which highlights the work of Yis Goodwin, also known by his moniker NoseGo. This talented graffiti-style artist includes dozens of small, framed paintings in the JOG show as well as googly-eyed terrariums – quite the deviation from his [...]
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This weekend, for the third annual Early Music Festival, Zeitgeist (a Knight Arts grantee) will celebrate the pioneers of electronic music: Karlheinz Stockhausen, Steve Reich, John Cage, Alvin Lucier, Michael Oldfield, Charles Dodge. I spoke with percussionist Heather Barringer by phone yesterday and asked her about the idea behind the ensemble’s mini-festival. “From pop to more [...]
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Eleven new ideas for revitalizing Macon’s College Hill Corridor moved closer to becoming reality Tuesday when eight local organizations and individuals were awarded grants as part of the Knight Neighborhood Challenge. The corridor is the geographic region of the city comprised of the neighborhoods linking downtown and Mercer University (a Knight grantee) that has seen [...]
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When the Civil War came to the United States, it came to a people who, musically speaking, were a churchy lot. But they were also a people of sentimental secular song that hymned home and hearth, of minstrelsy and spiritual, and to hear the music of this time is to gain a greater understanding of [...]
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A cool musical invasion is headed our way when the Canadian Brass comes to E.J. Thomas Performing Arts Hall to perform a concert for Tuesday Musical, a Knight Arts grantee. Recognized as “the world’s most famous brass group,” Canadian Brass will be the vibrant and final performance for Tuesday Musical’s 125th-anniversary season. This talented group [...]
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