Baltimore Arts

The Baltimore Community Foundation will provide $1 million to strengthen arts and cultural programs in Greater Baltimore, it announced this week to a gathering of corporate, political, education and arts leaders.The foundation's pledge is based upon a report on the state of local arts: "Building Community: The Arts & Baltimore Together," which was written by Ernest L. Boyer, president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. The report calls for a regional effort to advance arts and cultural institutions.

The turning point for the Wham City Comedy Tour came at a gig in Buffalo, N.Y. And, in typical Wham City fashion, it took some unexpected chaos and quick improvisation to reach it. On Monday, the tour - which consists of six comedians from the city's experimental arts collective Wham City and a director, all traveling the Northeast and Midwest in a white van for about three weeks this month - played an arts gallery/performance space called the...

Patricia Modell, a successful TV and film actress in the 1950s and '60s who became a well-known philanthropist in Baltimore with her husband, former Ravens owner Arthur Modell, died Wednesday at the age of 80. Mrs. Modell was admitted two weeks ago to Gilchrist Hospice, one of several local charitable organizations she had served as a board member and donor. Though the cause of death was not immediately known, she was hospitalized several months ago with pancreatitis and her health continued to decline.

It's one of the ironies of the art world that major cultural institutions like the Baltimore Museum of Art are home to priceless collections of paintings, sculpture and other works by the world's greatest masters, yet they often struggle to come up with money to fix a leaky roof, pay the electricity bill or hire staff. We'd hesitate to guess the value of the BMA's holdings, but surely the total must reach into the hundreds of millions of dollars. Yet no museum that valued its reputation could sell off a Picasso or a Matisse every time the basement flooded or a heating and air-conditioning unit failed.

It's one of those great ideas that seems so obvious in retrospect: a boutique where shoppers can patronize five major Baltimore arts organizations while purchasing holiday presents.Today, Arts To Go, a cooperative retail effort featuring items from the Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, Center Stage, Morris A. Mechanic Theatre and the Walters Art Gallery, opens at the Gallery at Harborplace.For the first time, BSO mugs, BMA memberships and Walters nightshirts are available in the same place through Dec. 31.The five performance and cultural arts groups "never worked together in a public way before," says Joan Davidson, group marketing manager for Baltimore area Rouse Company shopping centers.

The founder of Baltimore's Artscape festival insisted yesterday that the event had no connection to City Hall during the Schaefer years although it was run by municipal employees out of city offices.Instead, Jody Albright testified in Baltimore Circuit Court, the summer festival really was run by the little-known Baltimore Arts Festival Inc., a nonprofit corporation.Mrs. Albright also said that she solicited funds for Artscape on behalf of the nonprofit corporation only."I never solicited [Artscape funds]

After four years of bitter legal wrangling, former Artscape officials agreed Wednesday to turn over to Baltimore some of the money raised for the arts festival when Gov. William Donald Schaefer was mayor.In settling a lawsuit filed by the city, the former Artscape officials agreed to turn over to the city 40 percent of the $666,513 that was raised for the summer event, in three annual installments of $88,868.The settlement does not say when the city will get the rest of the funds. Under the agreement, the former Artscape officials will pay their legal fees with Artscape funds.

LOCAL ARTS supporters, as well as six arts groups and their staffs, are to be congratulated for a milestone.The last of the institutions -- the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra -- recently met the rigorous financial and other goals necessary to qualify for a grant from the Baltimore Arts Stabilization Project, a partnership between National Arts Stabilization (NAS) and a local committee of contributing corporations and foundations.The other participating arts organizations are Center Stage, the Walters Arts Gallery, the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Maryland Institute College of Art and the Baltimore Opera Company.

A story in some editions of The Sun yesterday incorrectly stated the amount of money Baltimore contributed to Artscape since a disputed transfer of money from a group that managed Artscape funds to a foundation in 1986. The city has contributed several hundred thousand dollars to the festival.The Sun regrets the error.More than $700,000 that had been donated to Artscape, Baltimore's summer arts festival, belongs to the city government, a court ruled yesterday, and should be returned immediately by the organization that holds it, which is controlled by close associates of Gov. William Donald Schaefer.

Artists are known for their piques, temper tantrums and jealousies. Sometimes even their mentors are infected with these characteristics. Nothing else explains the petty attempts of two of William Donald Schaefer's former City Hall aides to prevent the Schmoke administration from inheriting some $666,000 they had raised for the annual Artscape happening.Legal wrangling about this money continued for four years. And it probably would still continue, except that the city subpoenaed Governor Schaefer to testify about the collection and purpose of that money.

Part of the charm of Baltimore's arts scene is that someone is always hitting the "refresh" button. An art gallery or music club shuts down on one block, only to have another pop up a few streets over. Abandoned or underused venues might suddenly sprout a theater troupe one day, an artists' collective the next. A lot of the refreshing can be traced to a thriving DIY culture in town, a culture that has been responsible for some of the most intriguing new enterprises over the years and that helps give the city its reputation as a place where artists of every genre can find - or create - an outlet.

Across the nation, consumers snapped up TVs, toys and other mass-produced goodies last week, as the holiday shopping season expanded into "Black Thursday" (aka Thanksgiving). But closer to home, authors, artists and musicians have been toiling over works that, given as gifts, are more apt to say, "Baltimore pride" than "Doorbuster special!" In the spirit of local enterprise, we've rounded up locally themed gift ideas that sample the offerings this year from Baltimore's arts and culture scene.

If electronic musician Dan Deacon is anything, he is fiercely loyal to his adopted hometown of Baltimore. Last night's sold-out show at the Ottobar wasn't so much a coronation; that ship has long since sailed. Rather, its familiar dance party feel, high energy and many nods to Charm City made it seem more like a warm hug from an old friend. As he and his three-piece backing band worked through old staples and many of the songs from his most recent album, "America," Deacon's performance showed the dynamical qualities of his newest works and the maintained ability to create ecstatic dance parties with manic blasts of electronic noise.

Three-year-old Elijah Thomas had just seen a face. And he couldn't have been more excited. "Look, look," Elijah implored, turning his head to his mother and pointing at a 15-foot metal face about 20 feet away, its mouth opening and closing as the youngster tugged on a metal joystick. "It closed! It closed!" Elijah's mom, Erika Taylor, laughed and smiled, delighted. "He's having a blast," she said, realizing that the toughest part of her family's visit to Artscape on Friday afternoon would be separating Elijah from the mechanical face that was fast becoming his new BFF. But that's what happens when you hand over control of a 15-foot stainless steel face to a steady stream of Artscapers.

Anne B. Leavitt, a retired registered nurse and an alto singer who was a longtime member of the Emmanuel Episcopal Church Choir and Baltimore Choral Arts Society, died June 21 of a stroke at Greater Baltimore Medical Center. She was 79. The daughter of a dentist and a registered nurse, Anne Lovelace Gorsuch Benson was born in Baltimore and raised in St. Margarets and in a home next door to the old Marconi's restaurant on West Saratoga Street. Mrs. Leavitt was a 1950 graduate of Eastern High School and earned her nursing degree at the old Hospital for the Women of Maryland in Bolton Hill.

A Baltimore circus-arts instructor and her students are at Niagara Falls today, where they'll be helping to prime the live audience for Friday's televised walk across the falls by high-wire artist Nik Wallenda. "It's going to be chaotic," Erica Saben, founder of Charm City Movement Arts, said Friday morning after arriving at Niagara Falls the previous afternoon. "I hope we'll get a good spot to watch the walk ourselves. We'll have to see how big the media hype is. " Wallenda's family has been walking high wires as the Flying Wallendas for generations.

Four mid-sized Baltimore art organizations -- Fells Point Creative Alliance, Everyman Theatre, Baltimore Choral Arts Society and Young Audiences of Maryland -- will participate in a program to teach management skills to arts executives. Run by the National Arts Stabilization, a nonprofit management group based in Baltimore, the program is designed to strengthen participants' ability to raise money, manage their finances and set long-term goals. The NAS also operates stabilization projects in Arizona, Washington state and Ohio.

One of Baltimore's leading bankers yesterday testified that the creators of the Artscape festival were "morally bankrupt" because they had raised nearly $700,000 for the summer festival when William Donald Schaefer was mayor and refused to turn it over to the city after Kurt L. Schmoke became mayor.H. Furlong Baldwin, chairman of Mercantile-Safe Deposit and Trust Co., assailed the festival's creators during testimony in Baltimore Circuit Court. He was the first witness in a trial sparked by a lawsuit the Schmoke administration filed against Baltimore Arts Festival Inc., a nonprofit corporation set up by Mr. Schaefer's mayoral administration.

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.

Oversized illustrations of Florida teenager Trayvon Martin have begun to spring up on abandoned buildings throughout Baltimore, the work of a street artist protesting the death of the 17-year-old at the hands of a neighborhood watch volunteer. An image of the young man's hooded face went up overnight on Wednesday at the intersection of Caroline and Baltimore streets. Only the youth's chin is visible, but a bag of Skittles — the type of candy Trayvon was carrying when he was shot — is superimposed in the lower right corner of the poster.