Press Releases

The Hermitage property is owned by Sarasota County and is leased to the Hermitage Artist Retreat, Inc.
The property is maintained by the Hermitage Artist Retreat, Inc. and the Sarasota County Department of Parks and Recreation.

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Aug

Fri

Hermitage Sunsets @ Selby Gardens “The Latest from Terry Guest” @ Selby Gardens

Tickets

Aug 19 @ 6:30 pm – 7:30 pm

Hermitage Sunsets @ Selby Gardens
“The Latest from Terry Guest”
with Hermitage Fellow Terry Guest

Presented in partnership with Urbanite Theatre

Terry Guest’s Hermitage Residency generously sponsored by Larry Bold & Carol White Bold.

Friday, August 19 at 6:30pm

Marie Selby Botanical Gardens (entrance at 1534 Mound St, Sarasota, FL 34236)

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

Hermitage Fellow Terry Guest, playwright of Urbanite Theatre’s recent acclaimed production of At The Wake of a Dead Drag Queen, returns to Sarasota to share his latest work! This funny, vital, and raucous new work is a “Pageant on White American Memory” and explores several of our country’s most consequential families through a wickedly contemporary lens. Join the Hermitage for a sneak peek at a new play by the playwright whose work has been described as “breathtaking” with “indelible scenes” (Chicago Reader).

Note: Audience members are invited to bring their own chairs for this program. May not be suitable for children.

Hermitage Fellow Terry Guest is a Chicago-based playwright, actor, and teaching artist whose works include A Ghost in Satin (Williamstown Theatre Festival), The Magnolia Ballet (2022-2023 rolling world premieres), Marie Antionette and the Magical Negros, The Madness of Mary Todd (currently in development with Goodman Theatre), Andy Warhol Presents: The Cocaine Play, Ghost Town (Chicago Children’s Theatre), and At the Wake of a Dead Drag Queen (The Story Theatre). Follow along on Instagram @terryexplainsitall or at TerryCGuest.com

Aug

Fri

“Music’s Masterpieces” @ Sarasota Opera

Tickets

Aug 26 @ 6:00 pm – 7:00 pm

“Music’s Masterpieces”
with Hermitage Fellow Hilan Warshaw

Presented in partnership with Sarasota Opera

Hilan Warshaw’s Hermitage Residency generously sponsored by Jane and Bill Knapp

Friday, August 26 at 6pm

Sarasota opera (entrance at 61 N Pineapple Ave, Sarasota, FL 34236)

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

Hermitage Fellow Hilan Warshaw‘s films explore the lives and minds of great composers, delving into the often controversial passions and experiences that informed some of music’s most influential masterpieces. Blending documentary, narrative film techniques, and his own musical background as a violinist and conductor, Warshaw’s internationally broadcast films shine a new light on musical and operatic creators including Wagner, Schoenberg, Berg, Bach, and Mahler. For this program, Warshaw shares excerpts from his films and discusses the close relationship between the art forms of cinema and music.

Hermitage Fellow Hilan Warshaw is a film director and writer. His television documentaries include Wagner’s Jews (PBS-WNET, and others), Secret Song, In the Key of Bach (PBS-GPB), Rachmaninoff Revisited (co-producer and editor), Through the Darkness, and Mahler in New York. Since September 2020, he has been video director of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra’s on-demand Classical Series. His essays about music and film have been published by Cambridge University Press, McFarland Press, The Wagner Journal, and Wagner Spectrum. He has taught film courses at Western Carolina University and Barnard College, and has been a panelist and lecturer at Yale, Hofstra, BU, and NYU, among others. In addition to his own films, other television writing credits include A Workshop for Peace (PBS-WNET), commissioned by the United Nations. Additional editing credits include Shadows in Paradise: Hitler’s Exiles in Hollywood, In the Key of G, and the miniseries Great Conversations in Music, all broadcast on PBS stations and internationally. He holds a B.F.A. (Film and TV) and M.F.A. (Musical Theater Writing) from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, and studied orchestral conducting at Mannes College of Music and the Aspen Music School. OvertoneFilms.com

Sep

Mon

“Kudzu Calling” @ Virtual via Zoom

Tickets

Sep 19 @ 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm

“Kudzu Calling”
A Play Reading and Conversation with Hermitage Fellow Donnetta Lavinia Grays

Presented in partnership with Suncoast Black Arts Collaborative

Donnetta Lavinia Grays’ Hermitage Artist Residency generously sponsored by Charlotte and Charles Perret.

Monday, September 19 at 7pm ET

Via Zoom

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

Donnetta Lavinia Grays’ play Kudzu Calling is an interweaving of poems and moments which seek to expand and complicate the Southern narrative – a celebration of Black Southern Love, Black Southern Queerness, Black Southern Playfulness, Culture, and Spirituality. It is the playwright’s love letter to the place that made her. Join the Hermitage Artist Retreat and Suncoast Black Arts Collaborative to experience excerpts from this work performed live on Zoom, followed by a candid conversation with the playwright.

Hermitage Fellow Donnetta Lavinia Grays – raised in Columbia, South Carolina – is a Brooklyn-based playwright and actor whose writing credits include Where We Stand (Lucille Lortel, Drama League, and AUDELCO Award Nominations; World Premiere Co-Production – WP Theater and Baltimore Center Stage; Warriors Don’t Cry (TheaterWorks USA/Bushnell commission), Last Night and the Night Before (World Premiere – Denver Center for the Performing Arts; Kilroys List; Todd McNerney National Playwriting Award Winner); Laid to Rest (O’Neill Center National Playwrights Conference Finalist); The Review or How to Eat Your Opposition (WP Pipeline Festival; O’Neill Center National Playwrights Conference Finalist), The New Normal, and The Cowboy Is Dying. Donnetta is a recipient of the Whiting Award for Drama, the Helen Merrill Playwright Award, Lilly Award, National Theater Conference Barrie and Bernice Stavis Playwright Award, and is the inaugural recipient of the Doric Wilson Independent Playwright Award. Her work has been developed with, Hedgebrook, New Harmony Project, Berkeley Rep, Denver Center for the Performing Arts, The Labyrinth Theater Company, New York Theater Workshop, Orlando Shakespeare Theater, Portland Stage Company, Pure Theatre Company, [the claque], Naked Angels, Classical Theater of Harlem, Slant Theater Project, terraNova Collective, and TOSOS. In 2018, Donnetta founded Gap Toothed Griot (GTG) as a home for her particular brand of storytelling. Through GTG, Donnetta is currently under commission with True Love Productions, Steppenwolf, The Denver Center, Alabama Shakespeare Festival, and WP Theater. For television, she has been staffed on Spectrum Original/Lionsgate’s Manhunt, Y: The Last Man for FX Network/Color Force, and is currently the Executive Story Editor on Joe vs. Carole starring Kate McKinnon for NBC Universal.

Sep

Fri

“Scale and Beauty” @ Sarasota Art Museum

Tickets

Sep 23 @ 5:30 pm – 6:30 pm

“Scale and Beauty”
with Hermitage Fellow Anne Patterson

Presented in partnership with Sarasota Art Museum

Friday, September 23 at 5:30pm

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

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

Acclaimed Hermitage Fellow and multi-disciplinary artist Anne Patterson’s work ranges from vast, cathedral-filling beauty to smaller, evocative watercolors alive with moment-to-moment discovery. With an eye informed by her experience as a set designer, her art invites viewers to inhabit new worlds, sometimes literally encouraging people to interact with a given piece. Patterson’s work has been exhibited at The Ringling Museum and commissioned by the Community Foundation of Sarasota County. Join the Hermitage and Sarasota Art Museum for a conversation about the unique way Anne’s creations burst into life and what is next for this visionary creator. Moderated by Hermitage Artistic Director and CEO Andy Sandberg.

Hermitage Fellow Anne Patterson is a multi-disciplinary artist based in Brooklyn. 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, “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.

August – September 2022 Aug – Sep 2022

Press Releases

Hermitage Artists Respond to COVID-19.

Engage Creativity