Cultural Arts

A New Year begins. It's time to take stock of ourselves, make resolutions, alter plans and party hardy! The solstice has come and gone, so the days get longer from now on. Can the first crocus be far away?*The La Leche League of Savage/North Laurel will hold its first meeting of 1995 Wednesday at 10:15 a.m. at the Savage Library.This month's topic is "Why Breast Feed Your Baby?"All expectant and nursing mothers are welcomed at this meeting. Young children are cooed over and petted by the gentle moms.

The venerable Hutzler's building in Towson, one of the area's first suburban department stores, may usher in another era of development if a group of arts advocates has its way.About 100 artists, representatives from universities, government and business, and supporters of the arts will meet today to consider turning the four-story Art Deco landmark into a cultural arts center.The proposed Greater Baltimore Cultural Arts Center would include a 300- to 500-seat performing arts theater, branches of the Peabody Institute and the Maryland Institute College of Art, class space for Towson State University and Essex Community College, and a number of arts-related retail stores such as the Maryland Fiber Arts Center and Towson Artists Supply.

African-American art collection at the BMA Community, heritage and cultural pride are spotlighted in Celebration and Vision: The Hewitt Collection of African-American Art, a new exhibit at the Baltimore Museum of Art. Opening Sunday, the large display includes more than 60 paintings and works on paper by renowned artists, including Hale Woodruff, Henry O. Tanner and Romare Bearden. The show is scheduled to remain on display through Aug. 22. The Baltimore Museum of Art is at 10 Art Museum Drive.

Mary Boehly has a kaleidoscope view of culture. For years, she was a spectator, enjoying the theater and musical events. Then she joined the Baltimore Mandolin Orchestra, with which she performed for about eight years. "Being a musician helped me gain an appreciation for classical music," said Boehly, 64, a retired civil service employee. "I wanted to help other people gain a similar appreciation." She got her chance after she moved to Havre de Grace in 2004. With a strong desire to become involved with the community, she met some members of the Havre de Grace Arts Council.

In a move seen as a key to revitalizing Pikesville, the Baltimore County Council is expected to take the first step next week toward purchasing the Pikes Theater and turning it into an arts center.The theater, an art deco landmark in the 900 block of Reisterstown Road, has been closed for eight years and had been eyed in recent months as a possible site for a branch post office.But county planners say a postal facility would conflict with guidelines spelled out in the county's year-old master plan, which says the community should work toward "establishing a cultural arts center in the area of the Pikes Theater."

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.

In yesterday's Anne Arundel edition, the date of the first public meeting of the Cultural Arts Foundation was listed incorrectly. The meeting is at 7 p.m. April 26 in the Chesapeake Room of the Heritage Center, 2664 Riva Road, Annapolis.The Baltimore Sun regrets the error.A new arts foundation is forming in Anne Arundel County, but this time it's a private agency -- part of County Executive Robert R. Neall's determination to privatize county arts groups.The nonprofit Cultural Arts Foundation, which will replace the Anne Arundel County Commission on Culture and the Arts this July, is holding its first public meeting next week.

As a former colony of France, now an independent nation whose official language is French, the West African nation of Senegal has long ties to Europe and one should not be surprised to see a European influence in its contemporary art.One does, in a current show of seven Senegalese artists at the Montpelier Cultural Arts Center. But the more successful of these artists use elements of what can be interpreted as European style in order to deal with deeper concerns. When style itself comes more to the fore, as it does with other artists here, the work comes off as less essential and more superficial.

They're angry in Severna Park. Parents are panicked, convinced that the school board has with one quick move gutted the cultural arts programs for future middle school pupils. The board endorsed a plan this month to add an extra period of reading instruction in Anne Arundel County middle schools. The superintendent's budget seeks money for extra reading teachers. The push is the school district's answer to reading scores that have been plummeting as pupils progress from fifth grade to eighth grade.

Center Stage has been awarded the largest operating grant in its 30-year history -- $1.4 million from the Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund, according to Irene Lewis, the theater's artistic director. The grant is to be announced during a news conference at the downtown theater this morning.The five-year grant targets the development of younger and more diversified audiences. It is one of 11 awards totaling $9 million being presented to nonprofit theaters across the country, according to Holly Sidford, the fund's program director.