Summer’s super for young artists (and potential artists)

Betsy PickleOur Town Arts

The school year may be coming to a close, but students at Vine Middle Magnet School are ready to say goodbye in style.

“Binders: Vine Middle Magnet Visual Arts Spring Show” opens Friday, May 24, at A1 LabArts, 23 Emory Place. An opening-night reception will be held from 5:30 to 8 p.m. The gallery will be open the same hours on Saturday, May 25.

Vine Middle is a STEAM school as well as a community school, and its visual-arts program is renowned. See what these talented kids have created this weekend in “Binders.”

More music at Market Square

The music’s hot (in more ways than one) in the city’s Concerts on the Square series. Tonight’s performers are the Ensemble Swing Time Band, a 17-piece big band specializing in classic big-band swing, featuring both original arrangements and those popularized by Glenn Miller, the Dorsey Brothers and other great bands from the swing era. The show starts at 7 p.m. on Market Square and is free.

Don’t forget, Jazz Tuesdays are at 8 p.m. Tuesdays on Market Square and are also free.

Arts and more at summer camps

Speaking of heat, there’s still time to get your kids enrolled in a summer camp. Local organizations offer all kinds of arts camps and outdoor camps. Start your search on the Arts & Culture Alliance website.

WordPlayers go Wilde

Putting on a play can be expensive. And sometimes, the words on the page are electric enough that all they need is a well-cast ensemble to say them out loud. In that spirit, The WordPlayers will present a staged reading of Oscar Wilde’s “Lady Windermere’s Fan” at 7 p.m. Monday, June 10, in the Square Room, 4 Market Square.

“Lady Windermere’s Fan” is a comedy of manners that shifts between comedy and drama as it shows how a woman’s suspicions that her husband is having an affair drive her toward social disaster.

The performance is free, and reservations are not required. Info: 865-539-2490 or wordplayers.org.

KMA gets $40k for Delaney exhibition

Beauford Delaney, “Portrait of James Baldwin,” 1944. Pastel on paper. Knoxville Museum of Art, 2017 purchase with funds provided by the Rachael Patterson Young Art Acquisition Reserve

The Knoxville Museum of Art has received a $40,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts for the exhibition “Beauford Delaney: Through the Unusual Door,” which will run February 7-May 10, 2020. KMA received a $60,000 grant from the Henry Luce Foundation last November to help fund the exhibition.

More than 40 paintings, works on paper, documentary photographs and letters in “Through the Unusual Door” examine the 35-year relationship between Knoxville-born painter Beauford Delaney and writer James Baldwin.

Delaney was born in Dec. 30, 1901, in Knoxville. Baldwin was born Aug. 2, 1924, in New York. They met in Greenwich Village when Baldwin was 15 and continued their friendship when both later moved to France. Their ongoing intellectual exchange shaped each other’s creative output and worldview. Delaney died March 26, 1979, in Paris, and Baldwin died Dec. 1, 1987, in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, France.

In a press release, KMA Executive Director David Butler called Delaney “the most important artist Knoxville ever produced.” (Read about KMA board chair Allison Lederer here.)

 

Beauford Delaney, “Yaddo,” 1950. Pastel on paper, Knoxville Museum of Art, 2017 purchase with funds provided by the Rachael Patterson Young Art Acquisition Reserve

 

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