On its first tour in the Southeast, one of the nation's hottest new musical groups, Three Mo' Tenors, is scheduled for its premiere on February 18, 2002. The trio headlines the fourth season of “Tallahassee: Seven Days of Opening Nights,” Florida State University's community festival of the arts.
The Festival Schedule
Friday, February 15
- Art Treasures from the Ringling and Appleton Museums plus a Celebration of the Sculpture of FSU Professor Emeritus Ralph Hurst
- Ronald K. Brown's Dance Company, Evidence
Saturday, February 16
-
Shakespeare's “The Tempest,” staged by The Aquila Theatre
Company
Monday, February 18
Wednesday, February 20
Friday, February 22
Saturday, February 23
- The family-oriented Saturday Matinee of the Arts
- Violinist Joshua Bell and the University Symphony Orchestra
Sunday, February 24
- Special screening of "Gettysburg," with writer/director Ron Maxwell
Three Mo' Tenors—three classically trained African-American tenors with an incredible range of performance and a unique style of showmanship—have experienced a meteoric rise to prominence. Since 2000 they have been wowing audiences with critically acclaimed Broadway shows and an East Coast tour that led to their own PBS Great Performances special and CD. Tickets for this program are available through Ticketmaster outlets and the Tallahassee/Leon County Civic Center, 800-322-3602 or 850-222-0400. For further information, call 850-644-1000 or visit the festival's Web site, www.fsu.edu/~artsfest.
Tickets for all other festival performances are on sale through the FSU Fine Arts Ticket Office, 850-644-6500. A ticket order form is available at the festival Web site. — F.C.
Museum Lore 101
They're the quiet repositories of all that best defines civilization, and the people in charge of them are privileged caretakers indeed.
In America alone, more than 20,000 museums collect, identify, conserve and promote art, music, science, technology, history and a world of wonderful arcana that often defies neat classification but which defines culture as perhaps no other institution can. This immense treasure requires a corps of highly trained professionals to properly assay and protect its worth.
FSU is now into its fifth—and busiest—year as a training ground for museum professionals. The young Museum Studies Program, within the School of Visual Arts and Dance, now finds itself in the envied position of being the only program of its kind to offer students hands-on experience with what is easily one of the largest museum complexes directly tied to a university anywhere in the country. Susan Baldino directs the program.
“We're able now to take advantage of some truly extraordinary opportunities,” says Baldino. “Students now coming into the program are getting a rare treat.”
Florida State now either owns outright or has controlling authority over Florida collections valued at well over a half billion dollars. In 1997, FSU and Central Florida Community College acquired the Appleton Museum of Art in Ocala, a $20 million collection ranging from rare Pre-Columbian art to 19th Century African sculpture. In 2000, the Florida Legislature transferred to FSU authority over the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota. The museum, valued at up to $750 million, is home to one of the largest collections of Baroque paintings in the world. Such holdings complement campus collections housed in the university's Museum of Fine Arts.
What sets FSU's museum studies program apart, says Baldino—other than its wealth of at-hand collections—is what it offers a wide variety of students. Graduate students in 11 disciplines, ranging from anthropology to information studies, can earn certificates that qualify them for management, curatorial, public relations, financial and other career options linked to the diversified museum profession.
“This training is a superb complement to graduate degrees in a growing number of fields with museum components,” she said.
Last fall, students took advantage of a two-day symposium led by some of Florida's top conservators who demonstrated a range of new and traditional techniques used to identify and preserve artworks. This spring, Stephen Weil, noted emeritus senior scholar from the Smithsonian Institute's Center for Education and Museum Studies, is slated to visit the program as guest lecturer.
For more information about the program, visit http:// www.museumstudies.fsu.edu
— F.S.
Dodd Art
One of FSU's most revered buildings, Dodd Hall, now has another way to attract campus visitors. Last summer, this exquisite mural by Artemis Skevakis Jegart Housewright ('49, '53) was installed in the atrium. The painting, which depicts the university and its locale, is a gift from the classes of '49 and '50. The mural is scheduled to be officially dedicated on April 12, during the university's emeritus alumni society weekend. — F.S.
| 
