A 20-percent budget reduction for the Indiana Arts Commission will affect as many as 400 grant-dependent organizations
across the state. The agency’s overall budget will shrink from $4 million in 2009 to $3.2 million for the
next two fiscal years.
A gentleman from Fort Wayne died last month. The cancer caught up to him just a few days before his 80th birthday. Like many
of us native Hoosiers, this fellow was born of working folks. His dad was a traveling hardware salesman,
his mom a homemaker.
Reports of a Hulman-George family feud proved dead-on accurate when matriarch Mari Hulman-George issued a statement June
30 confirming the ouster of her son, Tony, as CEO of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and the family business empire. Shortly
thereafter, Tony George also resigned as CEO of the Indy Racing League.
In a saturated gambling market, Indiana casinos increasingly rely on expanded entertainment options to
attract patrons. The upshot is that an industry once considered “recession-proof” is asking
the General Assembly for lower taxes and hopes to eliminate expensive regulatory requirements like maintaining engines
and crews.
The upcoming print issue of IBJ will include a preview of the Indianapolis International Film Festival, including our guide to the Best of the Fest. When that hits the stands, you’ll also find a rundown of Recommends, If You…
Indiana and Indianapolis arts agencies will receive more than a half-million dollars in federal stimulus money to help save
jobs at local organizations, the National Endowment for the Arts announced today. A second round of American Recovery and
Reinvestment Act funding includes $250,000 for the Arts Council of Indianapolis.
In addition to its slate of plays and musicals, Indianapolis Civic Theatre will be adding a pair of concerts to the upcoming season.
Currently being considered are concert versions of “Hair,” and “Rent.” Tickets will be $24 with performances Oct. 2-4 and…
Hard drives fail—almost all of them, at one point or another. Back-ups are a little clunky to set up
and keep up with, so most people I know ignore it. I finally decided I couldn’t avoid it any longer.
Last week’s column about the wide array of events on our July sports calendar in Indy was glaringly lacking in
one aspect: The Indiana Fever. As of this writing, they are the hottest team in the WNBA, reversing an
0-2 start and racing to six straight victories.
I entered "Tutankhamun: The Golden King and the Great Pharoahs" (at the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis through Oct. 25) with a limited knowledge of Egyptian history—and by limited, I mean loose threads picked up from a handful of Mummy movies, the Bible, and a few too many productions of "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat."
Indiana’s struggling gambling industry didn’t get the relief it sought during the special session of the Indiana General Assembly. But embedded within the budget bill approved June 30 is a provision creating a gambling summer study committee. Its recommendations, due by Dec. 1, may make or break several of Indiana’s casinos.
A locally born initiative to make a movie about the first Indianapolis 500 has cleared a major obstacle to getting its project to big screens nationwide by May 2011—in time for the race’s centennial.
Search the Web for Naisa and you may come up with the North American International Auto Show or the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association. Neither has anything to do with the new Naisa Pan-Asian Cafe (1025 Virginia Ave., 602-3708), where the name comes from simply reversing the letters in the word Asian.
I spent much of the weekend participating in panel discussions, leading a pub trivia game, assisting a charity auction, and playing games with my son, all at the InConjunction convention. (Particularly popular: The card games Fluxx and Castle.) Didn’t make it…
"Arts organizations that consistently do good work and are aggressive about their marketing are the ones
which succeed, both programmatically and financially."…
Just when you’ve made it through another unfocused prison break sequence or another bank job more about the
sound of the machine guns then the strategy or risk of the heist, “Public Enemies” gives a glimmer of hope
it’s going…
One of just three Maker’s Mark restaurants in the country—the others are in Louisville, Ky., and Kansas City,
Mo.—the upscale eatery would have been a good fit in downtown Indianapolis or in one of the suburban dining-and-shopping
meccas.
The gilded exhibit, a happy byproduct of the museum’s close relationship with an Egyptian institution, is more of a gift than
a major moneymaker.
For all the heat and sunshine, July can be a cold, dark hole in the Indianapolis
sports calendar. Other than the ever-beloved Indianapolis Indians, sometimes there’s not much going on.
There’s nothing like following the wildly influential thinker Charles Darwin’s own footsteps, which I had the pleasure of doing by visiting the beautiful, mysterious, isolated and enchanted Galapagos Islands.
