New Harmonies Exhibit Comes to Goldsboro
 New Harmonies: Celebrating American Roots Music, an exhibit hosted by the Arts Council of Wayne County and presented in collaboration with the Smithsonian Institution opens on Saturday, August 7. Festivities begin at 4:00 p.m. with a “guitar-string-cutting” and continue until 8:00 p.m. with docent-guided tours of the exhibit and live music outdoors. Performers include A Drummer’s World Drum Line, Samantha Casey & the Bluegrass Jam, Bluesman George Higgs, and the Donald Underwood Thompson Band. Senator David Rouzer of the North Carolina General Assembly will welcome the exhibit with opening remarks. The exhibit is free and open to the public and will remain on display at in Goldsboro until September 18. Read more.
Fred Chappell to Receive Caldwell Award
The trustees of the North Carolina Humanities Council have chosen North Carolina author and educator Fred Chappell as the recipient of the 2010 John Tyler Caldwell Award for the Humanities, the state’s most prestigious public humanities honor. The award ceremony is scheduled for Friday, October 8, at 7:00 p.m. at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro’s School of Music Recital Hall. The event is free and open to the public.
Chappell, born in Canton, NC, earned graduate and undergraduate degrees at Duke University and for forty years taught at UNCG, where he helped establish the M.F.A. Writing Program. In 1999 UNCG established the Fred Chappell Creative Writing Fellowship. Author of over two dozen books of poetry, fiction, and criticism, Chappell was the Poet Laureate of North Carolina from 1997-2002 and a North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame inductee in 2006. Photo courtesy UNCG Communications. Read more.
Humanities Council Invests $58,950 in Eight Cultural Projects Statewide
During the June 2010 grant cycle, the North Carolina Humanities Council awarded $58,950 in grants for public humanities projects. All funded programs are free and open to the public. Awards included:
$10,000 to the Ashe County Arts County and Ashe County Public Library for “On the Same Page Literary Festival”
$9,430 to the Haliwa-Saponi Indian Tribe for “Haliwa Indian School Documentation Project, Phase II”
$8,830 to the Carolina Mountains Literary Festival Association for “Coming Home: The Fifth Annual Carolina Mountains Literary Festival”
$7,690 to Wake Forest University/Z. Smith Reynolds Library for “Single Threads Unbraided: A Celebration of the Work of A.R. Ammons”
$7,000 to Tri-Community College for “Mountain Work: A Social Commentary”
$6,000 to Wayne County Reads for “A Country, A People”
$5,000 to the Community Empowerment Fund for “Micro-finance Narratives in Durham, NC”
$5,000 to the Southern Documentary Fund for “Landscapes of the Heart: The Elizabeth Spencer Story”
Details here.
Elizabeth City Hosts New Harmonies Exhibit
Pasquotank County in Northeastern NC was the birthplace of bebop jazz giant Max Roach. From June 19-August 1 it becomes home to New Harmonies: Celebrating American Roots Music, a Smithsonian Institution exhibition hosted by Elizabeth City’s Museum of the Albemarle and presented in collaboration with the North Carolina Humanities Council. Read more.
Max Roach, 1947. Photo by William P. Gottlieb.Courtesy Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Division.
New Harmonies Opens in Warrenton
 On May 1 Warrenton officially opened the New Harmonies: Celebrating American Roots Music at the Warren County Memorial Library to a crowd of about 100 throughout the day, including federal, state, and local elected officials. Speakers included Humanities Council Executive Director Shelley Crisp, Valeria Lee, co-founder of WVSP 90.9 FM, and folklorist Mike Taylor, who has been conducting fieldwork about the musicians of Warren County. Between speakers, the audience enjoyed bluegrass by Alan Reid and Friends, a folk performance by Mandolin Orange, blues by Joe “B” Cutchins, with a rousing closing from the Bullock Family Gospel Singers. All are artists local to Warren County. Pictured above:
Angela Witherspoon enjoys the New Harmonies listening station at the Warren County Memorial Library.
Shelley Crisp Featured in Feb. Issue of Humanities Magazine
Executive Director of the North Carolina Humanities Council, Shelley Crisp, speaks to the state of the humanities in North Carolina.
Read the full article.
NEH Chairman Visits North Carolina 
In a January event hosted by the North Carolina Humanities Council and the Levine Museum of the New South, National Endowment for the Humanities Chairman Jim Leach made a stop in Charlotte as part of his nationwide “Civility Tour.” Before the evening lecture, Humanities Council board members, staff, project directors, and scholars met with Leach to describe how Humanities Council initiatives encouraged civility by bridging cultures. Attending were Tom Hanchett; Neva Specht; Reneisha Black; Juliette Montauk-Smith; Carol Reinhardt; Emily Eply; Pamela Grundy; Magdalena Maiz-Peña ; and Chris White. Read more.
(Above) Leach listens to Carol Reinhardt, Program Coordinator at the Gaston County Public Library, as she describes the recent project "Standing On a Box: Lewis Hines' National Child Labor Committee Photography in Gaston County, 1908."
Dr. Townsend Ludington Elected Chair
Townsend Ludington, Boshamer Distinguished Professor Emeritus of American Studies and English at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, is the new board chair of the North Carolina Humanities Council. Read more.
|
