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Omaha Symphony Music Director Ankush Kumar Bahl will lead the orchestra at a “Dance Party” on the Gene Leahy Mall on Sept. 17.
Admission will be free at the Durham Museum, inside Omaha’s Union Station near 10th and Pacific Streets, on Sept. 17 in honor of Smithsonian Magazine Museum Day.
The Omaha Symphony is taking over the Gene Leahy Mall on Sept. 17.
Two concerts that day — “A Symphony of Sports” and “Omaha Symphony Dance Party” — are part of the orchestra’s Forte Initiative, its effort to amplify the strengths of the Omaha community through collaboration, reflect the community onstage and ensure access to all.
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The programs “clearly reflect the goals of the Forte Initiative and our vision of being the adaptable, innovative and relevant source for our community,” said Jennifer Boomgaarden Daoud, the symphony’s president and CEO.
“A Symphony of Sports,” at 1 p.m., will feature a version of Ludwig van Beethoven’s “Fifth Symphony” that’s more like a baseball game than a concert, along with a fugue that’s reminiscent of a tennis match and more.
It will give kids and their parents an interactive experience, much like many sporting events.
The 7:30 p.m. “party” concert will feature dance performances in a variety of musical genres. Groups represented include Dowd’s Irish Dance Academy, Love 2 Groove L2G Dance Collective with founder Aaron Derell Gregory, El Museo Latino, the Omaha Burke High School Drill Team, Heartland Youth Ballet and Omaha Jitterbugs.
Singer Alexis Arai will join the dancers with songs in several genres. She was a finalist on Tengo Talento Mucho Talento, and has appeared on NBC-TV’s “The Voice” and ABC-TV’s “American Idol.”
The symphony, with conductor Ankush Kumar Bahl, will play dance-inspired orchestra masterpieces, jazz tunes and compositions highlighting electronic and pop beats.
Both concerts are free and outdoors at the mall near 13th and Douglas Streets. To learn more about the symphony, go to omahasymphony.org.
Four national and international storytellers will be on hand Saturday at Mahoney State Park for the 21st annual Moonshell Storytelling Festival.
The event runs from 9:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. and is free with park admission.
Ingrid Nixon, an award-winning and world-traveling storyteller who specializes in tall tales, traditional stories, personal accounts and descriptions of scary explorations.
Jeff Doyle, who enjoys telling all kinds of tales but particularly loves funny stories and those ranging from slightly scary to truly terrifying.
Al Batt, who writes humor and nature newspaper columns and comic strips, does radio shows about nature and wrote a book, “A Life Gone to the Birds.”
Sheila Arnold, who travels the country telling stories full-time. She also does historic character enactments and Christian monologues.
The festival also includes two workshops that are a great resource for storytellers, teachers, lawyers, librarians and anyone who is interested in stories.
For more information about the festival, visit nebraskastoryarts.org.
Smithsonian Magazine Annual Museum Day is just around the corner.
Admission will be free at the Durham Museum on that day, Sept. 17, in celebration of its 20th anniversary as a Smithsonian Affiliate.
It also marks the beginning of the museum’s Smithsonian Channel Film Series. This year, it will feature screenings of “America in Color” films, which highlight the same decades as the heyday of Omaha’s Union Station, the home of the museum near 10th and Pacific Streets.
Sept. 17: “America in Color: The 1930s”
Sept. 24: “America in Color: The 1940s”
Oct. 1: “America in Color: The 1950s”
Oct. 8: “America in Color: The 1960s.”
The series is free for members and with regular museum admission. The films are shown at 11:30 a.m. and 1:30 p.m. in the Stanley and Dorothy Truhlsen Lecture Hall.
To obtain free admission for two on Museum Day, download a ticket at Smithsonian.com/museumday. You can download one ticket per address.
To learn more about the Durham, go to durhammuseum.org.
“Renée Fleming’s Cities That Sing — Paris” will be shown on Sept. 21 at the AMC Council Bluffs 17 + IMAX movie theater.
The IMAX film features Fleming, a Grammy Award-winning opera singer, performing at the Theatre de Chatelet with world-renowned tenor Piotr Bezcala. Fleming is the only classical artist ever to sing the national anthem at the Super Bowl.
“IMAX is the perfect format for our one-of-a-kind film,” Fleming said in a press release. “It has the sheet scale to do justice to the expressive power of this art form.”
Advance tickets for the 7 p.m. showing at the theater, 3220 23rd Ave. in Council Bluffs, are on sale at amctheatres.com (go to “find a theatre” and click on Omaha to find a link to the Council Bluffs site).
1929 PHOTO: This photo, dated Aug. 1, shows the girders of the concert hall going into place at the Joslyn Memorial Art Museum. Omaha Central High is in the background.
1930s PHOTO: Joslyn Memorial Building during the 1930s.
1940 PHOTO: The Joslyn Memorial Art Museum was finished in 1931 at a cost of about $3 million, a gift from Sarah Joslyn in memory of her husband, businessman George A. Joslyn. This photo was taken on Feb. 28, 1940. The museum dropped the word "Memorial" from its name in 1987.
1941 PHOTO: An unidentified child looks at the portrait of George Joslyn at the Joslyn Art Museum during art week in December 1941.
1949 PHOTO: The print room at the Joslyn. People could view the presses and the prints and were allowed to actually use the presses for their work. The lithograph press, left, and the Washington Hand Press, right, were gifts from the Western Newspaper Union. The etch press, which Mr. Kingman is using, was a gift from Alice T. McCoun.
1953 PHOTO: Five-year-old Joanne Lacey at the Joslyn Art Museum in 1953.
1957 PHOTO: Miss Borg and school students tour the museum in 1957.
1982 PHOTO: A Bagels and Bach concert in the Joslyn's Fountain Court. The classical music concert series, which included a light brunch of bagels and toppings, was held on the first Sunday of the month for more than 25 years.
1993 PHOTO: Construction of the Joslyn Art Museum addition is shown in this Sept. 20 photo. Bill Herzog with Kiewit Construction works on the addition in the background. The addition was designed by world-renowned British architect Lord Norman Foster and used the same Georgian pink marble as the original building.
1993 PHOTO: Exterior sheets of pink Georgian marble arrive at the construction site for the Joslyn Art Museum's addition. Unloading the panels are ironworkers from Davis Erection Co. in Gretna.
1993 PHOTO: Construction of the Joslyn Art Museum addition. Exterior sheets of pink Georgian marble arrive at the worksite. Unloading panels are, from left: Vyrl Blum, an ironworker from Gretna, and Bill McDonald, an ironworker from Fremont. Both work for Davis Erection Co. in Gretna.
1993 PHOTO: Construction on the Joslyn Art Museum addition. The view is looking west on Nov. 18, 1993.
1994 PHOTO: The new atrium between the old and new buildings at the Joslyn Art Museum is this June 1994 photo. Bill Moore, an employee of Joe Kapcheck Granite and Marble Co. out of Chicago, works on piece of granite that will be put on the nearby wall. The new museum space added seven galleries, with over 14,000 square feet of space.
1994 PHOTO: An aerial view of the Joslyn Art Museum addition, which was completed in 1994 at a cost of $15.95 million . The addition bears the name "The Walter & Suzanne Scott Pavilion," after major supporters of the museum.
2002 PHOTO: Jeremy Biales, left, and Bill Borden work on renovation of the staircase at the east entrance of the Joslyn Art Museum. Mid-Continental Restoration Co. workers were removing the marble, leveling the concrete underneath and replacing or returning the marble, depending on its condition.
2002 PHOTO: The Walter & Suzanne Scott Pavilion at the Joslyn Art Museum.
2003 PHOTO: Gary Hayden, left, from Chihuly Studio, and John Landon, a freelance design consultant, work on installing a blown-glass piece by Dale Chihuly in the atrium of the Joslyn Art Museum on Dec. 17, 2003. The men were installing the 25-foot chandelier by Chihuly, which was part of a 2000 exhibition and a gift to the museum from Suzanne and Walter Scott.
2004 PHOTO: Aerial view of the Joslyn Art Museum, front.
2007: The Matt Wallace Band performs at the first Jazz on the Green concert of the summer at the Joslyn Art Museum on July 5.
2011: The thunderbird theme, shown here in the Joslyn Art Museum's Fountain Court, is carried out throughout the museum. This photo was taken in 2011, the year Joslyn celebrated its 80th birthday.
2013 PHOTO: To clean “Chihuly: Inside and Out,” the 15,000-pound, 2,080-piece glass sculpture at the Joslyn Art Museum, Dave Pugh takes just four or five pieces of glass at a time off their stainless steel studs, wraps each and labels it, then wipes them down them with a wet cloth and a dry cloth before carefully replacing them. The yearly process takes about a week. The Chihuly piece was created in 2000
2013 PHOTO: Docent Judy Schafer, in blue, leads one of several groups on a stroller tour of the permanent collection at the Joslyn Art Museum on Jan. 16, 2013.
2013 PHOTO: Mom's and little ones enjoy Edgar Degas' "Little Dancer," during a docent-guided stroller tour of the permanent collection.
2014 PHOTO: Visitors view the newly restored "Portrait of Dirck van Os" by Rembrandt van Rijn in the Joslyn Art Museum's Hitchcock Foundation Gallery. One of the world's foremost authorities on Rembrandt, Ernst van de Wetering. recategorized the painting from "School of Rembrandt" to an actual Rembrandt.
2015 PHOTO: A Jun Kaneko piece in the Sculpture Garden at the Joslyn Art Museum. Work on the Sculpture Garden began in 2008. When the garden opened in 2009, it featured works from local and national artists.
2015 PHOTO: On October 31, 2009, Joslyn opened a children's Discovery Garden on the northwest corner of the museum's grounds. This piece, the "Noodles & Doodles" sculpture by Omahan Matthew Placzek, is part of that garden, an innovative, interactive space that attracts children the moment they arrive.
2015 PHOTO: Fredric Remington's "Bronco Buster" in the permanent Western art collection at the Joslyn.
2016 PHOTO: “Central Park in Winter,” one of 600 original Currier & Ives prints that was donated to the Joslyn Art Museum by Conagra as a parting gift when the company left Omaha.
2017 PHOTO: Scott Orr, left, building and grounds manager, and Kevin Salzman, installation and design manager, move artwork from the museum vault back to the European collection galleries in April 2017. The museum had renovated its European collection galleries.
2017 PHOTO: Dave Villarreal, right, and Josh Villarreal, both with Allied Construction Services, at work in one of the European collection galleries. The museum had renovated its European collection galleries.
2017 PHOTO: Artwork in the European collection waits to be hung in March 2017 at the Joslyn Art Museum. The space was under renovation for three months as the museum worked to switch out some of the artwork, refine the collection’s narrative, rewrite the labels that accompany each piece and incorporate interactive iPad stations into the exhibit.
2017 PHOTO: A sign outside the Joslyn Art Museum's European art galleries during renovations in spring 2017. The museum conducted focus groups and surveys to determine the new layout of the five galleries that hold the museum's European works.
2017 PHOTO: Dave Villarreal of Allied Construction Services takes a display fixture out of the wall of one of the European galleries at the Joslyn Art Museum during remodeling in April. It was the first renovation for the galleries since 2000.
elizabeth.freeman@owh.com, 402-444-1267
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Betsie covers a little bit of everything for The World-Herald's Living section, including theater, religion and anything else that might need attention. Phone: 402-444-1267.
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