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2008-2009 ARTS PLANNER
Austin's arts season gets ready for full bloom
AMERICAN-STATESMAN ARTS CRITIC
Thursday, September 04, 2008
With the calendar flipping from August to September, Austin's arts landscape reaches full bloom.
And what a sizeable arts scene it is. According to the recently released city-commissioned Create Austin Cultural Master Plan, Austin's not-for-profit performing arts and visual arts groups — featured in this XL guide — generate $532 million in economic activity, $6 million in local tax revenue and reach an aggregate audience of more than 2.5 million every year. Arts-related tourism produces more than $1 billion in economic impact for Austin.
The scene continues to grow. In March, the much anticipated $77 million Long Center — more than a decade and a half in the envisioning — opened with great fanfare. The center's two venues will stay busy — providing a permanent performance home for Austin Lyric Opera, Austin Symphony Orchestra and Ballet Austin, as well as playing host to a variety of community groups and its own schedule of shows.
Come January, the University of Texas will reopen Bass Concert Hall. The 25-year-old, 3,000-seat theater has undergone a much-needed $14.7 million renovation. And with the Bass re-opening, the touring Broadway musicals come back to town.
Also exhibiting solid evidence of growth, the Blanton Museum of Art — which has exceeded attendance estimates since it opened in 2006 — will open the doors Nov. 16 to its 56,000-square-foot Edgar A. Smith Building. With a high-tech auditorium, a cafe, a museum shop and classrooms, the facilities at the Smith Building will expand the museum-going experience that's offered by the galleries of the Blanton's James A. Michener Building.
Downtown, Arthouse will begin the architecturally significant renovation of its historic Congress Avenue home in June.
But arts building projects are only part of what's on the horizon this season. Whether it's dance, theater, music or visual arts, Austin arts groups will present surprising new productions of all kinds as well as re-stagings of classics, the freshest in contemporary art and also important retrospective exhibitions.
Save this guide so you can pencil in your own personal dates with Austin creativity.
jvanryzin@statesman.com; 445-3699
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