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People love gardens and to garden. They go on tours of famous gardens all over the world. Of course our own Missouri Botanical Garden is world renowned.
Gardens are depicted in works of art going back to ancient times and in works of art being made to this day.
The Garden of Eden is the most famous of all gardens and great masters such as Jan Brueghel the Elder, Michelangelo and Lucas Cranach have painted their interpretations of that magical, mystical garden.
Just recently there have been art exhibitions right here in St. Louis in which the garden was the central focus. The Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis (CAM) featured work by Ebony Patterson, a Jamaican born artist who studied at Washington University and now resides in Chicago. She s had exhibitions all over the country in prestigious museums and galleries.
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Change it s hard, but can sometimes have positive results. We are in the middle of very unexpected change. This miserable pandemic has forced us to reflect on what has been and what might be coming.
Then we were hit on the head with more racial strife with awful tragedies occurring all over our country.
The arts are always at the forefront of change in our society and so I approached some respected leaders in the arts community and asked them how they were handling both the pandemic and equity, diversity and inclusion.
Andrew Jorgensen, General Director of Opera Theatre of St. Louis, says that the organization is adapting to the pandemic in many ways. First of all, the actual annual festival will be presented outdoors and many talks and musical programs have been presented on-line. As for diversity, equity and inclusion, Opera Theatre has been committed to this issue for years. Two operas presented recently, Champion and Fire Shut Up in My Bones, were a part of