News

National Endowment for the Arts Announces

March11,08

The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) has announced a new program, the NEA New Play Development Project (NPDP), to help the nation's nonprofit theaters bring more new plays to full production. The national program will be administered by DC-based Arena Stage's American Voices New Play Program. Selecting and providing support for exceptional new plays and new play development models will be a key component of the program. The NEA New Play Development Project will support the development of seven new plays at theaters from across the country. Two projects selected as NEA Outstanding New American Plays will receive up to $90,000 each to support advanced development, including at least one full production. Five projects selected as NEA Distinguished New Play Development Projects will receive up to $20,000 each to support the early stages of enlargement for a new play with strong potential to merit a full production. In both cases, the selected plays will be developed in close collaboration with the playwrights.

A full production is really the only way a playwright and his or her audience can fully experience a play in the way it was intended to be experienced. We're delighted to announce the NEA's New Play Development Project to help the best of the nation's new plays achieve that goal," said Bill O'Brien, NEA Director of Theater and Musical Theater. "We're also delighted have such an outstanding organization as Arena Stage helping us to administer the program. They bring an enormous amount of experience to the project, and we applaud the substantial commitment they are making in the support of new work on a national scale.

Educational Art Awards Apprehended In Jackson

Feb12,06

The Mississippi Museum of fine art hosted The Educational Art Awards of 2006 Mississippi Regional service Sunday.

The service was held at Thalia Mara Hall.

This yearly occasion recognizes the exceptional artwork of 7th through 12th graders from across the state. Art teachers suggest their students' mechanism which are judged and then choose to take delivery of admirable talk about, silvery key, or gold key awards.

Gold key winners then take a trip to the nationwide contest in New York.

Mosque Monument Pulled Since German Fine Art Show

Feb13,06

A monument depicting a mosque by means of missiles as minarets was pulled since a German art show Monday behind threats were made, the director of Duesseldorf's art academy established.

Titled "Aggression", the work by a Swiss art student was detached from the show at the demand of the artist, whispered academy director Peter Lynen.

Lynen said there had been no force from the academy itself to pull the effort and that every artist had to be given the choice to attend to what he termed "contemporary themes".

The design of the mosque with rockets as its minarets was very "low-key", said Lynen.

He did not say what kinds of pressure had led to deletion of the monument.

About 30,000 group visited the show over the past four days through the missile-minaret mosque.

Lynen said there had been no incidents associated to the monument while it was exposed but complained of a "lurid" media report having led to the pressure.

Art Lovers

Feb 14,06

Valentine's Day might be a profitable formation of the greeting card, flower and chocolate businesses, but it still seems like the great time to tell the story of Arthur Osver and Ernestine Betsberg.

The two painters, who have lived in the same residence in Webster Groves since 1962, met though at school at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1935. She was 26, he was 23, and they have been mutually ever since.

Today, in their 90s - she is "96 and a half," as she puts it proudly, he is 93 - they make a cute couple, interrupting each other in telling the tale of their lives together, but then rapidly conferring to make sure they've gotten a date, name or place right.

Their recall is fast and accurate - you get the feeling they've told the stories before - and they display a sprightliness you'd anticipate in someone decades younger. Even though Betsberg desires a chairlift to get upstairs, Osver jumps up to respond the phone, to find a bottle of wine and to find a framed newspaper extract on them.