Article: Getting and Keeping Your Little One’s Attention
If your preschooler's short attention span makes arts-related outings tricky, read on for four expert tips that will prevent meltdowns and make for an easy and enjoyable excursion
Family, Art Venues

Arts Quotes: Norman Rosenthal
"Collecting art is like a drug. It is both intensely pleasurable and highly addictive."
Europe, Art Venues

Arts Quotes: Dale Carnegie
"Learning is an active process. We learn by doing."
Education, Art Venues

Arts Quotes: Anonymous
"Any museum can invite you to look. A great one changes the way you see."
Art Venues, Education

Tipsheet: Art Critiques Made Easy
One-word answers and grunts don't count as student critiques of art. How to foster interesting and authentic discussion in the classroom
Education, Young Artists, Visual Arts, Art Venues

Arts Quotes: Joan Mondale
"The arts are the signature of a nation."
Art Venues, Education, America

Arts Days: October 21, 1959: The Wright Man for the Job
When Solomon Guggenheim’s personal advisor approached architect Frank Lloyd Wright to design a building to house Guggenheim’s art collection, he told Wright, “I need a fighter, a lover of space, an originator, a tester, and a wise man.” Wright was indeed the right man. It took 16 years to complete, but the result is one of New York’s signature buildings, an edifice as iconoclastic as the art it contains.

Wright rejected buildings’ traditional cubical shape; instead, he chose to mimic smooth, round forms of nature. The interior is no less revolutionary. Visitors ride elevators to the top floor, and from there descend a sloping ramp that lets viewers experience the artwork as one continuous series.
Architecture, Visual Arts, Innovators & Pioneers, Art Venues

Arts Days: October 22, 1883: For the Love of Music
Over a century ago, the Metropolitan Opera was housed in a building on Broadway at 39th Street in New York City. It was here that the first performance occurred—namely Faust, by Charles Gounod. The only reason a performance was made possible was all thanks to a group of wealthy New Yorkers with a passion for opera.

After being unable to purchase box seats for performances at the Academy of Music, they banded together to underwrite a brand new opera house. Initially, performers sang in Italian, later in German; fortunately, they agreed to stage operas in the works’ original languages during the 1895–96 season. Imagine hearing Aida in German! Today, the Metropolitan Opera presents over 200 performances each season, culled from a large repertoire, featuring the world’s most renowned vocal talents.
Art Venues, Opera, America

Arts Days: October 20, 1973: Architecture as Art
Think of a few of the world’s most iconic structures. What comes to mind? Probably buildings like the Eiffel Tower, the Empire State Building, and Big Ben. On this day in 1973, the Sydney Opera House was added to the list. As a symbol of Australia itself, the building resembles a huge white boat at full sail docked at the edge of the bustling Sydney Harbor.

That, in fact, was the image Danish architect Jorn Utzon had in mind when conceiving the design for this building that hosts a wide array of performing arts events, not just opera. Interestingly, the original “sail/roof” was beyond engineering capabilities at the time, and it took Utzon two years to solve design issues affecting the series of shell-shaped pieces.
Opera, Architecture, Art Venues

Arts Days: October 19, 1985: Movies Come Home
Cold out? Feeling lazy? Or is a trip to the movie theater simply too costly? The Blockbuster video-rental chain solved these problems for movie lovers when it opened the doors to its first store on this day in 1985. All of a sudden, instead of going out to a theater and paying for tickets and popcorn, you could spend a lot less money and watch movies from the comfort of your home, even dressed in your jammies.

All you had to do was visit your neighborhood Blockbuster, browse through hundreds of movie titles, and pick out which films to bring home. You could find everything from obscure documentaries to first-run hits. Blockbuster stores were an instant success and started popping up everywhere. The chain launched a whole new market for the film industry and changed the rules of movie-watching forever.
Innovators & Pioneers, Movies & Movie Stars, Television, Art Venues

Arts Days: September 27, 1983: One Singular Sensation
There are 17 of them up on the bare stage—chorus dancers, known as “gypsies” in musical theater lingo. They audition, then wait, wait some more…most are sent home empty-handed. This trying experience was captured by a young dancer/choreographer (and former gypsy) named Michael Bennett. Bennett took the audition process and added a slew of talented singer/dancer hopefuls and a fabulous score by Marvin Hamlisch.

The show’s minimal sets and costumes kept the audience’s focus right where it should be: on the singing and the dancing as each character sings and shares his or her story about how they wound up at the audition. Sometimes funny, always moving, the show’s cinema-like staging includes jumps from one character to another, stage dissolves, and close-ups.
Broadway, Musicals, Art Venues, Theater

Arts Days: November 18, 1881: Come to the Cabaret
Today you think of these clubs as famous nightspots where celebrities like to hang out in Hollywood or New York. But back in Paris in the late 19th century, they were referred to as cabarets, and Le Chat Noir was perhaps the most legendary. Located in Paris’ fashionable, bohemian Montmartre neighborhood, Le Chat Noir, or “The Black Cat,” was envisioned by owner Rodolphe Salis as part nightclub, part salon.

Seated at crowded tables were well-known Parisian celebrities and their artist associates from around the world. On any given night, you could rub elbows with painter Pablo Picasso, composer Claude Debussy, or perhaps Jane Avril, the can-can dancer whom Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec immortalized in several paintings. They and countless others would talk, drink, flirt, and enjoy live performances. The party lasted until 1897, when the place closed up shop.
Art Venues, Europe, Popular Culture, Musicals

Arts Days: November 28, 1907: Movie Mogul
Purchasing a small nickelodeon in Haverhill, Massachusetts, near Boston, Louis B. Mayer—a Russian immigrant who started off in his family’s scrap-metal business—was on a quest to reach the top of the Hollywood heap. That’s right: He’s the Mayer in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, or MGM, one of the most successful movie studios of all time.

On his way up the ladder, Mayer turned that single shabby, little theater into a successful chain of movie theaters all over New England. In subsequent years, after Mayer’s company had joined forces with Metro and Goldwyn Pictures, MGM pumped out hits like Ben Hur, Mutiny on the Bounty, and The Wizard of Oz. Mayer, who believed in the power of starting small, became one of Hollywood’s legendary movie executives.
Art Venues, Innovators & Pioneers, Movies & Movie Stars, America

Arts Days: July 23, 1926: Breaking the Sound Barrier
It only costs $60,000 to turn the page in the movie industry. That was the amount the Fox Film Corporation plunked down to buy the equipment to record sound onto film. Noises like bells ringing, car horns beeping, or birds squawking could be added with this kind of technology. This Movietone sound system created a sound track that matched the visual “track” of the film.

The first movie produced this way was in 1927. Though it was the first commercial film released with music and sound effects (like a trolley car rumbling by) to accompany the action, the actors spoke just a few words, none of them synchronized to the soundtrack. The technology that supported that kind of synchronization would come later.
Movies & Movie Stars, History, Art Venues

Arts Days: July 30, 1935: A Soft Spot for Writers
The Penguin publishing house made classic literary works available to a larger audience at an affordable price by publishing paperback editions—not heavy hardcover books that had been the norm up until then.

Allen Lane, Penguin’s founder, had been hunting for something to read at the train station, but had only found magazines and soft-cover romance novels. Among the first authors printed were Agatha Christie and Ernest Hemingway.

The books, a few cents each in today’s dollars, were color-coded: fiction works had an orange cover, crime a green one, and so on. And how’s this for success? That first year, some three million paperback books were sold.
Literature, Art Venues, Poetry

Arts Days: July 13, 1923: A Sign of the Times
It’s a lot more than just a series of letters stuck on a hill in Los Angeles. The Hollywood sign has come to embody glamour, success, and drama since it was dedicated on this day in 1923.

When it was first put in place, it was a marketing tool for a real estate project Los Angeles Times publisher Harry Chandler had invested in. At this time, the sign actually said “Hollywoodland,” the name of the housing development. At night, the letters’ 4,000 light bulbs blinked on and off, spelling out the words “Holly,” “wood” and “land.”

While the development didn’t survive the Great Depression with the “H” falling off due to neglect, the city of Los Angeles bought the sign, fixed the “H” and removed the “land.” The resulting sign represents magic and movies.
Movies & Movie Stars, Art Venues, Geography

Arts Days: January 18, 1985: Sun Screened!
The Sundance Film Festival is the largest cinema festival in the United States, established to showcase American-made films and attract filmmakers to the state of Utah.

The first festival was held in 1978, originally known as the Utah/US Film Festival. But thanks to the involvement of actor and Utah resident Robert Redford, as well as the strong, supportive response from Hollywood studios eager for a venue to celebrate their works, the festival was propelled into the national spotlight.

In 1985, the Sundance Institute took over management of the festival, changing its name to the Sundance Film Festival. Today this annual event is the premier showcase for new work by both American and international independent filmmakers.
Inventions, Art Venues, Movies & Movie Stars, Popular Culture

Arts Days: January 16, 1938: All Jazzed Up
Though jazz music originated in the early 1900s, it took several decades until it was commonly recognized as a serious musical form.

While there’s no way of putting an exact date on when this happened, jazz music did make history on this day in 1938. The prominent New York City music venue Carnegie Hall hosted its first jazz concert, performed by the Benny Goodman Orchestra. Guest artists included Count Basie and members of the Basie and Duke Ellington orchestras.

Initially, Goodman was hesitant to play at Carnegie Hall fearing mainstream audiences were not ready to accept jazz music. He was happy to be proven wrong by the 2,760 sold-out seats.
Art Venues, Innovators & Pioneers, Music Legends, Jazz

Arts Days: June 29, 1613: Global Warming
Before it went up in smoke, most of Shakespeare’s plays debuted at The Globe located just outside London’s city limits. The building, erected in 1599 by Shakespeare’s theater company, is probably the best known theater of the Elizabethan era.

With room for about 3,000 people, the Globe had a stage at one end and a couple of areas for viewing the plays: covered balconies with seats for the wealthy, and bare ground for those who didn’t have much money but were willing to stand up for the duration of the show (the standing folks were called “groundlings”).

The Globe had its own motto: “The whole world is a playhouse,” which might sound a little bit familiar. That’s probably because Shakespeare adapted this motto for As You Like It when he wrote the lines, “All the world’s a stage/And all the men and women merely players.”
Art Venues, Shakespeare, Theater, Playwrights & Plays

Arts Days: June 06, 1933: In a Parking Lot Near You
When Richard Hollingshead got the notion to create an outdoor theater showing films you could watch from your car, he experimented with cars and equipment in his New Jersey driveway.

First, he mounted a projector on the hood of a car and hung up a screen. Then, Hollingshead rearranged cars until he figured out a way everybody could see from their front or back seats. On this night, cars streamed into the world’s first drive-in to see a movie called Wife Beware. Each car was charged 25 cents for admission. In addition, each rider paid a quarter. Even though Hollingshead placed large speakers near the screen, movie goers parked in the back rows couldn’t hear well.

Still, the idea caught on and drive-ins began popping up everywhere, with 5,000 or so operating at the peak of the craze.
Art Venues, Movies & Movie Stars, Popular Culture, Innovators & Pioneers

Arts Days: June 02, 1912: A Movie First!
The movie industry’s first major studio was officially formed on this day when several smaller studios merged. A couple of years after it opened, Universal Studios bought a piece of land in the San Fernando Valley and began churning out movies (the first full length feature was 1913’s Traffic in Souls).

The hits starting racking up for Universal: scary stuff like Dracula and The Hunchback of Notre Dame helped the studio keep its momentum going as more studios were forming during Hollywood’s Golden Age.

Universal has acquired and been acquired by numerous other companies over its colorful history, but it’s still the studio responsible for many wildly successful films, from Jaws to E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial to Back to the Future.
America, Movies & Movie Stars, Art Venues

Arts Days: May 05, 1891: The Music House That Steel Built
The stages (there are three now) of Carnegie Hall, the preeminent concert hall in the U.S., have been graced by everyone from jazz singer Ella Fitzgerald and violinist Isaac Stern, to opera star Luciano Pavarotti and pianist Fats Waller.

In the late 19th century, the landmark building on New York’s Upper West Side, then known simply as “Music Hall,” was funded by steel magnate and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie and designed by architect William Burnet Tuthill. On this opening night, two important figures in classical music—conductor Walter Damrosch and composer Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky—were featured.

It would have been hard to imagine on this festive occasion that only 75 years later, Carnegie Hall would be slated for demolition. Fortunately, Stern and others persuaded the city to purchase the building and Carnegie Hall was saved. Renovations in the 1980s prompted critics to complain that the Hall’s famous acoustics were harmed, but others said that the renovations have improved the sound by muffling street noise.
Art Venues, Music Legends, Music, Orchestra

Arts Days: May 08, 1914: Lights, Camera, Action!
Back in 1912, an entrepreneur named Adolph Zukor thought he could bring more movies to the middle class by contracting a group of actors to make a fixed number of movies every year. So he started the Famous Players Film Company. Famous Players partnered with a startup called Paramount Pictures Corporation to distribute its films to theaters; a few years later, it officially merged with Paramount.

Under Zukor’s leadership, Paramount owned all the components of the movie-making apparatus. It employed superstars of the day, like Mary Pickford and Rudolph Valentino, and acquired film production studios. Paramount even bought hundreds of movie houses around the country where the finished movies would be shown.

The company has been through many mergers since those early days, and has once or twice come close to closing up shop, such as during the Great Depression. Today, however, the company is still growing strong.
America, Movies & Movie Stars, Jobs in the Arts, Art Venues

Video: The Kennedy Center Concert Hall
Conductor Emil de Cou leads an expedition to the Kennedy Center's grand Concert Hall
Art Venues, Music, Orchestra, Science

Video Series: The Kennedy Center Education Department
Learn about the activities and programs of the Education Department of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.
Education, Family, Art Venues