Art & Culture Features
A City’s Bicentennial Only Comes Around Once
In 2020 protests over the tragic death of a Black man named George Floyd at the hands of a white policeman reignited a long-running national debate over the significance of Confederate monuments in public places. Some discussions widened to consider the names of schools, streets, parks, and even a city itself. Suggestions for renaming Jacksonville have included Jaxson, Duval, Cowford, and even Durstville, after Fred Durst, lead vocalist for the local band Limp Bizkit.
read moreThe Life Scrolls
Some would say the story began in 1918 when, just after the announcement that the Huns had surrendered their fight in the Great War, a group of businessmen in Jacksonville … well, more on that later.
read moreStatue of Limitations
The ongoing process of racial reckoning that’s been taking place around the country over the past few years has occurred on many different fronts, be it the classroom, the pulpit, or the streets of hundreds of cities from coast to coast. This process has peaked (so far) with the social protests we saw sweeping the nation after George Floyd’s murder in 2020. Locally, there were protests here in Jacksonville, St. Augustine, the Beaches, and beyond.
read moreLeading Ladies
Christine Hoffman; Atlantic Beach reelected Mayor Ellen Glasser; and Neptune Beach’s Mayor Elaine Brown was currently in office. This meant that history had been made—for the first time all three Beaches communities had female mayors. This lady triumvirate has become a synergistic team, leading their respective cities as well as bolstering each other and cementing close professional and personal relationships. These three women have different backgrounds and priorities, but as you’ll see from the interview below, there is also a lot of common ground. Perhaps their biggest strength and commonality is that they are contented Beaches residents themselves. In addition, they share an ability to read the needs of their fellow Beaches citizens, aligning their priorities.
read moreIt was Crooked. It was Blurry. It was Mad.
Local author Tim Gilmore, Florida State College at Jacksonville (FSCJ) English professor, historian, and creator of jaxpsychogeo.com, knows a lot about bizarre, local lore and our city’s most idiosyncratic characters. Virginia King is certainly one of those—she spent decades feverishly documenting 1960-80s Jacksonville by word and photo, ultimately writing some 8,000 pages by hand in an effort to “capture the city,” as Gilmore puts it. Gilmore wrote a book about King in 2015, titled The Mad Atlas of Virginia King, that has now been adapted into a play by the same name.
read moreJacksonville Naval Museum Ship Arrives
Jacksonville’s long talked about floating Naval Museum is becoming a reality, set to transport visitors back in time to the Cold War era in a piece of living history. The Jacksonville Historic Naval Ship Association (JHNSA) has chosen the museum ship— the ex-U.S.S. Orleck—to be the official centerpiece of the Jacksonville Naval Museum. The Orleck is a WWII-era Gearing Class destroyer, built in 1945 and named in honor of WWII Navy hero Lieutenant Joseph Orleck. The Orleck served in the Korean War, Vietnam War, and Cold War periods in United States Navy history.
read moreChosen by Jane: A Rallying Cry for Excellent Arts Education
Chosen by Jane is a memoir of the life of Jane Condon, visionary principal who developed Douglas Anderson School of the Arts and LaVilla School of the Arts to nationally ranked status. The story carries the reader through her childhood in Jacksonville, graduation from Robert E. Lee High School, and stellar career in education.
read moreReimagining the Arts
Last year was, of course, marked by the unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic, which tasked schools with creating not only new campus-wide health and safety protocols, but entirely new guidelines for performing and visual arts programs. We profiled the creative and adaptive ways in which many area schools rose to this challenge, keeping art students inspired, creating, and even safely performing and exhibiting.
read moreIn Pursuit of Humanity
In the fall of 1958, young humanities professor Frances Bartlett Kinne came to Jacksonville for a one-month teaching engagement at Jacksonville University. Three years later, she became founding dean of the Jacksonville University College of Fine Arts, bringing to life the advice she often gave students to “go out and make the world a better place.” Kinne served as dean of the college until her appointment as president of Jacksonville University in 1979 and remains a steadfast supporter of the college, even beyond her death in 2020 at age 102, through her bequests.
read moreStanton College Preparatory School Produces Award-winning Authors
It may be coincidence that two Black female writers who are receiving recent national recognition for their books graduated from the same high school. However, it may be part of the school’s legacy, and it’s interesting to draw lines between the two writers.
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