Arts Office Hands Out Awards

A project to mount flowers on trees around Harvard Yard and the revival of a ballet based on the comic strip "Krazy Kat" were among the 10 offbeat proposals selected this week to receive funds from the Harvard-Radcliffe Arts Council.

The 10-member council doled out nearly $7000 for projects in dance, literature, music, theater, visual arts and multimedia, said Mary Caldwell, assistant director of the Office of the Arts. The 10 winners were selected from a pool of 35 proposals.

"The primary idea behind the grants is funding innovative or experimental art projects that leave a ripple effect on the undergraduate community," Caldwell said.

Only 70 percent of the $10,000 available was awarded by the council. "There's slightly less funding this year than there was last year," said Louis J. Bakanowsky, the director of the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, who has chaired the Arts Council for 10 years. Funding each year depends on what was granted the previous year, Bakanowsky said.

Flowers in Trees

Amanda R. Guest '87 received funding to mount flowers in Harvard Yard trees on the first day of spring. "Huge nets covered with flowers will look like tapestries," Guest said. "People can take the flowers, smell the flowers, see the flowers. The simplicity of it is what I like."

In the dance category, grant money from the council will be used to fund a revival and expansion of the ballet "Krazy Kat," which will be produced by Matthew I. Cohen '88, Claire A. Reinhardt '88, and Joy F. Sable '88.

Claire Mallardi, Radcliffe dance program coordinator, also received a grant which she will use to choreograph and perform an original dance piece.

Three grants were awarded in the literary category. "Atlas," a magazine chronicling the experiences of undergraduates who have taken time away from Harvard and the Kirkland House workshop with poet Desmond O'Grady received funds. The office gave Tobias M. Lederberg '88 monetary support for the establishment of the Harvard Art Club and a new magazine dedicated to the visual arts.

In the theater category, the Harvard-Radcliffe Classics Club for the production of Sophocles' "Ajax" was given money as well as Rebecca L. Crandall '87 for her staging of excerpts from Milan Kundera's "The Book of Laughter and Forgetting."

In the visual arts category, five recipients received money: the Harvard Radcliffe Architecture and Design Group for an environmental arts competition; the Dudley House Art Gallery for student exhibits; Maria Agui '87 for an original film-poem to deconstruct the traditional image of women in art; and Camille Landau '90 for a late-night student art gallery.

In the music catagory, three grants will fund projects by the Harvard-Radcliffe Collegium Musicum, the Harvard Wind Ensemble, and the Radcliffe Choral Society.