This season at the Chap

From Glenn Miller to Second City, season has diversity, depth

SEPTEMBER 9, 2010 9:04 p.m. (0)

Setting the season lineup for the Chapman Cultural Center’s CenterStage is a balancing act.

The schedule needs to have some crowd favorites that are sure to be slam dunks at the box office and acts that push the envelope and are outside the norm for the Spartanburg arts community.

“We feel a strong obligation not only to give the community what it wants, but also give it things that are different,” said Steve Wong, marketing director for the Arts Partnership of Greater Spartanburg. “Part of our responsibility artistically is to broaden horizons.”  Continue reading...

 

Warhol is here

Exhibitions boost city's cultural possibilities

SEPTEMBER 27, 2010 1:53 p.m. (3)

For more information, go to www.uscupstate.edu/warhol.

Jane Nodine almost threw away the University of South Carolina Upstate’s chance at owning a collection of photographs by famous pop artist Andy Warhol.

Back in 2007, Nodine was cleaning papers off her desk when a letter with the Andy Warhol Foundation’s return address caught her attention.  Continue reading...

 

Flower power

Locally written play brings breast cancer awareness to stage

OCTOBER 21, 2010 12:54 p.m. (0)

Five women – each with their own flaws – would have never been brought together if it hadn’t been for Abigail Elizabeth Monroe Taylor.

But there they are together at a funeral home in Pigeon Forge, Tenn., to pay respects to their friend who has died of breast cancer.

Taylor, who changed her name from Polly Lou Clementine and got a job at Dollywood to start her road to stardom, sends the women off on an adventure that includes Elvis and others.  Continue reading...

 

History's his thing

Slave cabin expert to speak at lunch and learn

NOVEMBER 14, 2010 2:12 p.m. (0)

Slaves were marginalized in life and shortchanged by history, but their memory lives on in the dwellings they occupied.

“Lots of places spend inordinate amounts of money on preserving the big house on plantations,” said Joseph McGill, a program officer with the National Trust for Historic Preservation office in Charleston. “But it was the slaves who drove the economic engine of the plantation system and at many sites the places where slaves lived are rapidly vanishing.”

Southerners have a love affair with the idea of plantations; moonlight and magnolias is an easy sell for tourists visiting one of the many plantation homes converted into bed and breakfast inns across the South.  Continue reading...

 

"Life is short, Art endures."

Chapman Cultural Center makes plans for its next phase of growing here

FEBRUARY 3, 2011 3:48 p.m. (0)

After a perfect storm of rising costs associated with the opening of the Chapman Center and flat revenues due to the recession, the Arts Partnership of Greater Spartanburg is back on track in its fund raising efforts.

H. Perry Mixter, outgoing director of the partnership, said, “It wasn’t so much that fundraising slipped (that income was fairly steady) but that our expenses had jumped considerably (in 2009 through 2010) due to the opening of Chapman. We knew this was coming.”

Mixter said the partnership’s income from donations has remained steady at about $800,000 a year while expenses jumped sharply to around $1.2 million.  Continue reading...

 

Science Center 2.0

New interactive exhibits first in four years for center

JANUARY 12, 2012 12:22 p.m. (0)

Science is a subject that should be experienced.

That’s what makes the Spartanburg Science Center’s new exhibits so exciting to the organization’s executive director John Green.

The Science Center is showcasing 14 new exhibits it received from Discovery Place in Charlotte during an open house Saturday. The old exhibits were informative, but not interactive, Green said.  Continue reading...