Summer Arts@VirginiaTech brings a robust schedule of arts programming to Blacksburg
A rich and diverse schedule of summer arts programming, including outdoor concerts, professional opera productions, children’s theatre performances, and visual arts exhibitions, will fill Blacksburg’s summer calendar.
The events are presented by the university’s academic art programs and arts presenters that collectively form Arts@VirginiaTech and community partners in Blacksburg.
New this summer will be three feature performances in June presented by the Center for the Arts at Virginia Tech — topnotch bluegrass with a twist by the Kruger Brothers; a performance co-presented with the Crooked Road by Còig, a line-up of five solo artists from Nova Scotia originally formed as a promotional band for the Celtic Colours International Festival; and one of the best-loved Italian operas, Giacomo Puccini’s “Madama Butterfly” in a semi-staged performance by the Ash Lawn Opera Young Artists.
The Summer Arts Festival returns in June, featuring a series of eight Friday evening outdoor concerts on Henderson Lawn and classic movie showings at the Lyric Theatre. The festival also includes four performances of the Roanoke Children’s Theatre’s production of “Fancy Nancy: The Musical.” The Summer Arts Festival 2015 is sponsored by Virginia Tech’s School of Performing Arts and the Town of Blacksburg.
Virginia Tech galleries will offer a summer full of exhibitions, featuring paintings, weavings, and visual representations of poetry. The Center for the Arts will present a suite of exhibitions from June 4-Aug. 9 by local artists Pat West, Charlotte Chan, Marie Collier, and Betty Moore. The exhibition brings together works of art that portray the beauty of nature, both real and reimagined.
The paintings on display in the Moss Arts Center galleries will be complemented by poetry by area writers related to the concepts of garden, paradise, refuge, and retreat. In addition to evening readings by participating authors, their words will be featured on the Moss Arts Center's gallery walls, in the hallways, and in the Grand Lobby.
The Perspective Gallery in Squires Student Center will feature watercolor paintings by Donald Sunshine, a professor emeritus from Virginia Tech’s College of Architecture and Urban Studies, alongside weavings by Joanna Sunshine. The exhibition will run from June 5-Aug. 9.
The School of Visual Arts in Virginia Tech’s College of Architecture and Urban Studies will present two exhibitions this summer — “Evocative/Recollective: Paintings by Mary Moore,” which runs June 5-July 18 and “Assemblage: Works from the Virginia Tech Collection,” from July 27-Aug. 29 in the Armory Art Gallery.
Dedicated to its motto, Ut Prosim (That I May Serve), Virginia Tech takes a hands-on, engaging approach to education, preparing scholars to be leaders in their fields and communities. As the commonwealth’s most comprehensive university and its leading research institution, Virginia Tech offers 240 undergraduate and graduate degree programs to more than 31,000 students and manages a research portfolio of $513 million. The university fulfills its land-grant mission of transforming knowledge to practice through technological leadership and by fueling economic growth and job creation locally, regionally, and across Virginia.
