Hermitage Announces a Full Slate of January and February Programs for the New Year Throughout Sarasota County

The Hermitage Artist Retreat will start the New Year with a full slate of early 2022 programs featuring new and returning Hermitage Fellows, from Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Paula Vogel and Beyonce collaborator and soloing band member Lady Jess to interdisciplinary artist Ni’Ja Whitson. The program lineup – presented at outdoor venues throughout Sarasota County including the Hermitage Beach and Selby Gardens Downtown – also includes “Say Their Names,” a partnership with Manasota ASALH to present selections from composer-saxophonist Matthew Evan Taylor, inspired by the fight against anti-Black racism.

These new programs add to the Hermitage’s previously announced January programs with Tony Award-winning Broadway star Gavin Creel on January 14th and Pulitzer Prize-winning musical theater playwright-composer Michael R. Jackson on January 21st.

“We are thrilled to launch 2022 with an exciting slate of programming that introduces our Gulf Coast community to some of the most extraordinary talents and performers working today,” said Hermitage Artistic Director and CEO Andy Sandberg. “We are grateful to continue our collaboration with Selby Gardens to present a new program with Lady Jess, a brilliant violinist who has frequently shared the stage with Beyoncé, as well as returning Hermitage Fellow Michael R. Jackson, who won the Pulitzer Prize last year for his musical A Strange Loop. We’re also looking forward to new partnerships with Manasota ASALH (featuring Matthew Evan Taylor) and the Conservation Foundation of the Gulf Coast (featuring Ni’Ja Whitson), among other leading arts and cultural institutions in our region. Where else can audiences experience – in the span of a few weeks – works in progress from so many of the world’s greatest artists, alongside theater legends like Paula Vogel and Gavin Creel?!”

In addition, the Hermitage has announced that the January 14th public program on the Hermitage Beach with Gavin Creel will now be presented in partnership with all of the leading theaters in Sarasota County, exemplifying our community’s spirit of collaboration. Creel’s Hermitage residency will be sponsored by Charlie Huisking.

All of these outdoor programs are free and open to the public with a $5/person registration fee. Due to capacity limitations and social distancing, registration is required at HermitageArtistRetreat.org.

Friday, Jan 7 @ 5pm, “Journeys of Identity in Music” with Hermitage Fellows Amir ElSafar and Wang Lu (Live on the Hermitage Beach). Wang Lu’s Hermitage Residency is generously sponsored by Ina Schnell in memory of Susan Brainerd.

Friday, Jan 14 @ 5pm, “Walk on Through” with Hermitage Fellow & Tony Award Winner Gavin Creel (Live on the Hermitage Beach). Gavin Creel’s Hermitage Residency is generously sponsored by Charlie Huisking.

Friday, Jan 21 @ 5:30pm, Hermitage Sunsets @ Selby Gardens: “The Work,” with Hermitage Fellow & Pulitzer Prize Winner Michael R. Jackson (Live at Marie Selby Botanical Gardens)

Friday, Jan 28 @ 5pm, “Natural Inspiration,” with Hermitage Fellow Ni’Ja Whitson (Live on the Hermitage Beach). Ni’ja Whitson’s Hermitage Residency is generously sponsored by Ellen Berman and Roy Cohen.

Friday, Feb 11 @ 5pm, “Pen to Paper with Pulitzer Prize-Winning Playwright Paula Vogel,” with Hermitage Fellow Paula Vogel (Live at Booker High School)

Friday, Feb 18 @ 5:30pm, “Say Their Names,” with Hermitage Fellow Matthew Evan Taylor (Live on the Hermitage Beach

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Mar

Sun

“Impact: Contemporary Artists at the Hermitage Artist Retreat” @ Sarasota Art Museum

Tickets

Mar 10 @ 10:00 am – Jul 7 @ 5:00 pm

“Impact: Contemporary Artists at the Hermitage Artist Retreat”

Presented in partnership with Sarasota Art Museum

Sunday, March 10 – Sunday, July 7

Sarasota Art Museum (entrance at 1001 S. Tamiami Trail, Sarasota, FL 34236)

Click here for more information.

This exhibition will feature work from ten nationally and internationally renowned Hermitage alumni artists: Diana Al-Hadid, Sanford Biggers (2010 Hermitage Greenfield Prize winner), Chitra Ganesh, Todd Gray, Trenton Doyle Hancock (2013 Hermitage Greenfield Prize winner), Michelle Lopez, Ted Riederer, the late John Sims, Kukuli Velarde, and William Villalongo. A key factor these ten artists have in common is that over the past two decades, each has been a Fellow at the Hermitage Artist Retreat on Manasota Key — a unique experience that contributed to each of their creative processes in a variety of ways. Overseen by guest curator and former Hermitage Curatorial Council member Dan Cameron, Impact represents the first major exhibition in collaboration between the Hermitage and Sarasota Art Museum. The exhibit will feature work across a range of media, including sculpture, painting, installation, video, photography, printmaking, ceramics, textiles, and social practice. Sanford Biggers, a distinguished Hermitage alumnus and internationally renowned artist, is also now a member of the Hermitage’s National Curatorial Council and was a featured guest speaker at the 2023 Hermitage Greenfield Prize Dinner.

A longtime member of the Hermitage’s Curatorial Council, Dan Cameron is a curator of contemporary art who also writes about art, teaches and lectures about art, makes art, serves on art-related juries and boards, and advises both public and private collections. He has lived in Manhattan since 1979, although at times he has also been based in New Orleans and Long Beach. Throughout his 40-plus year career, Dan has steadfastly championed both the unexpected and the under-recognized. In 1982, he was the first American curator to organize a museum exhibition on LGBTQ art, and in 2008 he launched the Prospect New Orleans triennial in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Along the way, he has curated international biennials in Istanbul, Taipei, Ecuador, and Orange County, California, as well as retrospectives of such esteemed artists as Carolee Schneemann, Paul McCarthy, Peter Saul, William Kentridge, Faith Ringgold, David Wojnarowicz, Marcel Odenbach, Pierre et Gilles, Cildo Meireles, and Martin Wong. As part of the Getty Foundation’s Pacific Standard Time initiative in 2017, the Palm Springs Art Museum hosted Dan’s exhibition “Kinesthesia: Latin American Kinetic Art 1954-1969.” Dan’s core connection with art stems from its capacity to expand our collective awareness of ourselves, the world around us, and the way that humans invent ways to communicate essential values with one another. Whether in the cause of furthering social justice or challenging art history, Dan believes that the artist’s fundamental obligation to civilization is to push sensorial and perceptual engagement into new, fruitful realms of engagement. The curator’s role is to provide an appropriate platform and context for that expression, and to provide a public forum for viewers to more fully immerse themselves in the experience, and for the artists to engage in critical dialogue about the art and its meaning.

Hermitage Fellow Diana Al-Hadid is known for her practice that examines the historical frameworks and perspectives that continue to shape discourse on culture and materials today. With a practice spanning sculpture, wall reliefs, and works on paper, Al-Hadid weaves together enigmatic narratives that draw inspiration from both ancient and modern civilizations.

Sanford Biggers was the first recipient of the Hermitage Greenfield Prize in the discipline of Visual Art in 2010. His work is an interplay of narrative, perspective, and history that speaks to current social, political, and economic happenings while also examining the contexts that bore them. His diverse practice positions him as a collaborator with the past through explorations of often-overlooked cultural and political narratives from American history. Working with antique quilts that echo rumors of their use as signposts on the Underground Railroad, he engages these legends and contributes to this narrative by drawing and painting directly onto them.

Across a 20-year practice, Hermitage Fellow Chitra Ganesh has developed an expansive body of work rooted in drawing and painting, which has evolved to encompass animations, wall drawings, collages, computer generated imagery, video, and sculpture. Through studies in literature, semiotics, social theory, science fiction, and historical and mythic texts, Ganesh attempts to reconcile representations of femininity, sexuality, and power absent from the artistic and literary canons.

Hermitage Fellow Todd Gray works in photography, performance, and sculpture. Gray’s work is represented in numerous museum collections. He works between Los Angeles and Ghana, where he explores the diasporic dislocations and cultural connections which link Western hegemony with West Africa.

Trenton Doyle Hancock won the Hermitage Greenfield Prize in 2013. Influenced by the history of painting, especially Abstract Expressionism, he transforms traditionally formal decisions — such as the use of color, language, and pattern — into opportunities to create new characters, develop sub-plots, and convey symbolic meaning. Balancing moral dilemmas with wit and a musical sense of language and color, Hancock’s works create a painterly space of psychological dimensions. Trenton Doyle Hancock was the winner of the 2013 Hermitage Greenfield Prize for Visual Art.

Michelle Lopez is a Hermitage Fellow, interdisciplinary sculptor, and installation artist. As a builder, conceptualist, and manipulator of materials, Lopez inventively explores cultural phenomenon, stretching to their limits the industrial processes that craft consumerism in its many forms. Lopez examines collapsed political and social structures by inverting cultural tropes through the process of building, exploiting industrial materials to expose the hidden boundaries of embedded societal constructions.

A “one-time refugee from punk and sometime band member,” Hermitage Fellow Ted Riederer has armed himself with painting supplies, electric guitars, amplifiers, old LPs, record players, drum kits, hard disk recorders, photography equipment, a vinyl record lathe, and long-stemmed roses as he’s ambled artistically from the Americas to the Antipodes. His work has been shown nationally and internationally.

John Sims, a Detroit native and Hermitage Fellow, was an interdisciplinary conceptual artist who created multimedia projects spanning the areas of mathematics, art, text, performance, and political-media activism. His main projects were informed by the vocabulary of mathematical structure, the politics of sacred symbols and poetic reflections. As the former coordinator of mathematics at Ringling College of Art and Design in Sarasota, Florida, he designed a visual mathematics curriculum for artists and visual thinkers. John Sims died in 2022 at the age of 54.

Hermitage Fellow Kukuli Velerde left Peru as an adult, already aware of its racial, social, cultural and economic climate. Latin contemporary culture, its finest expression: family ties, and herself as result, are together the frame within which her work evolves. Velerde’s mediums include paining on aluminum plates and ceramic installations.

Hermitage Fellow William Villalongo’s work is concerned with stories and images of time and change in the arch of inhumanity to humanity that has marked the black experience shaping his subject and study as an artist. He often works in series where he looks for frameworks to make these concerns visible. A figure, a still life, a painting, a drawing or a sculpture are his vessels for information and sites to produce meaning.

Apr

Sun

“The Truth of the Night Sky: A Hermitage Collaboration” @ Sarasota Art Museum

Tickets

Apr 21 @ 10:00 am – Sep 29 @ 5:00 pm

“The Truth of the Night Sky: A Hermitage Collaboration”
featuring Hermitage Fellows Anne Patterson and Patrick Harlin

Presented in partnership with Sarasota Art Museum

Sunday April 21 to Sunday September 29

Sarasota Art Museum (entrance at 1001 S. Tamiami Trail, Sarasota, FL 34236)

Click here for more information.

The Truth of the Night Sky, a Hermitage collaboration, is the second exhibition of Hermitage alumni premiering at Sarasota Art Museum this spring – opening on April 21, 2024 and remaining on display through September 29, 2024. After meeting while in residence at the Hermitage Artist Retreat ten years ago and building on their friendship and collaboration, multidisciplinary visual artist Anne Patterson and composer / soundscape artist Patrick Harlin have joined forces to develop this one-of-a-kind immersive experience. Patterson, who is familiar to Sarasota audiences from previous exhibitions at The Ringling Museum and whose “Divine Pathways” is currently represented in New York at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, is widely celebrated for her grand environments that immerse the viewer and surround the senses. A distinguished Hermitage alumna with an impressive background in immersive exhibitions and theatrical design, Anne Patterson has frequently collaborated with musicians, including fellow Hermitage alum Patrick Harlin, to design mesmerizing environments. For this collaborative project, Patterson and Harlin are expanding upon Harlin’s original composition Earthrise (2022), an orchestral piece inspired by the eponymous photograph (1968) taken by Apollo 8 astronaut William Anders on humanity’s first-ever trip around the moon. The original composition by Patrick Harlin, who was also the very first recipient of the Hermitage Prize in Composition at the Aspen Music Festival, will play as visitors pass through the galleries. The exhibition will feature several works by Patterson, as well as a suspended tree and her signature satin ribbon installation work. With each step, visitors will travel imaginatively through space and time. Of their time at the Hermitage Artist Retreat, Patterson and Harlin are fond of saying that their experience was invaluable to their craft and their collaboration, allowing them to achieve new heights, find a unique environmental inspiration, and explore new possibilities in their work.

Hermitage alumna Anne Patterson is a multidisciplinary artist based in Brooklyn. She recently served as a juror for the 2023 Hermitage Greenfield Prize. Her body of work consists of paintings, sculptures, and large-scale multimedia installations that combine sculpture, architecture, lighting, video, music, and scent. Drawing from her background in theater and opera set design, she uses these modalities to create an artistic practice, hovering somewhere between the visual, experiential and immersive. Patterson’s large-scale installations have filled cathedrals, office buildings, and galleries across the country with miles of fabric, aluminum ribbon, and metal birds. Her most recent installation, “Divine Pathways” was created in concert with communities and organizations across the Morningside Heights neighborhood in New York City and is now on display at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. “Ascendant Light,” commissioned by Capital One as the centerpiece of their new corporate headquarters, is made of hundreds of hand plotted ribbons over six stories. Other recent commissions include “Art for Earth,” commissioned by the fashion house Ermenegildo Zegna, was made of thousands of lengths of fabric repurposed from Zegna fabrics. Anne has exhibited widely including solo exhibitions at The Ringling Museum and Alfstad & Contemporary. Her work has been shown at The Trapholt Museum, Denmark; Cristina Grajales, New York; Scope Art Fair, Miami; Aqua Art Fair, Miami; Building Bridges Art Exchange, Los Angeles; Valerie Dillon Gallery, New York; Denise Bibro, New York; Cade Tompkins Projects, Providence, RI and One Twelve Gallery, Atlanta. Her paintings and sculptures are in private, public, and corporate collections across the USA (Tishman Speyer, Tribune Media, Nortek, New York Presbyterian Hospital, Memorial Sloan Kettering Hospital, Rhode Island Blue Cross) and in London. Anne’s theatrical and symphonic partnerships have included Lincoln Center, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Arena Stage, The Wilma Theater, The Kennedy Center, Alliance Theater and prestigious symphonies throughout the country (San Francisco, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Chicago, Seattle). Patterson was the 2014 and 2016 CODAaward Winner for Liturgical Art and received a Creative Capital Award in 2008. She is a proud Fellow of the Hermitage Artist’s Retreat. In Sarasota, her work has been exhibited at The Ringling Museum and commissioned by the Community Foundation of Sarasota County. Patterson received her B.A. of Architecture from Yale University and her M.F.A. in Theater Design from The Slade School of Art, London UK.

Hermitage Fellow Patrick Harlin’s “aesthetics capture a sense of tradition and innovation” (The New York Times). He is the inaugural recipient of the Hermitage Prize in Composition at the Aspen Music Festival, which offered a residency at the Hermitage Artist Retreat in Manasota Key, Florida. Harlin’s music is permeated by classical, jazz, and electronic music traditions, all underpinned with a love and respect for the great outdoors. His works have been performed on subscription series concerts by the St. Louis Symphony, Kansas City Symphony, the Rochester and Calgary Philharmonic Orchestras, Collegium Cincinnati, and Calidore String Quartet, among others. CD recordings include Wilderness Anthology by the Kinetic Ensemble and American Rapture on the Grammy-nominated album by the Rochester Philharmonic. Patrick was the inaugural composer in residence with the Lansing Symphony Orchestra (2019-2023.) To date, he is the only artist-recipient of a DOW Sustainability Fellowship. While at the Hermitage, Harlin met visual artist Anne Patterson, and they have been collaborating since, including the work The Art of Flight with Anne’s art installation “Murmuration.” Patrick’s interdisciplinary research in soundscape ecology — a field that aims to better understand ecosystems through sound — has taken him to imperiled regions around the world, including the Amazon rainforest and the Book Cliffs of Utah. His baseline recordings for ecological impact studies are also the fodder for artistic inspiration. Patrick’s research on the importance of soundscapes has been supported by a Graham Sustainability Institute Doctoral Fellowship, Rackham Fellowship, Theodore Presser Award, and private support. The resulting works, the Wilderness Anthology draw parallels between the sounds of the natural world and those of the concert hall, seeking to bring awareness to the importance of sound in our environment. Patrick grew up in Seattle, holds a doctorate in music composition from the University of Michigan, and currently resides in Ann Arbor.

May

Fri

“Waves: Movements that Shape Us” @ Hermitage Beach

Tickets

May 10 @ 6:30 pm – 7:30 pm

“Waves: Movements that Shape Us”
with Hermitage Fellows Rebecca Crenshaw and Bess Wohl

Bess Wohl’s Hermitage Residency generously sponsored by Carol White Bold & Larry Bold.

Friday, May 10 at 6:30pm

Hermitage Beach (entrance at 6660 Manasota Key Road, Englewood, FL 34223)

Register here.
Registration is required. $5 per person.

Beach-loving Sarasotans are no strangers to the sand and sun, but that familiar environment can be transformed by the creativity of artists like Rebecca Crenshaw and Bess Wohl. A violinist whose practice is shaped by the sound waves she creates with bands like Grammy Award-winners Arcade Fire and Mumford & Sons as well as her community-oriented yoga practice, Rebecca Crenshaw is a New Orleans-based artist and educator. Hermitage audiences will remember Tony Award-nominated playwright Bess Wohl from her sharing of Camp Siegfried on the beach before its successful Off-Broadway run; her Broadway and Off-Broadway plays like Grand Horizons and Small Mouth Sounds are praised by audiences and critics alike for their poignant humor, smart characterizations, and inventive theatricality. Join these two innovative Hermitage Fellows on the Hermitage Beach as the sun sets into the Gulf of Mexico.

A New Orleans-based teaching artist and violinist/violist, Hermitage Fellow Rebecca Crenshaw combines knowledge, connection, expression, and balance in her work, whether teaching, performing on a concert stage, developing arts-integrated curricula, or leading a yoga class. Her passions and talent for building community, promoting playful expression, and healing the mind and body continue to afford her professional opportunities that benefit the local and global music communities while fostering self-awareness, enrichment, and creativity. In addition to active collaborations with New Orleans artists and musicians, Crenshaw has performed and recorded with artists such as Arcade Fire, Mumford & Sons, Hurray for the Riff Raff, Samantha Fish, Judith Owen, Ronnie Spector, and more. She has 15 years of teaching experience and, in 2021, earned an Executive Graduate Degree from the Global Leaders Program’s 360° Executive Education Program for Arts Innovators. She is registered with the Yoga Alliance as an RYT 500 instructor and has been teaching yoga since 2015.

Hermitage Fellow Bess Wohl’s plays include Camp Siegfried (developed in part at the Hermitage), Grand Horizons (Tony Nominations for Best Play; Outer Critics Circle Honor, Drama League Award nom.), Make Believe (NYTimes Critics’ Pick, Best of 2019, Outer Critics Circle Honor), Continuity, Small Mouth Sounds (John Gassner Outer Critics Circle Award, top ten lists in The New York Times, The New York Post, The Guardian and others), American Hero, Barcelona, Touched, In, Cats Talk Back, and the musical Pretty Filthy, with composer/lyricist Michael Friedman and The Civilians (Lucille Lortel and Drama Desk nominations for Outstanding Musical). Her plays have been produced or developed at theaters in New York and around the country, including Second Stage, Manhattan Theater Club, Ars Nova, Williamstown Theatre Festival, Goodman Theater, Geffen Playhouse, People’s Light, The Contemporary American Theater Festival, Vineyard Arts Project, Pioneer Theatre, Pittsburgh Public Theater, Northlight Theater, TheaterWorks New Works Festival, Ojai Playwright’s Conference, Cape Cod Theatre Project, PlayPenn, and the New York International Fringe Festival (Award for Best Overall Production). In 2015, Bess won the Sam Norkin special Drama Desk Award for “establishing herself as an important voice in New York theater, and having a breakthrough year.” Other awards and honors include the Athena Award for her screenplay, Virginia, a MacDowell Fellowship, and inclusion on Hollywood’s “Black List” of Best Screenplays. She is an associate artist with The Civilians, an alumna of Ars Nova’s Play Group, and the recipient of new play commissions from Manhattan Theatre Club, Hartford Stage, and Lincoln Center. She also writes screenplays and has developed multiple original television projects for HBO, ABC, USA, FOX, Disney, Paramount, and others. She is a graduate of Harvard and the Yale School of Drama.

May

Wed

“Seeing Oneself and Celebrating Identity” @ Asolo Repertory Theater's Koski Center

Tickets

May 15 @ 6:30 pm – 7:30 pm

“Seeing Oneself and Celebrating Identity”
with Hermitage Fellow Shayok Misha Chowdhury

Presented in partnership with ALSO Youth and Asolo Repertory Theatre

Wednesday, May 15 at 6:30pm

Asolo Repertory Theater’s Koski Center (entrance at 1009 Tallevast Rd, Sarasota, FL 34243)

Register here.
Registration is required. $5 per person.

Not only are the arts for people of all backgrounds and identities, but they have the power to shape us, and the world in which we live. Obie Award-winning Hermitage Fellow, playwright, director, and poet Shayok Misha Chowdhury’s work crosses continents, encompassing different languages, peoples, cultures, identities, and beliefs. Fresh from his critically acclaimed play at Soho Rep and Theater for a New Audience (NY Times Critic’s Pick), this Relentless Award Winner shares work and talks process in a candid and empowering program.

Hermitage Fellow Shayok Misha Chowdhury is an award-winning writer and director based in Brooklyn. A Mark O’Donnell Prize and Princess Grace Award recipient, Misha was an inaugural Project Number One Artist at Soho Rep, where his new play Public Obscenities recently premiered, co-commissioned by NAATCO. The production, which Misha also directed, was a NY Times Critic’s Pick and transferred subsequently to Theater for a New Audience. Misha was also awarded a Jonathan Larson Grant for his body of work writing musicals with composer Laura Grill Jaye; their most recent collaboration, How the White Girl Got Her Spots and Other 90s Trivia, was awarded the 2022 Relentless Award. As a Resident Artist @ HERE Arts Center, Misha is developing Rheology, a concert-memoir-physics-symposium, for which he was awarded an inaugural Sundance Asian American Fellowship. Other collaborations: SPEECH (Philly Fringe) with Lightning Rod Special; Brother, Brother (New York Theatre Workshop) with Aleshea Harris; MukhAgni (Under the Radar @ The Public Theater) with Kameron Neal; Your Healing Is Killing Me (PlayMakers Rep) with Virginia Grise. Misha was also a soloist and collaborator on the Grammy-winning album Calling All Dawns. Misha is the creator of VICHITRA, a series of sound-driven, cinematic experiments, including Englandbashi (Ann Arbor Film Festival); The Other Other (Ars Nova); An Anthology of Queer Dreams (Audio Unbound Award finalist); and In Order to Become (The Bushwick Starr), which he is developing into a live Carnatic opera. Residencies: Hermitage Artist Retreat, Rhinebeck Writers Retreat, Ucross, SPACE on Ryder Farm, Mercury Store. He has taught and directed at Stanford, Brown, NYU, CalArts, Fordham, Syracuse, UArts, Hunter College, CMU, and Williams.

May

Thu

“Visualizing Culture” @ Hermitage Beach

Tickets

May 23 @ 6:30 pm – 7:30 pm

“Visualizing Culture”
with Hermitage Fellows Diana Al-Hadid, Raven Chacon, and Candice Hopkins

Thursday, May 23 at 6:30pm

Hermitage Beach (entrance at 6660 Manasota Key Rd, Englewood, FL 34223)

Register here.
Registration is required. $5 per person.

Art, no matter the medium, helps to make abstract concepts like culture and broad historical narrative a palpable, personal experience. Engaging directly with this idea through her work currently on display at the Sarasota Art Museum, internationally acclaimed visual artist Diana Al-Hadid‘s art “is a masterclass in duality… both ancient and modern, fierce and delicate, simultaneously growing and disintegrating—reminding us there is no such thing as a fixed state,” (Vogue). In a special beach program, Al-Hadid discusses her work alongside Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Raven Chacon whose unique graphic scores capture “a concentrated and powerful musical expression with a haunting visceral impact,” (New York Times). Adding insight and nuance to the conversation is Candice Hopkins, a citizen of Carcross/Tagish First Nation whose curated exhibitions have traveled across the country and around the world. Join these remarkable creators for insights into their groundbreaking processes and perspectives on the contemporary arts landscape.

Returning Hermitage Fellow Diana Al-Hadid examines the historical frameworks and perspectives that continue to shape discourse on culture and materials today. With a practice spanning sculpture, wall reliefs, and works on paper, the artist weaves together enigmatic narratives that draw inspiration from both ancient and modern civilizations. Al-Hadid’s rich allegorical constructions are born from art historical religious imagery, ancient manuscripts, female archetypes, and folkloric storytelling. Born in Aleppo, Syria in 1981, Al-Hadid lives and works between upstate New York and Brooklyn, NY. She received a BFA in Sculpture and a BA in Art History from Kent State University (2003); an MFA in Sculpture from Virginia Commonwealth University (2005); and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (2007). She has been the recipient of a Joan Mitchell Grant, a New York Foundation for the Arts Grant, a Pollock-Krasner Grant, and The Academy of Arts and Letters Art Award. She is also a Hermitage Artist Retreat Fellow, a USA Rockefeller Fellow, and in 2022, she was awarded a Fellowship with the Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship Program. Al-Hadid’s work can be found in numerous institutional collections worldwide, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; and the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens, Greece, among others. Her work is currently on display at Sarasota Art Museum as part of the exhibition Impact: Contemporary Artists at the Hermitage Artist Retreat.

Hermitage Fellow Raven Chacon is a Pulitzer Prize-winning composer, performer, and installation artist from Fort Defiance, Navajo Nation. As a solo artist, collaborator, and a member of Postcommodity from 2009 to 2018, Chacon has exhibited, performed, or had works performed at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; The Renaissance Society, Chicago; San Francisco Electronic Music Festival; REDCAT, Los Angeles; Vancouver Art Gallery; Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin; Borealis Festival, Seattle; SITE Santa Fe; Chaco Canyon, New Mexico; Ende Tymes Festival, New York; The Kennedy Center, Washington, D.C.; Whitney Biennial, New York; documenta 14, Athens and Kassel; Carnegie International, and Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh.

Hermitage Fellow Candice Hopkins is a citizen of Carcross/Tagish First Nation and lives in Red Hook, New York. Her writing and curatorial practice explore the intersections of history, contemporary art, and Indigeneity. She is Executive Director of Forge Project (Taghkanic, NY) and Senior Curator for the 2019 and 2022 editions of the Toronto Biennial of Art. She was part of the curatorial team for the Canadian Pavilion at the fifty-eighth Venice Biennale, featuring the work of the media art collective Isuma; and co-curator of notable exhibitions including the national traveling survey Art for New Understanding: Native Voices, 1950s to Now; SITElines.2018: Casa Tomada, SITE Santa Fe; documenta 14, Athens and Kassel; and Sakahàn: International Indigenous Art, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa. Notable essays include “The Gilded Gaze: Wealth and Economies on the Colonial Frontier,” in the documenta 14 Reader; “Outlawed Social Life,” in South as a State of Mind; and “The Appropriation Debates (or The Gallows of History),” in Saturation: Race, Art, and the Circulation of Value (New Museum/MIT Press, 2020).

May

Fri

“A Piano Performance: Sonata in Memoriam Lloyd Arriola” @ Oak Street Stage

Tickets

May 24 @ 5:30 pm – 6:30 pm

“A Piano Performance: Sonata in Memoriam Lloyd Arriola”
with Hermitage Fellow Robert Pound

Presented in partnership with Oak Street Stage

Friday, May 24 at 5:30pm

Oak Street Stage (entrance at 2050 Oak Street, Sarasota, FL 34237)

Register here.
Registration is required. $5 per person.

A chance encounter at the Metropolitan Opera in 2015 with Lloyd Arriola, a Juilliard-trained pianist, sparked a conversation for a commission to be composed by Hermitage Fellow Robert Pound. Something ambitious, evocative, and undeniably powerful was needed to satisfy Arriola’s thirst to extend the canon and Arriola couldn’t wait to perform it. When Arriola suddenly passed away in 2016 at the age of 43, this solo piano composition took on an entirely new dimension, which Pound used his residency at the Hermitage to create. Hear insights from the composer and the sweeping, complex result performed by a close friend and fellow Julliard-trained pianist, Charles Hulin IV, interpreted as only someone with such insight into the source material can.

Hermitage Fellow and composer Robert Pound’s numerous works have been featured by the Atlanta Symphony (Irrational Exuberance, 2005; Heartenings, 2011) and the Columbus Symphony which commissioned a luminous jewel lone (2002) jointly with the River Center for the Performing Arts. The St. Louis Symphony Youth Orchestra commissioned Pound’s Fêtes and Fireworks in celebration of its 35^th anniversary (2005). His recording of The Orbit of the Soul, settings of texts by Oscar Wilde, was released in October 2018 and hailed by Fanfare as “a positively revelatory release.” Albany Records released Pound’s album of song cycles, Relics of Memory, in 2020, earning acclaim from Opera News. His music may also be heard on recordings by trumpeter Jack Sutte (The Cleveland Orchestra), Fanfare Alone (2014) and Beyond the Moon (2011). Pound has received commissions from such distinguished ensembles as the Corigliano Quartet, the Amernet Quartet, the Timaeus Ensemble, Alarm Will Sound, and the Florestan Recital Project. His works have also been featured by the Verge Ensemble, the New Juilliard Ensemble, and at Fondation Bemberg. In 2011, the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra commissioned Pound to compose a fanfare for the 10^th anniversary of Robert Spano as Music Director and Donald Runnicles as Principal Guest Conductor. He has composed numerous works for the theater including What Passes for Comedy (Chain Theatre, NYC), The Dance of Death (Jean Cocteau Repertory Theatre, NYC), and Oedipus at Colonus (Handcart Ensemble, NYC). His music has also been adapted for film by director Rick Hamilton. In March 2002, Pound was Composer-in-Residence at Columbus State University. In 2020, Pound was a Fellow at the Hermitage Artist Retreat. He holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of North Texas and Masters and Doctoral degrees from the Juilliard School, where he was a composition student of Stephen Albert and Milton Babbitt. Also, an active conductor, Pound has appeared as guest conductor with the Atlanta Symphony, as conductor of the Verge Ensemble at the June-in-Buffalo Festival, as a Fellow at the Tanglewood Festival of Contemporary Music, as Music Director of the West Shore Symphony Orchestra, and as Director of the orchestra at Dickinson College, where he is Professor of Music.

A Juilliard-trained pianist, Charles Hulin IV was a prize winner in the Hilton Head International Piano Competition and a recipient of special recognition for collaborative work in the Liszt-Garrison International Piano Competition. Hulin studied with Yoheved Kaplinsky at Juilliard and Ellen Mack at Peabody while participating in the masterclasses of Leon Fleisher. Before moving to Florida, he performed extensively in the mid-Atlantic states, frequently appearing with members of the U.S. Naval Academy Band and as a soloist for performances of the Richmond Ballet. He has participated in a wide range of festivals including University of Richmond’s Third Practice Festival of Electro-Acoustic Music, the University of Oklahoma Clarinet Symposium, and the annual conference of the Hymn Society in the United States and Canada. The recording of his own hymn-inspired concert works, Be Thou My Vision, is available online. Currently, Dr. Hulin directs the study of piano and music theory at Southeastern University and coordinates the Lasker Summer Music Festival.

Jun

Fri

“Standing at the Beach’s Edge: London to Sarasota” @ Hermitage Beach

Tickets

Jun 7 @ 6:30 pm – 7:30 pm

“Standing at the Beach’s Edge”
with Hermitage Major Theater Award Winner Chris Bush

Chris Bush’s residency and Hermitage Major Theater Award are made possible with generous support from Flora Major and the Kutya Major Foundation.

Friday, June 7 at 6:30pm

Hermitage Beach (entrance at 6660 Manasota Key Rd, Eglewood, FL 34223)

Register here.
Registration is required. $5 per person.

London theatergoers can’t get enough of 2024 Hermitage Major Theater Award winner Chris Bush’s latest musical Standing at the Sky’s Edge. After its premiere in the town where it’s set and this gifted theater maker hails from, Sheffield, the production moved to the National Theatre in London and is now running on the West End, garnering accolades and rave review along the way. Now, one of the show’s lead creative minds is coming to Sarasota. Hear from Hermitage Major Theater Award winner Chris Bush about her career, creating theater in the UK, and how she plans to reimagine Virginia Woolf’s iconic novel Orlando for the 21^st century and set in Florida.

A Sheffield-born playwright, lyricist, and theatre maker, Chris Bush is the 2024 recipient of the Hermitage Major Theater Award. Current and past work includes Standing at the Sky’s Edge (Sheffield Theatres/National Theatre – Olivier Award and UK Theatre Award for Best Musical, South Bank Sky Arts Award for Best Theatre), Pericles and The Odyssey (both National Theatre); Rock/Paper/Scissors, The Band Plays On, What We Wished For, A Dream, and The Sheffield Mysteries (all Sheffield Theatres); Jane Eyre (Stephen Joseph Theatre, New Vic Theatre); The Doncastrain Chalk Circle (CAST Doncaster/National Theatre); Fantastically Great Women Who Changed the World (Kenny Wax, UK Tour – UK Theatre Award for Best Show for Children & Young People); Hungry (Paines Plough); Kein Weltuntergang/Not the End of the World (Schaubühne, Berlin); Nine Lessons and Carols: Stories for a Long Winter (Almeida Theatre); Faustus: That Damned Woman (Headlong/Lyric Hammersmith/Birmingham Rep); The Last Noël (Attic Theatre/UK tour); The Assassination of Katie Hopkins (Theatr Clwyd – UK Theatre Award for Best Musical); The Changing Room (NT Connections); A Declaration from the People (National Theatre: Dorfman); and Larksong (New Vic, Stoke-on-Trent). Film includes Mars (dir. Abel Rubinstein).

Jun

Wed

“Stealing the Show: Broadway, Beach, and Beyond” @ Hermitage Beach

Tickets

Jun 26 @ 6:30 pm – 7:30 pm

“Stealing the Show: Broadway, Beach, and Beyond”
with Hermitage Fellow Leslie Rodriguez Kritzer

Wednesday, June 26 at 6:30pm

Hermitage Beach (entrance at 6660 Manasota Key Rd, Englewood, FL 34223)

Register here.
Registration is required. $5 per person.

Returning Hermitage Fellow Leslie Rodriguez Kritzer is a 2024 Tony Award nominee for her recent performance in Spamalot, where The New York Times noted that “she essentially steals the show.” Broadway audiences have celebrated Kritzer for years thanks to her powerhouse voice, her pitch-perfect comic timing, and her iconic roles in Broadway’s Beetlejuice, Something Rotten!, Legally Blonde, The Robber Bridegroom, and more. TV audiences have also come to know Leslie, notably through her memorable turn as Carol Burnett on the series finale of “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.” Now, Hermitage audiences will get to know Leslie as a gifted writer, composer, and lyricist who has been developing her own original projects right here along the inspirational shores of the Hermitage. Join this quadruple-plus threat for a bit of both worlds: the songs you know and the next great work of American theater.

Hermitage Fellow Leslie Rodriguez Kritzer is a 2024 Tony Award Nominee for her showstopping turn as ‘Lady of the Lake’ in the Broadway revival of Spamalot. She previously starred on Broadway as Delia in Beetlejuice, for which she received Drama Desk, Drama League, and Chita Rivera Award nominations. Additional Broadway credits include Something Rotten!, Elf, Sondheim on Sondheim, Legally Blonde, A Catered Affair (Drama Desk nomination) and Hairspray. Off-Broadway: The Robber Bridegroom (Lucille Lortel Award and Drama League Award), Gigantic (Lucille Lortel nomination), ROOMS: A Rock Romance (Outer Critics Circle nomination), and others. She can be heard on several original casting recordings. TV: “Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” (as Carol Burnett in the Series Finale) “The First Lady,” “Bridge & Tunnel,” “New Amsterdam,” “Difficult People,” “Kevin Can Wait,” “Younger,” “Vinyl,” and “Law & Order: SVU.” Sarasota audiences have previously seen Leslie perform alongside Andy Sandberg in the Hermitage 20^th Anniversary Concert (Van Wezel Hall) and at the 2023 Hermitage Greenfield Prize Dinner (Ringling Museum). @lesliekritzer

Jun

Fri

“We Were the Universe” @ Bookstore1

Tickets

Jun 28 @ 6:00 pm – 7:00 pm

“We Were the Universe”
with Hermitage Fellow Kimberly King Parsons

Presented in partnership with Bookstore1.

Friday, June 28 at 6pm

Bookstore1 (entrance at 117 S Pineapple Ave, Sarasota, FL 34236)

Register here.
Registration is required. $5 per person.

From the author of the short story collection Black Light (National Book Award longlist) comes the highly anticipated debut novel We Were the Universe. Set in Texas and through the stream-of-consciousness narration from Kit, Hermitage Fellow Kimberly King Parsons “has created a character so appealing in her cheerful brokenness that you won’t want to leave her side for a minute.” (Kirkus Review) From trips to Oregon to acid trips, life, death, and rock’n roll, Parsons’ remarkable style has readers turning pages and discovering entirely new frames of mind. Hear selections of the novel read by this Hermitage author and dive into conversation about the writing process in Bookstore1’s intimate loft space.

Hermitage Fellow Kimberly King Parsons is the author of the forthcoming novel We Were the Universe and the short story collection Black Light, which was longlisted for the National Book Award and the Story Prize. A recipient of Fellowships from the Hermitage Artist Retreat, Yaddo, and Columbia University, Parsons won the 2020 National Magazine Award for “Foxes,” a story published in The Paris Review. She lives in Portland, Oregon with her partner and children. Born in Lubbock, Texas, Parsons earned a BA in English and an MA in Literary Studies from the University of Texas at Dallas. She then moved to New York, where she earned an MFA in Fiction from Columbia and served as the editor-in-chief of Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art. Parsons’ book reviews and interviews have appeared in Bookforum, BOMB, Time Out New York, The Millions, and elsewhere. Parsons’ collection Black Light was a finalist for the 2020 Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction, the 2020 Texas Institute of Letters Best Work of First Fiction Award, and the 2020 Oregon Book Award.

Jul

Fri

“2024 Hermitage STARs” @ Hermitage Campus

Tickets

Jul 12 @ 2:00 pm – 3:00 pm

“2024 Hermitage STARs”
with 5 Fantastic Florida Arts Teachers

Presented in partnership with Florida Alliance for Arts Education, Boys and Girls Club of Sarasota and Desoto County, and Englewood YMCA

Friday, July 12 at 2pm

Hermitage Campus (entrance at 6660 Manasota Key Rd, Englewood, FL 34223)

Register here.
Registration is required. $5 per person.

Now in its fourteenth season, the State Teaching Artist Residency (STAR) at the Hermitage Artist Retreat is designed to nourish the artist within Florida’s Arts Teachers. Proudly serving teachers from all across the state, this partnership with the Florida Alliance for Arts Education is one of the few of its kind in the country and offers five educators two weeks of inspiration on the Hermitage’s historical campus. Culminating in a free public sharing with the Gulf Coast community, the selected teachers span artistic disciplines and offer insights into their creative practice to audiences of all ages. Selected teachers will be announced at a later date.

March – July 2024 Mar – Jul 2024

Hermitage Artists Respond to COVID-19.

Engage Creativity