This Week's Connecticut Arts Connections

The interior of the beautiful Palace Theater in Waterbury. Photo: © Louis Belloisy

Dust-off the scrapbooks and help the Palace Theater take a stroll down memory lane as the organization begins gathering memorabilia for an historical exhibit scheduled to debut in the Fall of 2014, in honor of the performing art center’s 10th anniversary.

To commemorate the milestone event, the theater is asking the public to take part in an historical exhibit celebrating the theater’s rich history by donating or lending any Palace memorabilia collected since its official opening in 1922. Playbills, posters, ticket stubs, movie promotional items, business records, ledgers from previous employees and photos of good times spent in the theater are all welcome.

To donate memorabilia for the exhibit, contact Marketing and Public Relations Officer Sheree Marcucci at 203-346-2008 or marcucci@palacetheaterct.org.

• The Harriet Beecher Stowe Center will receive $150,000 from the Museums for America program at the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) to preserve the Stowe Center's collections. The Stowe Center grant will support acquisition of climate control and fire suppression systems for the Stowe House as well as architect/engineer and conservator fees. The work is part of phase two of a multi-year Collections Preservation project to renovate and restore Stowe's home, recently named a National Historic Landmark. Upgrades will include state of the art climate control and fire suppression, interior renovations and collections conservation. 

• In honor of the 40th anniversary of the Center for the Arts, "The Alumni Show II" will be on view in Wesleyan University’s Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery through Dec. 8. Organized by guest curator John Ravenal '81, P'15, the Sydney and Frances Lewis Family Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond, the exhibition features work that spans a broad range of contemporary practice and media, including painting, sculpture, drawing, installation art, video art, performance, and films. THe gallery is located at 283 Washington Terrace on the Wesleyan campus in Middletown. Hours are Tuesday through Sunday from Noon to 5pm. Gallery admission is free. 

• Special gallery hours on Nov. 2 will be from noon to 6 pm, with the free event "We Buy White Albums" by Rutherford Chang '02 taking place from 2 to 6 pm. The public will be able to browse a collection of over 750 first-pressings of The Beatles’ "The White Album" (1968), and sell copies to Mr. Chang. He usually pays up to $20 per copy, and also happily accepts donations of copies of the album. He has also created a new version of the album—which visitors can play in the gallery—by layering recordings from 100 albums in his collection over one anotherThe exhibition will be closed from Wednesday, Nov. 20 through Monday, Nov. 25 for the Thanksgiving holiday. (860) 685-3355, or visit http://www.wesleyan.edu/cfa.

• Wendy C. Goldberg, Artistic Director of the National Playwrights Conference (NPC), has renewed her contract to continue at the head of the center's founding program. The Eugene O'Neill Theater Center will celebrate its 50th Anniversary next summer, which will also mark Goldberg's 10th season as Artistic Director of the Playwrights Conference.

• Lisa O'Hare, Lauren Worsham, Jane Carr, Pamela Bob, Joanna Glushak, Eddie Korbich, Jeff Kready, Mark Ledbetter, Jennifer Smith, Don Stephenson, Price Waldman,and Catherine Walker will join the previously announced stars, Jefferson Mays and Bryce Pinkham, in Broadway's  A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder. Following critically acclaimed, smash-hit runs at Hartford Stage and San Diego’s Old Globe Theatre, A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder will begin performances on Tuesday, Oct. 22 at Broadway’s Walter Kerr Theatre, and officially open on Sunday, Nov.17. Darko Tresnjak directs.

• The UConn Torrington ARTS Project presents an exhibit of Richard Heys’ work. "What’s in there? Exploring the beauty and energy within trees through woodturning." It features decorative and utilitarian wooden bowls, vases, lidded boxes and sculptural objects. The exhibition runs from Sept. 16 through Nov. 8 at the campus’ Brick Wall Space Gallery and Whitson Gallery. Richard Heys will give an artist’s talk in the Whitson Gallery on Oct. 10 at 7 pm.