Arts Education

A statewide arts education group has named Anne Arundel Schools Superintendent Kevin M. Maxwell as its arts advocate for 2010, citing his creation of an arts magnet program at an Annapolis middle school and other arts-related initiatives. The Arts Education in Maryland Schools Alliance plans to honor Maxwell at a conference at Towson University on June 3. "Dr. Kevin Maxwell's commitment to arts education has resulted in vibrant learning [and] teaching environments that prepare Maryland's school children to think creatively, innovate, problem solve, collaborate, communicate and compete successfully in the 21st century global economy," the alliance said in a statement.

In celebration of Ballet Theatre of Maryland artistic director Dianna Cuatto's receiving this year's Performing Arts Annie, BTM dancers entertained at the start of the 12th annual Annie Awards ceremony, offering excerpts from their "1812 Ballet" and from "Aladdin," along with Spanish and Irish dances. On Oct. 19 in the Key Auditorium at St. John's College, the Arts Council of Anne Arundel County awarded Annies to six people for their contributions to performing, literary and visual arts, and to arts education, patronage and lifetime achievement.

Two Maryland schools are among five in the nation to be honored for excellence in arts education. Roland Park Elementary/Middle School in Baltimore City and Sudbrook Magnet Middle School in Baltimore County were named "national schools of distinction" Friday by the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, according to a news release from the Arts Education in Maryland Schools Alliance. The award is presented annually to five public schools selected from around the country that have "made the arts an essential part of their students' education," the alliance said.

Doris Brandt Bauer, an art educator and artist whose mixed-media collages incorporated found objects such as driftwood, died of pneumonia and respiratory failure July 17 at St. Joseph Medical Center. She was 86. Born Doris Caroline Brandt, she grew up in Southwest Baltimore and attended Western High School, said her eldest son, G. Andrew Bauer III of Towson. She graduated from the College of William and Mary with a degree in fine arts in 1946 and returned to Baltimore, where she began teaching.

Can you name the beginning solo instrument in George Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue"? Identify the style of visual art called Surrealism? Draw a self-portrait and explain the "memory of place" you used in drawing it? A federal report on the state of U.S. arts education, issued last week, could help assure that Maryland students can ace these and similar questions by the time they reach eighth grade. But progress depends on a willingness by state educators, government officials and parents to view the report as a long-awaited opportunity, not merely as a data-laden critique.

MARYLAND HAS long been a leader in arts education. For 15 years now, it has required that students earn a credit in fine arts before receiving a high school diploma, recognizing the arts as an integral part of the academic experience as well as an essential part of life. Now the state is trying to be a leader in measuring how well students are doing in the arts. To do that, the state Department of Education needs some additional money next year to support its ongoing effort to develop a fine arts assessment for middle school students.

A new program to fund arts education in the schools, developed by the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, the PHOENIX Repertory Dance Company and the Morton and Sophia Macht Foundation, will introduce elementary- and middle-school children to the art of dance.A grant of $7,100 from the Macht Foundation will enable PHOENIX to take professional dancers into six schools in southwest Baltimore this fall for assemblies and participatory sessions. It will also fund dance workshops for children at UMBC.

The Baltimore Community Foundation has announced it will use its $1 million Arts and Culture Initiative to fund programs in arts education run collaboratively between arts organizations and schools. It recently awarded $100,000 to programs run collaboratively between five arts institutions and local schools.* The Alvin Ailey Dance Theater Foundation of Maryland received $15,000 to bring instructors to 30 area schools for two-day workshops and to develop additional activities for teachers and students.

IT IS ONE THING to crack down on smoking in school lavatories, but in Howard County, they're talking about lowering the boom on music and art education in middle schools.Superintendent Michael E. Hickey makes a terrible mistake if he relents to pressure from some circles and sacrifices arts education in an overwrought, if well-intentioned, move to focus on math, language, social studies and science in middle schools.Pitting the core subjects against arts and music is a mistake. Why turn one positive education goal into the enemy of another positive education goal?

On some mornings when Mary Toth leaves her Columbia home to drive to her new job as executive director of the Maryland Citizens for the Arts, she finds herself heading for her old office at the Howard County Arts Council.That's understandable. Toth was executive director of the county's Arts Council for 12 years.Her new office -- in the historic George Ellicott House just east of downtown Ellicott City -- is only a mile or so from the Howard County Arts Council on High Ridge Road. And she's been going there for only two months.

Ruth R. Marder, a Baltimore philanthropist whose charitable interests ranged from the arts to educational and medical institutions, died Jan. 28 of cancer at her Roland Park Place home. She was 83. Born in Pittsburgh, Ruth Rosenberg was the daughter of Henry A. Rosenberg Sr., who had been president of Crown Central Petroleum Co., and Ruth Blaustein Rosenberg. She was the granddaughter of Louis Blaustein, founder of the American Oil Co. She was raised at Rainbow Hill, her family's Owings Mills estate, which had once been the home of Gen. Douglas MacArthur and his first wife, Henriette Louis Cromwell Brooks, in the 1920s.

Emma D. Favazza, co-founder of a Baltimore construction company whose philanthropic and charitable interests included the arts and education, died Saturday of heart failure at St. Joseph Medical Center. The Timonium resident was 81. Emma Elizabeth Dalcin, the daughter of a bricklayer and a homemaker, was born the youngest of 11 children in Bethlehem, Pa., and then moved with her family to nearby Allentown, Pa. During the Depression, the family moved to the city's Pimlico neighborhood and later Catonsville.

Two Maryland schools are among five in the nation to be honored for excellence in arts education. Roland Park Elementary/Middle School in Baltimore City and Sudbrook Magnet Middle School in Baltimore County were named "national schools of distinction" Friday by the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, according to a news release from the Arts Education in Maryland Schools Alliance. The award is presented annually to five public schools selected from around the country that have "made the arts an essential part of their students' education," the alliance said.

Some Anne Arundel County teachers will be learning songwriting, mime and dance this summer, in efforts to better teach students in math, science and other subjects in the fall. They will be teaming up with local artists as well as with teachers from abroad at the 21st Century Learning Institute, a summer development program that allows county elementary and middle school teachers to take arts lessons then devise ways to integrate those disciplines in all subjects. The program will be held at Bates Middle School in Annapolis from July 19-23, and will involve daily hands-on workshops with local talents — including recording artists, theatre actors, and visual artists.

The retouching on the black-and-white photograph is a giveaway. The good looks of the suave young man peering out from one of Warsaw's Academy of Fine Arts student passbooks rival those of a movie star. The confident gaze, hint of a smile and darkroom-perfected complexion were all characteristic of portraiture in the 1930s and 1940s. Next to the headshot, a red ink stamp pinpoints the date first hinted at by the portrait's signature style: Oct. 31, 1939. That was the last time Jerzy Kajetanski used his bus pass in his native Poland, two months after the Sept.

At the SEED School of Maryland, a tuition-free public boarding school for disadvantaged youngsters slated to open this summer in Southwest Baltimore, administrators and staff are working overtime to integrate art, music and theater into the regular academic curriculum. Some people still have a hard time with the idea that instruction in the arts is as essential to a well-rounded education as training in the liberal arts and sciences. Yet educators have known for decades that the arts play a crucial role in the development of young minds.

Some Anne Arundel County teachers will be learning songwriting, mime and dance this summer, in efforts to better teach students in math, science and other subjects in the fall. They will be teaming up with local artists as well as with teachers from abroad at the 21st Century Learning Institute, a summer development program that allows county elementary and middle school teachers to take arts lessons then devise ways to integrate those disciplines in all subjects. The program will be held at Bates Middle School in Annapolis from July 19-23, and will involve daily hands-on workshops with local talents — including recording artists, theatre actors, and visual artists.