The Imagine Mural Festival is back, Whittenberg Scholarship recipients are announced, and the Cultural Pass is filling our summer with art!
How a kid from Smoketown who wanted to be a doctor became CEO of Fund for the Arts
If someone would have told me when I was a kid that I would have a career in the arts, I would have thought they were crazy. From the time I was in the first grade, there was no doubt in my mind that I was going to be a doctor.
I wanted to help people heal. In 1973, when I was in the first grade at Booker T. Washington Elementary School in Smoketown, just a block and a half from where I grew up on Jackson Street, (the school closed in 1975, but it was located in the building that is now Meyzeek Middle School) my teacher, Mrs. Dixon, told me that I could be anything that I wanted to be when I grew up. Her husband was a physician. One day she took me to his office to visit him. I was hooked. I was going to be a doctor.
Eleven years later after I graduated from Male High School, I enrolled in a six-year medical program in Boston. After one semester, I quickly figured out that I no longer wanted to be a doctor. However, little did I know at the time that four decades later I would accept a position where healing was part of the job description — not just healing of individuals, but for an entire city and region. ...
Click here or below to read the full story by Fund for the Arts President and CEO Andre Kimo Stone Guess in the Courier-Journal.
Fund for the Arts and the Imagine Greater Louisville 2025 Steering Committee in partnership with PBS, KET, The Muhammad Ali Center, and Louisville Metro Government are announcing the resurgence of the transformational Imagine Mural Festival, which had its inaugural year in 2019. The new Imagine Mural Festival will bring together collaborative teams of interdisciplinary artists to create multimedia art installations in the downtown Louisville blocks adjacent to the Muhammad Ali Center.
The festival will coincide with the premiere of PBS’s new Muhammad Ali mini-documentary series celebrating the life and legacy of Louisville’s own Muhammad Ali. The new four-part documentary is directed by acclaimed filmmaker Ken Burns and will air on KET on September 19-22, 8:00-10:00 p.m. ET.
The festival’s interdisciplinary murals will be created in the weeks leading up to the PBS premiere and will be unveiled at a festival event on September 18, 2021, part of an Ali Premiere Week series of events that will also include a free in-person screening event hosted by KET and the final national virtual conversation around the film.
The central theme of this year’s Imagine Mural Festival is We are the Home of the Greatest…, which celebrates the legacy of Muhammad Ali, the city from which he hailed, and the only place in the world that is charged with preserving and sharing his legacy with the world.
“Ali is known all over the world as the G.O.A.T., the Greatest of All Time, and our city has the honor to claim him as a native son,” said Andre Kimo Stone Guess, President & CEO of the Fund for the Arts. “With this festival, we are excited to celebrate Ali’s legacy while also spotlighting the continuum of greatness that emanates from his hometown to this day.”
“The arts are the soul of our city, and we are blessed with an amazing array of brilliant and compassionate artists who love their hometown – just as Muhammad Ali did,” said Mayor Fischer. “I look forward to seeing the fruits of this effort to connect The Greatest with the greatness of our city’s diverse artists and creatives.”
Jeanie Kahnke, Senior Director of Public Relations and External Affairs for the Muhammad Ali Center said, “We are pleased to partner with Fund for the Arts, PBS, KET, and Louisville Metro Government to bring this festival to life. This is a perfect opportunity to share the six core principles that Muhammad embraced throughout his life and to celebrate his local and worldwide impact through art right here in his hometown.”
Thanks to our partners for making the Imagine Mural Festival possible.
Congratulations to this year's Whittenberg Scholarship recipients!
The William Tolbert Whittenberg Scholarship for Performing Arts Excellence awards young artists up to $10,000 to pursue advanced study in the performing arts. Applicants eligible for the scholarship must be from the Greater Louisville region, between the ages of 16 and 22, and plan to pursue a professional career in performing arts. Recipients of the 2021 Whittenberg Scholarship have now been announced. Congratulations to the following recipients!
First Prize - Torinae Norman, Manhattan School of Music, Musical Theatre
Second Prize - Andrew Tran, University of Kentucky, Vocal Music
Second Prize - Brooklyn Durs, DePaul University, Theatre
Second Prize - Kaylee Strange, Arizona State University, Dance
Second Prize - Kaylynn Li, Various, Music Trials, Violin
Second Prize - Sophia "Sofi" Pascua, Northwestern University, Musical Theatre
Second Prize - William French, Morehead State University, Trumpet
Honorable Mention, Chase Dean, Vocal Music
Honorable Mention, Genesis Smith, Saxophone
Honorable Mention, Jasper Kasey, Flute
Honorable Mention, Caitlin Espinueva, Dance
Beginning August 4th, the Fund for the Arts will hold after-hours appointments every Wednesday from 5:30 - 6:30 pm. Two 30-minute time slots will be available each week for a meeting with President & CEO Andre Kimo Stone Guess or another member of the Fund for the Arts staff. Please fill out the formhere or at the link below to let us know about your interest in meeting with us during our after-hours appointments. Someone will be in touch with you promptly about the next available timeslot.
Audience Magazine publisher, G. Douglas Dreisbach, caught up with Andre Kimo Stone Guess to learn more about his background, his interest in the arts and the community, and what he is excited about for the future of Fund for the Arts.
G. Douglas Dreisbach: How does the arts community in Louisville compare to some of the other places like New York or Pittsburgh?
Andre Kimo Stone Guess: Louisville's art footprint is disproportionate to the size of the city, disproportionately large. Louisville, for the longest time, had the largest per capita giving in the arts than any other city in the country. The art community and the arts organizations, because of organizations like Fund for the Arts historically have sort of banded together to move the arts forward. It hasn't always been as inclusive as it could be, which is why they went through the work in 2017, and now of course, because of all the things that have gone on recently, there's much more focus on it.
Join the Adventure! Cultural Pass is fun for the entire family
The 2021 Cultural Pass offers families in Greater Louisville with children ages 0-21 access to participate in arts and cultural activities provided by 51 venues, free of charge. This year's Summer Cultural Pass is currently available until August 8!
The Cultural Pass is designed to inspire, explore, and discover new experiences. After going virtual last year, this year's Cultural Pass offers both virtual and in-person experiences so that every family can participate in a way that works for them!
Pictured above from top to bottom: Arts Alliance of Southern Indiana, Louisville Visual Art, Waterfront Botanical Gardens, Crane House, Little Loomhouse
Sponsored by the Kentucky Arts Council, the state arts agency, supports the Fund for the Arts with state tax dollars and federal funding from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Fund for the Arts | 623 W Main Street | Louisville, KY 40220
