GUEST COMMENTARY: Public art effectively builds host communities

Why are communities throughout our country and around the world developing large-scale outdoor art projects? There are many reasons why.

Onward, upward with the arts

One Region's recent Quality of Life Indicators Report gave the arts and culture sector the report’s only upwardly trending indicator of our region’s quality of life, noting that arts and culture enrich the lives of area residents and visitors.

EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD: Unique partnership keeping the music alive

In the past, symphony orchestras were enthusiastically supported simply for perpetuating the symphonic art form. When the Gary Symphony presented its first concert in December 1941, it was because people were interested in playing and hearing classical music.

EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD: Art education improves students' minds, academic performance

Arts education in not just about finger-painting or stick figures on the fridge.

GUEST COMMENTARY: Onward, upward with arts in 2012

Creative collaborations were a hallmark of the arts last year and continue into this year. The Unity Event brought together 250 teenagers and adults in a performance of "Evita" at Highland High School, a partnership among multiple arts organizations.

LaPorte home of Anneke and Jan Dekker is the site of this year's Mystery Dinner

For the third consecutive year, generous patrons of the arts have opened their home to complete strangers, guests of South Shore Arts, who had purchased an evening of gourmet cuisine in an undisclosed location. The Mystery Dinner, as we call it, had been auctioned at last June's Beaux Arts B…

EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD: The year in review, artistically speaking

The longer I've been around promoting the arts along the south shore, the more I'm amazed by people's lack of awareness of the treasures we have in our own backyards. To that end, I would like to share some artistic highlights in our region in the past year. These are not among the year's Go…

EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD: Commemorating a tragic event through art

If you were alive at the time and old enough to do so, you remember with clarity where you were when you heard that President John F. Kennedy had been shot. I was 9, a fourth-grader at John H. Vohr Elementary School in Gary.

A Night of Surprises in Michigan City

The surprise, the unexpected, is everything.

EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD: Why arts, culture are important in Indiana

As the Indiana General Assembly works to draft a new budget, the Indiana Coalition for the Arts is reminding residents of why the arts are important to our lives and worthy of public support.

Why arts and culture are always worthy of your support

With state funding for the arts down by 35% from this time two years ago, the support of the arts on the local level by individuals and businesses is more essential than ever before.

Seeking a better way to do business

With the renaming of South Shore Arts from Northern Indiana Arts Association in 2006, the arts assumed a modest yet effective leadership role in rebranding our region, giving it a newer, more positive image and underscoring its place in the greater Chicago metropolitan area. Two years later,…

Celebrating a way of life along Lake Michigan's South Shore

As spring leads us into summer, one is reminded of the wonderful icons we have in Northwest Indiana, many of which have been memorialized in the South Shore poster series.

Blockheads miss the true meaning of Christmas

You don't have to be Charlie Brown -- or even a blockhead -- to question the true meaning of the holiday season. "Christmas in our house," Charlie Brown grumbles, "is a bowl of hard candy that always sticks together. Christmas is going over the hills and through the woods to Grandmother's ho…

Arts advocacy efforts are paying off

This past March, I had the opportunity to attend the Arts Advocacy Day in Washington, a national advocacy and grassroots campaign organized by Americans for the Arts and co-sponsored by more than 90 national organizations representing thousands of arts, cultural, business, civic and educatio…

International exhibit to tell story of urban renewal

In May 2005, the curators of From Rust to Restoration: Basque Art and the Bilbao Effect traveled to Bilbao, Spain, as part of a delegation from Indiana University Northwest. The purpose was to study and see firsthand the results of the miraculous transformation of Bilbao from a post-industri…

Bringing home the Bilbao miracle

Earlier this year, I joined a delegation from Indiana University Northwest to Bilbao, Spain. We were to learn how Bilbao had been transformed in just over 10 years from a city with a heavy, undiversified industrial base and an unemployment rate of 35 percent with high drug abuse and other so…