The Henry Gets Rich--and Brown
The grant-funding welcome wagon paid an extravagant visit to incoming Henry Art Gallery head curator Elizabeth Brown (who took her post just last Monday) to announce a whopping $100,000 in funding from Americans for the Arts for the Henry's upcoming exhibit Better Living through Science: Contemporary Art and Human Genomics, scheduled for a February 2002 launch. The exhibition will explore the social, ethical, and economic implications of the Human Genome Project, and will combine original work commissioned from local and national artists with a significant civic-discourse component, comprising lectures and dialogues at various venues around town.
The news comes at the end of a somewhat turbulent year for the Henry, and provides a welcome re-appraisal of the organization's curatorial strengths. A public community meeting to introduce and discuss the exhibit is scheduled for Sunday, December 3 from 1-4 pm. Contact the Henry for more info. JAMIE HOOK
Stranger Personals
Are You My Neighbor?
The Mayor's Arts Initiative 2000 continues to demonstrate its limited understanding of "art" as it sponsors a two-day forum titled "Empowering Communities through the Arts." The theme is centered around linking artists to community concerns, including domestic abuse, incarceration, "empowerment and pride in cultural or geographic communities," and urban revitalization. The problem is, really good artists traditionally create their own communities and commentary, outside the rhetoric of social commentary. What the Mayor's Arts Initiative is really doing is encouraging propaganda. What's more, they're charging $10 a person for a box lunch--and how neighborly is that? The forum occurs October 13 and 14 at the Henry Art Gallery Auditorium, 8:30 am-5 pm. TRACI VOGEL
Youth and Police Forum
Using techniques created by Brazilian theater director Augusto Boal, Marc Weinblatt (from the Mandala Center for Awareness, Transformation, and Action) will facilitate a series of improvisations based on real-life situations involving youth and police. The technique, which attempts to deconstruct components of a situation and--if possible--move toward common ground, can have amazing results. Anyone interested should go to the Rainier Room at Seattle Center, (just north of KeyArena) on Saturday, September 30 at 7 pm. For more information, call Paul Figueroa of the Village Project at 206-650-5364 or paul@thevillageproject.org.
BRET FETZER
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