Arts

When Johns Hopkins Hospital officially opens its new, $1.1 billion building Tuesday, sick children will find a cobalt cow with legs the color of grass and a butter-colored head floating above their heads, poised to jump over a fanciful "moon. " The new hospital won't just provide state-of-the-art health care. It will also provide state-of-the-art art. The 500 original paintings, sculptures and murals, created by more than 70 artists from around the U.S., are on display throughout both the children and adult towers in the new facility.

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With the primaries in full swing, the cowboy poetry festival and Big Bird have returned to the news. The Nevada festival is the most recent whipping boy for those who oppose government funding of the arts. Mitt Romney joined this chorus by suggesting that, in his administration, "Big Bird is going to have advertisements," meaning that he would advocate using advertising revenue to replace government funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Similarly, Mr. Romney suggested that the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities seek private philanthropy to replace their government funding.

Richard Paul Sullivan , a former chairman and CEO of Easco Corp. who had been active in Republican state politics and civic affairs, died Sunday of cancer at his Owings Mills home. The longtime Guilford resident was 79. Mr. Sullivan, whose father was president of the American Girl Shoe Co. and whose mother was a homemaker, was born and raised in Newton, Mass. After graduating in 1950 from St. Sebastian's School in Milton, Mass., he earned a bachelor's degree in 1954 in marine engineering from the Massachusetts Maritime Academy.

When film star Robert Redford was starting the Sundance Festival in Utah in the late 1970s, there were times when he felt like a barker outside a seedy nightclub. "Sundance was a rocky road, and there were a lot of near-fatalities along the way," Redford told about 1,000 arts administrators who gathered in Baltimore this weekend for the half-century summit of the advocacy group Americans for the Arts. "When the festival started, it was just me and two other people. We had one theater, and I'd stand by the front door and urge people to give us a try. I felt like a man who works in a strip joint saying, 'Why don't you come on in?

I admire and endorse Joe Ehrmann's recommendations for a new approach to sports in education ("Athletics as education," Sept. 15), and I would point out that much of what he says is equally true of the arts. The arts can help bridge "the achievement gap. " They promote human rights, diversity, etc., and, when the right coaching is applied, they teach an "other-centered" curriculum. Often in school cultures, however, successful student artists are labeled sissies or weirdos, while successful student athletes are characterized as heroes.

Charles Albert Wunder, a lifelong Baltimorean and avid supporter of the city's arts institutions, died Dec. 20 of complications from metastatic melanoma at Gilchrist Hospice in Towson. The retired life insurance salesman was 77. Mr. Wunder was born in Baltimore and grew up in a West Baltimore rowhouse on Grantley Street with his family, which included two sisters. As a teen, he hitchhiked across town to attend Loyola Blakefield High School in Towson, and was among the members of the first ROTC class to graduate from Loyola College in 1955.

The George Washington Carver Center for Arts and Technology, in Towson, held its commencement ceremonies for the Class of 2011 on May 30 at Goucher College. Congratulations to the new graduates: Matthew Adelberg Eden Anbinder Catena Badolato Kayla Baker Jermaine Bantum Morgan Barber Alyssa Bass Amir Bassioni La'Shae' Batten Elisabeth Bayne Joseph Bednar Bridget Bingham DeAunna Blackwell Christopher Blizzard Kenneth Blue Benjamin Borinsky Erin Branch Annelise Brennan Connor Brown Andrew Brown Mary Burke Daquan Burrell Evan Buyalos Alexander Caldwell Maura Callahan Lindsay Caplan Cassandra Carnahan Park Chin Erika Clinton Lauren Cohen Jada Collins Imani Cook Sean Costello Leigha Cutting Amanda Czyz Joyce Davis Margaret Denning Kevin Depaz Megan Dickinson Nicholas Digregorio Meka Dixon Matthew Donato Michael Dorbit Marisa Dorrett Roisin Dowling Jack Doyle Todd Duncan Shaequan Edmonds Kyle Elliott Katrel Etheridge Mark Evans Yasmine Faieq Babatunde Fakuade Jonathan Falk Demetra Farantos William Fedo Zsade Fleming David Folk Hayley Frazier Fred Gaddy Valerie Gendelsman Samuel Ginn Diana Goldsmith Sierra Griffin Lauren Griffith Courtney...

Rachel Hilson , a 15-year-old sophomore at the Baltimore School for the Arts, has landed a recurring role on "The Good Wife," the CBS hit drama now in its second season. She debuts Tuesday as Nisa, a study partner and love interest for Zach Florrick (played by Graham Phillips ), the teenage son of Alicia Florrick (played by Julianna Margulies ). Hilson has already shot three episodes and just got word this week that she'll be shooting a fourth. Quite a big break for a young actress whose other credits are more along the lines of lower-school plays at McDonogh.

Federal Hill art gallery owner Mark Cottman never forgot the night he saw comedian Richard Pryor perform at the old Civic Center. So when he heard that Pryor's daughter, Rain, was living in Baltimore and teaching at a city junior-senior high school arts academy, Cottman decided he wanted to help her students in their efforts to stage a production of playwright August Wilson's "Gem of the Ocean. " "Her father inspired me," said Cottman last week as he stood in a classroom at West Baltimore's ConneXions Academy of Art, where Rain Pryor chairs the drama department.

Ashley Boycher has always considered public museums "magic places. " "Growing up with modest means in rural Louisiana sure will make a kid curious about the world," said Boycher. That curiosity never left her, and she now has been at the Walters for 18 months, designing interiors for all temporary exhibitions and touching up permanent displays. Next month, you can see her handiwork in the exhibition "Public Property. " "We will showcase our visitors' voices and choices more than ever before," she said.

Some of the bravest people in the world can be found at BWI Thurgood Marshall Airport. Vaclav Havel of the Czech Republic. Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa. The Dalai Lama. These and many other figures are featured in a photo exhibit organized to honor human-rights defenders around the world. Part of the airport's upper concourse, just off the main atrium of the international terminal, has been transformed into a photo gallery to display the traveling exhibit "Speak Truth to Power," which runs through May 31. The exhibit was organized by the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights, a Washington-based nonprofit organization that was formed in 1968 in memory of the former U.S. senator and attorney general, who was assassinated that year at age 42. It is based on a book written by Kerry Kennedy, a daughter of Robert F. Kennedy and president of the RFK Center.

I'm always interested in finding new ways to use books as art -- whether it's creating a spectrum from shelved books or recycling books as craft projects. Here's another: Litographs , colorful wall prints that incorporate the words of Moby Dick and other classics into designs. Founder Danny Fein notes that with each purchase a book is donated to a community in need through the Baltimore-based International Book Bank. For contemporary books, each print is custom-made from a physical copy of the book that is scanned and printed back out in "art form," he said.

A tot's discarded rocking horse has taken on an artful life and become a compelling symbol of a river befouled by debris. Towson University art students recently salvaged the toy, in two large chunks, during a volunteer clean-up along Back River in Essex. "When it came out of the river, it was scary, dirty and something like the swamp creature," said Vicki Miller, 19, of Parkton, during a class critique last week in anticipation of a trash art auction. But Olivia Moore saw in the yellowed, broken toy the potential to deliver an anti-pollution message.

Not even getting stabbed repeatedly by a needle could get Danielle Cromb to put down her smartphone Saturday afternoon. "I've been on Tumblr, Facebook, Pinterest," said Cromb, of Charleston, S.C., who clutched her iPhone as she was having ink injected into the skin on the back of her neck. "Mostly it's helpful if I'm looking up a picture in the middle of a conversation with an artist. And it can definitely be a distraction. " It is a common sight this weekend inside the Baltimore Convention Center: Semi-dressed, prostrate people playing games, texting and listening to music on their cellphones as tattoo artists work.

Tattoos aren't just for outlaws anymore. Maybe they never were, but for years, popular culture suggested otherwise. Just think of the movies: Robert Mitchum's homicidal preacher in "The Night of the Hunter," with "Love" and "Hate" tattooed on his knuckles; Robert De Niro's vengeance-crazed ex-con in "Cape Fear," his torso covered in soulless ink; or Ralph Fiennes' serial killer, Dolarhyde, in "Red Dragon," his back emblazoned with an elaborate, and...

When Mark Chewning was a kid, he dreamed of being an artist. But at some point, the Baltimore resident's dream became all but dormant, giving way to about 27 years in the photograph-retouching business and a stint as supermarket deli clerk, as well as marriage, parenting, unemployment, divorce and self-doubt. Last week, Chewning, 54, was honored as the Student of the Year at Howard Community College. The single parent says his dream of becoming an artist will probably never come to fruition.

Any effort that promises to attract new residents and businesses to a historic Baltimore neighborhood could do a lot worse than make the arts a magnet for bringing people together. That's why we can't see any down side to a city proposal to create a third arts and entertainment district for Baltimore, this one on the west side of downtown. If the idea of a new cultural destination works anywhere near as well there as it has elsewhere in the city and state, the results are practically guaranteed to be an improvement over the status quo. State economic development officials are expected to decide by June 1 whether to approve Baltimore's request to designate 117 acres of downtown as the Bromo Tower Arts and Entertainment District.