By John Cain
South Shore Arts at the Center for Visual and Performing Arts in Munster is currently presenting the 67th Annual Salon Show through March 27. The exhibit is free.
The Salon Show is a tradition that has defined South Shore Arts since its inception in the late 1930s, when 120 Hammond and Calumet City, Ill., artists sponsored the first Art Exhibition of the Hammond District Art Association in the millinery department of the Minas Department Store in downtown Hammond.
The exhibit came about when Hammond sign painter O.O. Haag and Edward C. Minas Jr. met to discuss a sign to be painted on the Sibley Street side of the store. Their discussion led Minas to ask if an exhibit might be held there, just as Marshall Field & Co. had housed the annual Hoosier Salon Exhibition in its State Street picture galleries until discontinuing it a few years before. The invitation was enthusiastically accepted.
The public came out in great numbers to see the work done by regional artists. The exhibit included 99 pieces of art with prizes totaling around $425. Since 1989, the Salon Show has been presented at the Center for Visual and Performing Arts with a purse of $10,000. The first Helen V. Surovek Memorial Award was presented at the opening of the 46th Annual Salon Show in October of that year as the exhibit's top prize. At $2,000, it has remained the Salon Show's most generously funded award.
Although the Salon Show was not juried until 1942 – prizes were instead awarded by popular vote – jurying has been the accepted practice ever since. This year's juror is Lanny Silverman, who has more than 30 years experience curating and promoting contemporary and avant garde art forms from our own and other cultures. As curator of exhibitions for the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs at the Chicago Cultural Center since March 1990, he has curated more than 90 exhibitions, most notably Sowers of Myth (1991); Michiko Itatani: Paintings Since 1984 (1992); The Nature of the Machine (1993); ConTextual: Art & Text In Chicago (2001); Leon Golub: Works Since 1947 (2003); Nick Cave: Soundsuits (2006); Karl Wirsum: Winsome Works(some) (2007); William Conger: Paintings 1958-2008 (2009); and Diane Simpson: Sculpture + Drawings, 1978-2009 (2010).
The Northwest Indiana Symphony Orchestra will present a series of three classical concerts through the winter months and into the spring in the auditorium at Bethel Church in Crown Point. The first will feature acclaimed pianist Daria Rabotkina playing Rachmaninoff's romantic second piano concerto on Friday, Feb. 11. A month later, on Friday, March 11, 26-year-old cellist Joshua Roman, dubbed a “Classical Rock Star” by the press, will join the orchestra for a performance of Dvorak's cello concerto. On Friday, April 8, the Symphony Chorus will be featured in Carl Orff's cantata, “Carmina Burana,” one of the most recognized and loved pieces in the choral repertoire.
Tickets are available online at www.nisorchestra.org or through the symphony box office, 219/836-0525, ext. 200.
