The Open Doors Artist’s Studios and Available Space tour is an annual event organized by the Newark Arts Council.  The Tour features a number of crated and juried exhibitions highlighting artists from Newark and surrounding areas while showcasing available artists’ space; performance art; a rare look into artists’ studios and a crawl through Newark’s numerous and diverse art galleries.

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The New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, the state’s preeminent performing arts organization, is one of the oldest orchestras in the United States. It was founded in 1922, but traces its roots to 1846, when the Eintracht Orchestra and Singing Society of Newark was founded. Today, the NJSO fulfills its mission as a true state orchestra by performing over 150 concerts each year from Englewood to Cape May including classical, pops, summer parks and summer Amadeus Festival concerts as well as many special events. The NJSO also takes great pride in its extensive education programs, which bring over 50,000 schoolchildren to performances each year. While maintaining an active statewide presence, the NJSO is the Resident Orchestra of the New Jersey Performing Arts Center (NJPAC) in Newark, NJ. MORE…

Founded as the Summit Art Association by a dedicated group of artists in 1933, New Jersey Center for Visual Arts has evolved into a major regional arts center with both a professionally recognized studio program and critically acclaimed exhibition program. The Center, a non-profit organization located in Summit, New Jersey, offers a variety of fine arts education programs. Its mission is to promote the knowledge, understanding and appreciation of contemporary art.

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2009-2010 Season Announced

The new season schedule is filled with premieres, revivals and celebrations. Among the highlights is the November 7 Opening Night at The Community Theatre; the company’s return to Kean University in March; and the big 51st Anniversary festivities on Saturday March 13 at NJPAC.

There is no better way to introduce children to the magic of dance theatre than NJB’s productions for Kids and FamiliesSM. There are no fewer than five opportunities to see NJB’s highly acclaimed Sleeping Beauty (both the Kids & FamiliesSM edition and the full length classical ballet). Cinderella is fast becoming a mini-Nutcracker, with a loyal following that returns to see it every year. This season, young Cinderella fans and their families will be greeted by a fresh new look to the scenery and a brand new Pumpkin Coach, thanks to a grant from the Hyde and Watson Foundation. MORE…

A Force for Change: African American Art and the Julius Rosenwald Fund

A Force for Change is the first exhibition to explore the legacy of the Julius Rosenwald Fund, created in 1917 by the well known Chicago businessman and philanthropist. The Rosenwald Fund’s Fellowship Program was designed to foster black leadership through the arts, literature, and scholarship, and between 1928 and 1948, the program awarded stipends to hundreds of African American artists, writers, and scholars across many disciplines. MORE…

The mission of the Holmdel Theatre Festival is to provide artistic/theatrical opportunities for community residents to perform and create in a professional environment. Each season the HTF strives to improve artistic standards, quality and arts education by hiring professional artistic and technical personnel in efforts to cultivate and encourage the growth of the artistic community, educate performers and to provide high quality theatre productions to the community. The HTF seeks to artistically integrate professional actors, technicians, designers and directors with non-professionals and young people in a synergistic artistic and educational exchange. This goal involves increasing our budget for the hiring of actors, technicians, designers and administrators each year. In doing this the HTF has made a commitment to support New Jersey artists to work, to educate and support New Jersey young people to explore theater as a creative outlet and as a profession, in addition to bringing the highest quality theater experience possible to the audiences of Monmouth County.

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Providing audiences with world-class theatrical experiences, George Street Playhouse presents world premieres, classic masterpieces and contemporary drama. Under Artistic Director David Saint, George Street Playhouse premiered the upcoming New York productions of Anne Meara’s Down the Garden Paths and Arthur Laurents’ Jolson Sings Again, as well as the award-winning Syncopation by Allan Knee. Productions that originated at George Street Playhouse include the Tony-nominated musical Swinging On A Star, the Broadway production of Voices in the Dark and the London premiere of The Fields of Ambrosia.

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The mission of the African Art Museum of the S.M.A. Fathers is to further the appreciation of African art as representations of African culture, civilization, and, more broadly, the human experience as a whole. The initials S.M.A. come from the Latin name for the Society: Societas Missionum ad Afros, the Society of African Missions. Efforts were made early on in the history of the Society to collect and preserve artifacts from West Africa. Thanks to the untiring efforts of some of those early missionaries, many fine pieces in wood, ivory, brass, bronze and other metals have been preserved and now are on display at the African Art Museum. The Museum also features changing exhibitions of the traditional arts of sub-Saharan Africa designed to interest, motivate and inform diverse constituencies, including children of all ages, young adults and senior citizens.

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The quest for human rights and the search for personal fulfillment, as proposed in the 1776 American Declaration of Independence, provide the starting point for this international exhibition curated by Roger Manley (curator of AVAM’s mega-popular inaugural exhibition “Tree of Life.”) Works by the last surviving descendant of the Tsars of Russia, Iroquois Indians, French Revolutionaries, illegal immigrants, Algerian War veterans, Guantanamo Bay detainees, Holocaust survivors, incarcerated prisoners, African-American civil rights activists and Iraqi doctors are among the 80 visionary artists to be featured. Illustrator Renaldo Kuhler’s vast imaginary country of “Rocaterrania,” Tilden Stone’s masterful “Furnitures of Secrets,” and Duncan Laurie’s Purr Generator (a “happiness machine”) are among the many works that will never have been shown publicly before. LL&PoH runs through September 5, 2010. MORE…

Cocktail Party Fact: Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty, who wrote the lyrics and music for Ragtime, had to audition to get the job. Along with several other songwriting teams, they wrote four songs “on spec” (on speculation, as an audition). Of all the teams who wrote songs for the show, producer Garth Drabinsky felt Ahrens and Flaherty best understood the material, so they got the job. They have also written scores for the musicals Once on This Island, My Favorite Year, Lucky Stiff and the animated feature Anastasia. MORE…