Art & Culture Features
Chosen 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.
read moreSchool and Group Tours at the Cummer Museum of Art & Gardens
the museum, “Art is like life.” The benefits of arts and nature-based experience for kids are innumerable, and at the Cummer Museum of Art & Gardens, we strive to make art and gardens accessible, fun, and engaging for everyone in the community. Education is central to the museum’s mission and is how we connect and serve the Northeast Florida community.
read moreQ&A with Theatre Jacksonville Executive Director Sarah Boone
It’s always a treat when an original show comes to town. This February, Theatre Jacksonville patrons will be only the second audience (the other being in New York in January) to see the debut of Mom Before Dad: A Young Woman of the Greatest Generation, a production written and performed by Theatre Jacksonville’s own Executive Director Sarah Boone. Inspired by a diary and letters found after her mother’s death, Mom Before Dad has been a highly personal and rewarding undertaking for Boone as she has developed a living story about the hopes, dreams, challenges, and heartbreaks of a young girl during WWII. We sat down with Boone to hear about the show and discuss her remarkable creative journey.
read moreExperience Chihuly
Dale Chihulyis perhaps the most well-known glass artist in the world. Outside of the artist’s hometown of Tacoma, Washington, the sole museum devoted to his work is in St. Petersburg, Florida. The Morean Arts Center opened a permanent Chihuly collection display in 2010, along with a glass studio that is the brainchild of Chihuly himself. The presentation of this groundbreaking, large-scale glass work, housed in a building and garden designed specifically for the purpose of its viewing, is unlike any other.
read moreThe Strategy For What You See
What role do exhibitions serve at an art museum? Museums, after all, are a particular type of institution defined in large part by the presence of a permanent collection. There are institutions without (or with limited) collections that focus exclusively on exhibitions. Known as kunsthalles (literally, “art halls” in German), these spaces are more popular in Europe, although there are some notable examples in this country.
read moreA Single Flower Of Many
Susan Ober has long been a painter of portraits and figures. Recently, she made a marked shift toward close-up florals, but Ober’s figurative background is still alive in her flowers. One can see the attention to detail, but one that is held in soft focus. The texture, surface, and soft shapes of flower petals almost mimic the body. Perhaps paralleling a human’s physical changes over time, Ober states that she is interested in the life span of a flower—the transient states of beauty in all its stages.
read moreModern Hunter-Gatherer
Gabrielle Gould is a self-described “modern hunter-gatherer” who uses small wonders of the natural world to create jewelry art. Based in historic St. Augustine, Gould’s art form has caught the eye of the producer of PBS’s art and craft documentary series Craft in America. The show airs just once or twice a year, and typically features craft arts in conceptually themed episodes. The episode featuring Gould will be the first medium-specific one, shining the spotlight on jewelry. The episode will air on PBS stations on December 10. (For our area, check WJCT’s listings for airtime.)
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