Missoula Cultural Council SCOPE for 12/10

Today is Wednesday, December 10, the birthdate in 1911 of Chet Huntley in Cardwell, a hamlet of about 800 on Montana’s Jefferson River. Huntley died in 1974 after a distinguished career in journalism capped by his role as a TV anchor man on the nightly Huntley-Brinkley Report. He retired in August 1970 and returned to Montana to develop the Big Sky resort south of Bozeman. “Maybe where there’s clarity of air, there’s clarity of thought,” he once suggested.

General Interest items

#1a – The Missoula Cultural Council’s annual Cultural Achievement Awards will be presented at a January 16 luncheon in the Conference Center at St. Patrick Hospital’s Broadway Building. Some 250 civic and cultural leaders attended last year’s awards ceremony at which former National Endowment for the Arts Chairman Frank Hodsoll spoke on how “Culture Strengthens Community.” Added to this year’s event will be awards by the Missoula Business Committee for the Arts recognizing the role of local businesses in supporting arts and cultural organizations. Judith Jedlicka, President and CEO of the national BCA will be among the honored guests at the luncheon. To make reservations call 721-9620 or [email protected]

#1b – Each person attending MCC’s January 16 Awards Luncheon will receive a “Culture Kit” filled with information about Missoula cultural organizations. The kits have been decorated by students in Missoula arts education ckasses and, on a random basis, will also contain free tickets to cultural events and some valuable art objects. Organizations that want to have their material included should contact MCC at 721-9620 or [email protected]

#1c – The unveiling of a replica of the historic curbside clock outside the Stoverud Jewelry store on Higgins Avenue last Thursday drew a large and appreciative crowd. Photos of the event were posted on the Missoula Cultural Council website within an hour, thanks to some deft webwork by Donna Hyora who is turning the MCC into the definitive source for news and photos of cultural activities in the Missoula region. The replacement clock was crafted by the Verdin Company, North America’s oldest bell and clock company, which in 1982 turned a historical church in Cincinnati into a Bell and Clock Museum. You can visit it at http://www.verdin.com

#1d – Geoff Badenoch was feted for his 21 years of service with the Missoula Redevelopment Agency at a reception Monday evening at the Missoula Children’s Theatre. MCC president Michael Marsolek was among those paying tribute to Geoff’s dedication to the community’s cultural environment. He noted that in the entry way of the MCT administration building — formerly Central High School — there is an inscription written by Geoff: “The heart of any community beats stronger where there is art and culture to stimulate and satisfy it.” See pictures of the gathering at http://www.missoulacultural.org

#1e – A 14-day cultural tour of Palmerston North, Missoula’s Sister City, and other places in New Zealand is scheduled to depart Missoula on Friday, March 26. It is being sponsored by the Missoula Cultural Council and coincides with a commercial tour being arranged by the Missoula-based Montana World Trade Center that includes an art show of Missoula and Montana artists at the city-owned art gallery in Palmerston North. The itinerary, with optional extensions to Australia and Fiji Islands, will be posted on the MCC website soon. Meanwhile, for tour details contact MCC at 721-9620 or [email protected]

#1f – To whet your appetite for the New Zealand tours, visit the Te Manawa gallery at http://www.temanawa.co.nz/default.asp Te Manawa has regionally and nationally important collections of Taonga Maori, New Zealand contemporary art, social history and natural history. The museum’s name is taken from the Maori word Manawa — meaning heart. Te Manawa refers also to Manawatu, the district where Palmerston North is located on the Manawatu River that runs through it. Take a tour at

http://www.ourregion.co.nz/theregion.php?articleID=15

On the Literary Landscape

#2a – Corrections: SCOPE goofed last week in citing two websites. The correct URL for the Montana Committee for the Humanities is: http://www.humanities-mt.org. Winners of the Montana Festival of the Book “Happy Tales” competition are at http://www.bookfest-mt.org/winners.htm

#2b – Montana 1948 by Lawrence Watson is the choice for the ongoing Missoula Reads program. Here’s one estimate by a national critic: Watson “writes with forthright and painful honesty about small-town life on the northern plains. Clear prose and sure characterizations are hallmarks of this novel. The human frailties that Watson hints at and reveals of the people in Mercer County, Montana, are reminiscent of the Faulknerian folk of a certain fictional Southern county, but presented in a more succinct and readable style.”

#2c – Registrations are open for Missoula playwright Shaun Gant’s Introduction to Playwriting. For course information call 243-5274 or [email protected] For registration contact Peggy Nesbitt at 243-6014or [email protected]

The Art Scene

#3a – Goatsilk Gallery, 1909 Wyoming Street, #5, stages another performance art piece this Saturday at 8 PM with a live drama on The LED Sign installed there. Actors and actresses will type in their characters’ lines from remote locations. Anyone can take part in the drama by interjecting their own personal messages and dramatic lines into the pre-arranged script as it is being presented. To participate, log onto http://www.goatsilk.com at 8 PM MST and type into the message box. Cool.

#3b – Traffic was heavy when SCOPE visited the annual Holiday Craft Show at the UC Center last weekend. You can get a birds-eye view of some of the booths at the MCC website, http://www.missoulacultural.org

#3c – farm ART SPACE gallery owner/artist Wes Mills is joined by fellow Missoula artists Roger Walker and Kerri Rosenstein at the Miami/Basel art fair this week. Three years ago, organizers of Art Basel, the prestigious contemporary art fair in Switzerland, chose Miami Beach for their sister-city venture. More than 160 of the world’s most renowned art galleries were selected through a competitive process to show work. Last month Mills exhibited at an international art show at Cologne in Germany.

Musical Notes and Stage Cues

#4a – Elinor Freer, Missoula-born pianist now on the faculty at Eastman School of Music, was here last week to arrange the 2004 Summer Music Festival performances and workshops in Missoula, Whitefish and other venues, including outdoor concerts at Big Mountain and Quinn’s Hot Springs resorts. She will be joined again by the famed Ying Quartet, which was featured on the November 17 NPR Performance Today. On a personal note, Elinor is married to cellist David Ying who was nominated for a 2003 Grammy Award. The Missoula appearances will be August 1-3. Freer is an internationally known piano soloist and chamber musician. She has performed at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, the Valery Gergiev Festival in Rotterdam, and other international venues. Both Ying and Freer are involved in a program called the Eastman Initiative, which is designed to broaden students’ performance training and to teach them new methods of audience outreach. SCOPE will post info on the Festival in upcoming issues.

#4b – The Missoula Community Chorus and Missoula Community Strings, will present a Holiday Performance this Friday at 7:30 PM in the First United Methodist Church, Dr. Ron Wilcott conducting. Handel’s Coronation Anthem is featured, and the program rounded out with several international seasonal pieces. Admission is free, donations gladly accepted. Info at 728-0983

#4c – The Helena Symphony Orchestra and Chorale, joined by the Helena Youth Choir, present their annual Christmas in the Cathedral concert next Sunday and Monday, at 7:30 PM in the Cathedral of St. Helena. A pre-concert Conductor’s Crash Course for season ticket holders preceeds the concerts and a special feature this year is Kids Konductors! Three children will be randomly selected to lead the Symphony in their own interpretations of Deck the Halls.

#4d – The Fourth Annual Odyssey of the Stars on March 20 in the University Theatre will feature the careers of Jim Caron and Don Collins and spotlight the UM Music Department with over 200 performers. The event benefit’s the UM School of Fine Arts Scholarship fund.

Cultural Tourism Directions

#5a – There were about 40 people at the monthly Board of Directors meeting of the Missoula Convention and Visitors Bureau last Thursday, a striking contrast to the sparse attendance at such gatherings when the Chamber of Commerce relegated its tourism activities to a minor committee.

#5b – There are stirrings at other Chambers of Commerce around the state. In Butte, Marko Lucich, a juvenile probation officer, was chosen recently from a field of 37 applicants to head that city’s Chamber. SCOPE hears from readers in Billings that the Chamber there is about to get new leadership too.Stay tuned.

The Creative Community

#6a – The second Missoula “Creative Clusters” Roundtable takes place this Friday starting at 2:00 PM at the Missoula Childrens’ Theatre. Because of the response to this invitation, the site of the meeting has been moved to the “Blue Room” on the second floor at MCT. The Missoula Cultural Council is collaborating with the Montana Associated Technology Roundtables in putting into action the cluster concepts that were adopted as a strategy for economic development in Montana. (See the cluster study at http://montanajobs.org/ ) These roundtable sessions are open to all who are interested in contributing to the creative vitality of Missoula. If you’d like to talk about your creative endeavor, please contact [email protected] or [email protected]

#6b – Representatives from the worlds of art, science, business, education and the Canadian government are gathering in Halifax to explore the links between innovation and creativity at a national conference entitled "Creativity Gap: How the arts inspire an innovative society." Organized by the Canadian Conference of the Arts, the two-day event will explore the idea that creativity and innovation are the key elements to a country’s economic success.

#6c – More than 300 people attended the premiere of the Live. Right. Here, a media campaign intended to show that Great Falls is a great place to live and work. The campaign, which includes TV, radio and print ads, features a number of local residents talking about the quality of life and the business climate in Great Falls.

The Cultural Environment

#7a – As chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, Bill Ivey began to wean that agency from its role as “sugar daddy” to the visual arts. He outlined his plan while in Missoula as guest of the Missoula Cultural Council. He’s still charting a new course from his posts at Vanderbilt University and the Center for Arts and Cultural. "I think we need to look at the overarching issues that affect both the for-profit and nonprofit sectors, to find common ground around policy and figure out ways to advance the whole sector, and that way build bridges between for-profit and nonprofit," he said in a recent interview. He believes the most impactful way to unite the arts is for the profit and nonprofit leaders to meet each other as equals, rather than nonprofits slinking up to profits with their hands out. “I don’t think the nonprofits have an automatic moral claim on the public largesse.”

#7b – A new book by Illinois State University professor Terry White accuses the media-dominated drivers of American culture, corporate and academic alike, of eliminating the capacity for imagination. In The Middle Mind, White maintains that, due to the collapsed distinction between entertainment and art, he writes, "we have nearly no art at all."

Academic notes

#9a – A middle school in South Orange, N.J. has cancelled a field trip to see Charles Dickens’ Christmas Carol because Christian references in the play might make students who don’t celebrate the holiday feel awkward.

#9b – The City University of New York has refused to grant tenure to a history professor at Brooklyn College in part because he suggested that faculty be hired on the basis of merit instead of because of their gender. He thereby flunked the “collegiality” test being used in some institutions of higher learning to rate professors.

Media and Web Watch

#10a – The November issue of Smithsonian Magazine carries an article by Michael Parfit, who lives in the St. Ignatius area, titled “Ouch!” It‘s about a controversy surfacing in fishing circles caused by a recent study that claims fish feel pain when hooked. Parfit paints this picture in prose: “In early October larch trees paint gold on the slopes of the Mission Mountains of western Montana and snow edges down from high rocks in waves, like a curtain blowing closed on summer. Men and women wade into the chilling waters of Rock Creek, Jocko River, Clark Fork and Blackfoot, casting coils of shining line for trout. For these enthusiasts, fly-fishing is a noble endeavor, a sport that borders on the spiritual. After all, it was these waters that gave birth to one of the immortal lines in a long history of fine fishing literature, the opening to Norman Maclean’s A River Runs Through It. "In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing."

#10b – The Montana Natural History Center is going gung-ho to turn an 80-year warehouse on Hickory Street in downtown Missoula into its new home. You can see the building and get the story on MCNH’s revamped website and you can subscribe to the Nature Center newsletter at [email protected]

Finally, as a plea for grizzly bear survival, you are urged to stuff the online ballot box at http://www.capitalonebowl.com to help UM’s Monte the Mascot defend his National Mascot of the Year title. No chads, please, but vote once a day until 5 PM December 22. The winning mascot will be announced during the Capital One Bowl on New Year’s Day. No appeal to the US Supreme Court.

MARK at MCC