The Beck Center for the Arts is one of the area’s largest cultural and performing arts organizations and the only institution of its kind on Cleveland’s Westside.  Each year we provide professional theater performances and high-quality arts education for tens of thousands of patrons in Northeast Ohio.

The question "Am I possible?" is the beating heart of Get Rid of Yourself, and it echoes throughout Bernadette Corporation's existence on the borders of fashion and art.  The group is influenced by Vivienne Westwood, Malcolm McLaren, and Jean-Luc Godard. They are also interested in new immigrant cultures surrounding their loft "headquarters" on the Bowery in New York City. Bernadette Corporation's interventionist projects function as a critique of our global culture, which constructs identity through consumption and branding.

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Learn how the arts can change everything...from an individual to a nation!  Young Audiences invites you to hear two dynamic and engaging speakers on Friday, April 27th:

	Sir Ken Robinson, a senior advisor for education policy at the Getty Foundation in Los Angeles and expert in the development of creativity,education and the economy. 8:30 a.m., the Hyatt Regency Cleveland at the Arcade.   FREE.
	Aaron Dworkin , accomplished violinist and the founder of The Sphinx Organization, which works to overcome the cultural stereotype of classical music, and to encourage Black and Latino participation in the field.  12:00 p.m., Jacobs Field Terrace Club.  The cost is $25 and includes lunch. Registration required.

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The Asian art collection at the Cleveland Museum of Art may be in storage, but this past Saturday, April 7th, Clevelanders had an exciting opportunity to learn about ancient and contemporary Chinese Art and a leading scholar's recent work in that area through the eighteenth annual Harvey Buchanan Lecture in Art History and the Humanities.

I am in DC for the next while and thought I would share with NEO the latest smattering (LOL pun inteneded) of news re: birds and bats and blades of DOOM!

DOOM DOOM DOOOOooOOOooom I say!!!  

It is easy to see why this might be difficult from onboard a barge. It must have been an amazing dance out there in the southwest where there are the massive farms Jeff pictured here on realneo.

Easter rolls around and you start mixing up heavy duty reactive synthetic dyes using household chemistry like viniger.   Safe enough for Paas yet strong enough to stain my counter.   Where's a toxicologist when you need one?

 Many of the world's brightest cryptographers are codebreaking as we speak, in dark labs all over.  The DaVinci Code is the perplexing puzzle puzzling people like the Pope.  I have some hardcore thoughts around which we All need to postulate and ponder.  World's intellectuals Unite! 

My idea to Crack that Code is to simply state the following Six Sentences.  Listen up Y'all!

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"Absence as Presence: Exploring a Fundamental Representational Mode in Chinese art and Visual Culture"
Wu Hung, distinguished professor of art history, University of Chicago, and associate curator, Smart Gallery, presents the 18th annual Harvey Buchanan Lecture in Art History and the Humanities in the CMA lecture hall. Free and open to the public.  Sponsored by the Department of Art History and Art, Case Western Reserve University.

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TRUE ART GALLERY presents Michaelle Marshall, Jeanetta Ho and Laurel Herbold, April 6 – 30

OPENING RECEPTION, FRIDAY, APRIL 6, 2007, 6-10 P.M.

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This is what’s wrong with how Cleveland and the County run their “business”. 

Claude Monet. Poplars, Pink Effect, 1891
36 7/8 x 29 1/8, Private Collection

Wednesday night I attended a lecture at the Cleveland Museum of Art, part of the Monet Lecture Series that accompanies the exhibition Monet in Normandy. So far I have attend all but the first in this eight lecture series. I found the previous lectures all to be very entertaining and enlightening. I feel I know a lot about Monet now -- I read the exhibition catalog and gallery labels and I have listened to the audio tour, but I am finding that Claude Monet is a truly fascinating figure and it seems there is always something more to learn about him. Paul Tucker is a  professor at the University of Massachusetts and a renowned scholar on Monet and Impressionist painting. His lecture was titled "Monet, Modernism, Normandy, and La France" -- a title I believe was meant to cover all the bases. What I found most interesting about Professor Tucker's hour long lecture was his insights on some of Monet's late works that become narrow and vertically oriented (such as Poplars, Pink Effect 1891) and the role of religion in Monet's life and work. 

From Groundworks: "a must-see performance". I know my friend Marjorie Talalay is very big on this troup so I believe this must be a must see... I'll try to see... learn more at Cleveland Public Theater... check it out... press release below...

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I received an informative email this afternoon from Richard McDougald Enty, Planning Team Leader, Programming & Planning Department, Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority, about some of their Transit Oriented Development initiatives and vision. It is very exciting to see this as an active subject for discussion and planning here. I am a strong supporter of Transit Oriented Development and consider it the core foundation on which we should rebuild the City of Cleveland and surrounding suburbs.  Here is the vision from RTA:

This week's edition of Dee Perry's arts & culture television program Applause!, on WVIZ, features a segment on REALNEO... so I'd like to invite all the friends of realneo to join us for a screening party for the first broadcast of the program, Thusday, March 29, from 7:30 - 8:00 PM, at the great A.J. Rocco's Cafe, at 816 Huron Road, by East 9th Street. As a special treat, I was pleased to learn that A.J. Rocco's had already planned a very cool and complimentary event for that evening - Cleveland City Councilman Joe Cimperman will be the guest bartender from 6-8 PM.

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There are not many opportunities to see African art in Cleveland -- especially while the Cleveland Museum of Art is under renovation. Fortunately, there are some generous collectors with outstanding African collections in Cleveland. Art: Trilogy, Anonymity, and Eclecticism, 100 pieces of African Art and African American Art is an exhibition going on now through May 15th 2007 at the Cleveland Public Library, Main Library Building, 2nd Floor Exhibit Corridor, which taps into the collectors' and creators' spirits.

The Church at Varengeville, Morning Effect is the most powerful work Monet created while on a painting campaign in Varengeville in 1882. The church of Saint-Valery is a Romanesque medieval church, built in the 12th-century, perched dramatically near the edge of  a towering cliff. It has long been a mariners' church and many generations of local fisherman are buried in the cemetery.

Carl Topilow conducts works by Dvorak and Stravinsky, with cellist Chia-Ling Chen. Don't miss hearing some of the best young musicians in the United States, many of whom will soon be playing with the world's great symphonies. Free, tickets will be distributed 30 minutes before the concert.

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Stephen Marley (son of reggae legend Bob Marley) play the House of Blues.
Visit Stephen Marley's website to hear his music and learn more.

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Majorie Williams, Director of Education, The Cleveland Museum of Art, lectures at the CMA as part of the Monet Lectures series accompanying the exhibition "Monet in Normandy". This lecture is free, open to the public and in the Recital Hall.

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