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Art Down
It felt strange seeing all of the paintings and drawings from the exhibition Nzambi (God) down off the walls at the Italian Academy this week. Columbia had requested that the show stay around another month after the festival ended in June so more people on campus could see it. I went to the gallery and removed the paintings, took off the hardware, pulled off the wall labels. The room felt so lonely. The director of the Italian Academy, Rick Whitaker, told me that he already missed the works.
Review: Immediate Present
We were pleased to read this week a critical review of the Mormon Arts Center publication, Immediate Present, by Laura Allred Hurtado in Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought. The reviewer was Sarah C. Reed. In 2017, for our first Mormon Arts Center festival, Hurtado brought together a group exhibition of two dozen contemporary Mormon artists. For the exhibition catalog, she paired an equal number of authors who wrote a response of one kind or another for each visual art work. Hurtado wrote an extended essay on Mormon art that introduced the volume.
More Great Press
In a Church News article over the weekend that highlighted events of the Mormon Arts Center Festival, staff writer Morgan Jones described some exciting elements of our June event. Although it happened far away from Salt Lake City, the Center has been very fortunate to attract the attention of media outlets in Utah, including the Salt Lake Tribune, the Deseret News, Church News, and KSL-TV.
The Festival on Your Phone
YouTube videos of the 2018 festival continue to be posted. There are currently 19 new videos, for a total on our channel of 52. That's hours and hours of presentations, performances, and interviews. Subscribe and receive notification when new videos appear on YouTube.
The Festival on YouTube
A priority for the Mormon Arts Center is sharing. It's no surprise, then, that after the festival our main goal is to get dozens and dozens of hours of video edited and posted online. The first eight presentations are now on YouTube, with more coming every few hours. Even for those attending, these should be welcome because the presentations and concerts were overlapping. Nobody could be everywhere at once. Well, our video crew could. Enjoy.
Nzambi (God) continues
Before the festival ended, the Italian Academy requested that Hildebrando's exhibition Nzambi (God) remain on display until August. We were prepared to take it down, but having an extension "by popular demand" so to speak, was more than welcome. It gives people a little bit longer to see it. The building is open to the public.
What Just Happened?
Throughout the 2018 festival, the Mormon Arts Center filmed all the events, performances, presentations, discussions, and panels at the Italian Academy on the campus of Columbia University. Our goal is to have all of these wonderful documents posted on YouTube in the next two weeks. That's an ambitious goal, given that it is many hours of programming, but we want everyone--no matter where you live--to have full access to what went on. We can't wait for you all to experience it.
Good(s) Piling Up
The deliveries are coming fast and furious now--treasures of books, posters, magazines, and CDs that will be available and displayed at the Festival, starting on Thursday. The biggest, heaviest, and most exciting to me are the cases of Mormon Cinema. Biggest because the boxes and boxes of books are taking up the lion's share of my little apartment; heaviest because at 680 pages, the book is our heftiest offering by far; and most exciting because after 20 years of research, a major publication is seeing the light of day.
The Kindness of Strangers
In addition to the crew of committee members and supportive friends, the Center has been the recipient of some anonymous kindness in preparation for the festival. One of the last checklist items before the festival opens on Thursday was a series of posters and banners to decorate the Italian Academy itself. Printing oversize posters can be expensive. A large poster can be about $200. So I was pretty nervous when I went to my local shop and gave them a flash drive with about 15 posters--some of them to be mounted to foam core.
Sing With Us
Mormons a generation or two ago knew the music of Evan Stephens like the back of their hand. It was everywhere. Nearly two-thirds of the hymns in the early 20th century hymnal were composed by him. Conductor of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, prolific composer of hymns, anthems, oratorios, and operettas, and a master choral teacher: Stephens was easily one of the most influential men of his era in the Church. How did this son of a Welsh coal miner, with almost no musical training become such a force?
On Carnegie Hall
I went by Carnegie Hall today, and I was surprised to see the poster for the Scott Holden recital in the beautiful outside display cases at Carnegie Hall. It was a proud moment, an arrival. When I first arrived in New York as a college student, I would scrape together $9 to buy a ticket on the back row of the balcony.
Our Secret Weapon
I'm not sure I should be revealing this, but we have a trade secret. Far away, in the land of snow-capped mountains and Jell-O, exists the most fantastic company. They do brilliant work. They are fast. They're nice. Their equipment is top-notch, state-of-the-art …