Arts Scene: Recent Episodes
Daniel Breen
Arts Scene explores what's happening in the arts in Arkansas. Since 1985, Ann Nicholson has produced and hosted this weekly fine arts magazine.Where there is an arts performance, art exhibit, or a literary artist with a new book, Nicholson is there. She maintains close connections with the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra, the Arkansas Repertory Theatre, UALR Artspree and Opera in the Ozarks at Inspiration Point Fine Arts Colony in Eureka Springs."I want our listeners to gain a new experience from each program. I look for persons in the arts that I think will not only indulge my interests, but also those in the audience. I try to give them a little bit of extra personal background that they wouldn't get anywhere else," says Nicholson.Born in India, the daughter of a British Army Officer, and educated in India, Kashmir, Scotland, and England, Nicholson immigrated to Canada in 1958 and then to the United States in 1962. She received a double BA degree in music education and music history from Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas. Nicholson continued her graduate education in Musicology at the University of Kentucky. Ann was the recipient of the 2003 Aha! Cultural Spirit Award, in recognition of her years of work supporting the arts community in Arkansas.Contact information: daniel@kuar.org
Whether it's been over a year since your last trip to the cinema, or you're hot off the heels of the latest blockbuster release, we could all use a trip to the movies right about now.
For arts organizations, the past year-and-a-half has been an interesting time to say the least. But now, audiences are hungering for new performances.
For more than 20 years, Phil Mariage has been attempting to bridge the gap between the generations, all while sharing it with an audience.
Summer is upon us after a year indoors, but the sweet strains of chamber music make a convincing case to go back inside for a brief moment.
With life slowly returning to pre-pandemic normal, arts organizations across Arkansas are welcoming patrons back with open arms.
There's nothing more American than hitting the open road, but for Black Americans in the Jim Crow South, travel was a potentially life-threatening endeavor.
And now, the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra presents finale to a season that's been anything but normal.
The UA Little Rock Art Gallery is soldiering on with new exhibitions, placing the work of women front-and-center.
The sights and sounds of classical music are even more welcome after months without in-person concerts.
On this week's Arts Scene, we take time to pay homage to our program's founder. Ann Nicholson, who hosted the show for nearly 30 years, died this past week at age 88.
Arts organizations and audiences have been deprived of a performance experience during the pandemic. But, in the words of the immortal Freddie Mercury, the show must go on.
Melba Pattillo Beals, Minnijean Brown, Elizabeth Eckford, Ernest Green, Gloria Ray Karlmark, Carlotta Walls LaNier, Thelma Mothershed, Terrence Roberts and Jefferson Thomas.
Artists are a rare breed; seemingly the perfect mix of dreamer, thinker and doer. Nick Cave is by no means a stranger to those actions, but for this project, he's dreaming, thinking and doing BIG.
After months of the "new normal," it can seem like there's no single aspect of daily life the coronavirus pandemic hasn't changed. Work has been replaced with Zoom, movie theaters with Netflix, and restaurants with take-out.
If you've heard the news in the past few months, you've probably heard that we're "living in historic times." But what exactly does that mean?
Since 2012, Opera In The Rock has served Arkansas as the state's only professional opera company. But now, like all arts organizations, they're having to adapt to a wildly different way of life during the COVID-19 pandemic.