The Palm Beach Cultural Council is holding a series of Artist Conversations beginning tonight and running over the next two weeks.
The gatherings, which are scheduled for four cities, are designed to gather input from the artist community in order to guide the council. Rena Blades, the council’s chief executive officer, will lead the discussions.
Conversations are set for:
· Gardens Branch Library, 11303 Campus Drive, Palm Beach Gardens, 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. today.
· Offioce Depot corporate headquarters, 6800 N. Military Trail, Boca Raton, 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 3.
· Palm Beach Post, 2751 S. Dixie Highway, West Palm Beach. 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 16.
· Dolly Hand Cultural Arts Center, 1977 S.W. College Drive, Belle Glade, 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 17.
To RSVP, visit http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/ArtistConversationsRSVP. For more information, call 561-471-2901.
George Bolge, who recently retired as executive director of the Boca Raton Museum of Art, has been named chief executive officer of the Museum of Florida Art in DeLand.
Bolge served as director of the Boca museum for 16 years, and was critical in winning funding for the museum’s new Mizner Park home, which opened in 2001. Before coming to Boca, Bolge was director for 18 years of the Museum of Art Fort Lauderdale, where he also led the effort for a new building to house the museum’s collections.
The Museum of Florida Art was founded 60 years ago as the DeLand Children’s Museum before the focus was switched to visual art. The DeLand Museum of Art became the Museum of Florida Art in 2006 to better acknowledge the fact that the organization had been working to promote Florida artists and their works since the 1990s.
Bolge holds a master’s degree from New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts, where he majored in Greek and Roman archaeology and minored in museum studies. He is a Vietnam War veteran and a fellow of the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
He begins his new job in DeLand in November, museum officials said. Steven Maklansky, formerly the director of the Brevard Art Museum in Melbourne, took over as the Boca museum’s director in July.
Edward Villella, Miami City Ballet’s founding artistic director, will be retiring in two years from the ballet company he started more than 25 years ago.
The company recently returned from a three-week tour in Paris where they received enthusiastic standing ovations, one lasting 10 full minutes. Villella, who turned 75 on Oct. 1, announced his decision to leave in 2013 before a private meeting of dancers and staff Sept. 22 and then in a meeting with the company’s Board of Trustees.
A former principal dancer with George Balanchine’s New York City Ballet, Villella made the Miami City Ballet into a South Florida cultural institution, taking it from a storefront on Miami Beach’s Lincoln Road in 1986 to critical acclaim in the United States and beyond.
The company has 45 dancers and a budget of $14.5 million. Villella has said he will pursue various dance-related projects.
Monday, the company announced that Nicholas T. Goldsborough has been named executive director of Miami City Ballet, replacing Pamela Gardiner, who becomes MCB’s executive vice president for executive affairs.
Goldsborough has been managing director of the Shakespeare Theatre Company of Washington, D.C., and executive director of the Music Center of Los Angeles County in California. As chief operating officer of C.W. Shaver in New York, he was instrumental in the renovation campaigns for Carnegie Hall ($60 million) and the Jewish Museum ($50 million).
Goldsborough, who begins work Nov. 14, has also served as deputy director of university development at UCLA and senior development officer at Harvard University.
The Florida Grand Opera’s general director, Robert Heuer, has announced that he will be stepping down in May 2013, at the close of the 2012-13 season.
Heuer, 66, has been with the company 34 years, and for the past 26 has been its chief executive officer. He is credited with being a key force in the 1994 merger of his Greater Miami Opera with the Opera Guild of Fort Lauderdale, creating Florida Grand Opera.
Under Heuer’s guidance, the company has presented three world premieres, including David Carlson’s Anna Karenina (2006), and three American premieres, including Rossini’s Bianca e Falliero (1819).
“I am so proud to have served as general director of this respected and renowned Level 1 company,” Heuer said Oct. 3 in a news release. “My good fortune is to have spent my entire life in the theater, bringing the world’s great operas to life for our tremendously appreciative audiences.”
The company’s first production of the 71st season, Federico Moreno Torroba’s zarzuela Luisa Fernanda, opens at 7 p.m. Nov. 12 at the Ziff Ballet Opera House, Miami. The eminent Spanish tenor/baritone Placido Domingo will sing the role of Vidal in the opera on Nov. 15 as part of a special gala celebration. – Compiled from ArtsPaper staff reports