KETC is the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) member Public television station in St. Louis, Missouri. Owned by St. Louis Regional Public Media, the call letters KETC represent the St. Louis Educational Television Comission, the former name of the organization responsible for bringing public television to St. Louis.

The station broadcasts in stereo and broadcasts a secondary audio program (SAP) channel, used for descriptive video service (DVS). The station's digital signal operates on UHF channel 39, using the station's former analog VHF channel 9 as its virtual channel via PSIP.

Some of the programs produced by KETC for nationwide consumption include Inside/Out and The Letter People, instructional program about reading, which was seen on many PBS and educational television stations in mid-1970s, A Time for Champions an hour long documentary chronicling the St. Louis University soccer dynasty of the 1960s and 1970s, and Homeland and upcoming limited series examining the topic of immigration in the United States.

History[link]

KETC building

KETC began broadcasting on September 20, 1954. Its first general manager was the well-known Shelby Storck, who also emceed the station's first evening of broadcasting. It was the first community-licensed educational station in the United States. It originally broadcast from the Baer Memorial Building on the campus of Washington University in St. Louis, the first facility specifically built for educational television. In 1998, it moved to the Dana Brown Communications Center in the Grand Center district.

During the 2004 elections, KETC partnered with area NBC affiliate KSDK, to provide St. Louisans with the comprehensive and up-to-date local and national election results. This partnership was first utilized to simulcast a gubernatorial debate between Missouri Secretary of State Matt Blunt (Republican) and State Auditor Claire McCaskill (Democrat). On election night, KSDK aired NBC's primetime election coverage with Tom Brokaw and Tim Russert as well as segments of local results. Meanwhile, KETC ran three hours of local election results hosted by KSDK anchors Mike Bush and Karen Foss. Viewers could also watch election results online on the stations' websites.

The successful KETC/KSDK partnership was used again in September 2005 when, along with radio partners KYKY (y98, 98.1FM) and KEZK (Soft Rock, 102.5FM), a telethon for Hurricane Katrina relief was simulcast that raised more than $5 million. The telethon featured an appearance by John Goodman, a native of Affton, Missouri who now calls New Orleans home and whose family was actually missing for a time during the storm's peak. Sheryl Crow, a native of Kennett, Missouri, and her then fiancé Lance Armstrong urged viewers to call when they were interviewed by phone from the region.

After being known for most of its history as "KETC 9," the station rebranded itself as "The Nine Network" in 2010.

KETC has acquired a certain infamy among viewers in St. Louis for preempting a large number of PBS programs to air library shows or less controversial programs, such as WQED's doo-wop specials, on a regular basis, preferring to air the network shows at late hours. However, KETC has been known to cave in to pressure regarding this: when St. Louis Post-Dispatch columnist Eric Mink wrote an editorial complaining about the station's scheduling a Stars on Ice show instead of a PBS September 11, 2001 documentary, KETC announced the next day that it would change and air the scheduled network program.

In May 2008, the E! cable network contracted with KETC to film two episodes of weekly pop culture series The Soup at its studios to accommodate host Joel McHale's filming of The Informant! in the St. Louis area [1].

The station has recently been partnered with the Saint Louis Beacon, an online-only, non-profit news publication, to form the Public Insight Network, a citizen journalism initiative created in conjunction with American Public Media. As of October 13, 2010

Digital television[link]

References[link]

External links[link]

• Official website
• Nine Kids & Family
• Query the FCC's TV station database for KETC
• BIAfn's Media Web Database -- Information on KETC-TV

Katherine Dunham
Katherine Dunham in 1956
Born	Katherine Mary Dunham (1909-06-22)June 22, 1909 Chicago, Illinois, USA
Died	May 21, 2006(2006-05-21) (aged 96) New York City, USA
Influenced by	Robert Redfield, Melville J. Herskovits
Spouse	Jordis W. McCoo (m.1931-1938; divorced) John Pratt (m.1951-1986; his death)

Katherine Dunham wearing dance costume

Katherine Dunham (June 22, 1909 – May 21, 2006) was an American dancer, choreographer, and company director as well as an author, educator, and social activist. Dunham had one of the most successful dance careers in American and European theater of the 20th century and has been called the "matriarch and queen mother of black dance."^[1]

During her heyday in the 1940s and 1950s, Dunham was renowned throughout Europe and Latin America and was widely popular in the United States, where the Washington Post called her "dance's Katherine the Great." For almost thirty years she maintained the Katherine Dunham Dance Company, the only self-supported American black dance troupe at that time, and over her long career she choreographed more than ninety individual dances.^[2] Dunham was an innovator in African-American modern dance as well as a leader in the field of dance anthropology, or ethnochoreology.

Early Years[link]

Katherine Mary Dunham was born in June 1909 in a Chicago hospital and taken as an infant to her parents' home in Glen Ellyn, Illinois, a village about fifteen miles west of Chicago. Her father, Albert Millard Dunham, was a descendant of slaves from West Africa and Madagascar. Her mother, Fanny June Dunham (née Taylor), who was of mixed French-Canadian and Native American heritage, died when Katherine was four years old. After her father's remarriage a few years later, the family moved to a predominately white neighborhood in Joliet, Illinois, where Mr. Dunham ran a dry cleaning business.^[3]

Katherine became interested in both writing and dance at a young age, displaying talent in both fields. In high school she joined the Terpsichorean Club and began to learn a kind of modern dance based on ideas of Jaques-Dalcroze and Rudolf von Laban. At the age of 15, she organized the Blue Moon Café, a fund-raising cabaret for Brown's Methodist Church in Joliet, where she gave her first public performance. While still a high-school student, she opened a private dance school for young black children.

Academic Anthropologist[link]

Upon completing her studies at Joliet Junior College, Katharine Dunham moved to Chicago to join her brother Albert, who was attending the University of Chicago as a student of philosophy. In a lecture by Robert Redfield, a professor of anthropology, she learned that much of black culture in modern America had begun in Africa. She consequently decided to major in anthropology and to focus on dances of the African diaspora. Besides Redford, she studied under some of the great anthropologists of the day, including A.R. Radcliffe-Brown, Edward Sapir, and Bronisław Malinowski. Under their tutelage, she showed great promise in her ethnographic studies of dance.^[4]

In 1935, Dunham was awarded travel fellowships from the Julius Rosenwald and Guggenheim foundations to conduct ethnographic study of the dance forms of the Caribbean, especially as manifested in the Vodun of Haiti, a path also followed by fellow anthropology student Zora Neale Hurston. She also received a grant to work with Professor Melville Herskovits of Northwestern University, whose ideas of African retention would serve as a platform for her research in the Caribbean. Herskovits provided her with invaluable information in preparation for her voyage.

Her stay in the Caribbean began in Jamaica, where she went to live several months in the remote Maroon village of Accompong, deep in the mountains of Cockpit Country. (She later wrote a book, Journey to Accompong, describing her experiences there.) Then she traveled on to Martinique and to Trinidad and Tobago for short stays, primarily to do an investigation of Shango, the African god who remained an important presence in West Indian heritage. Early in 1936 she arrived at last in Haiti, where she remained for several months, the first of her many extended stays in that country throughout the rest of her life.

While in Haiti, Dunham investigated Vodun rituals and made extensive notes on her research, particularly on the dance movements of the participants. Years later, after extensive studies and initiations, she became a mambo (priestess) in the Vodun religion. She also became friends with, among others, Dumarsais Estimé, then a high-level politician, who became president of Haiti in 1949. Somewhat later, she assisted him, at considerable risk to her life, when he was persecuted for his progressive policies and sent in exile to Jamaica after a coup d'état.

Dunham returned to Chicago in late spring of 1936 and in August was awarded a bachelor's degree, a Ph.B. (bachelor of philosophy), with her principal area of study named as "social anthropology." In 1938, using materials collected during her research tour of the Caribbean, Dunham submitted a thesis, "The Dances of Haiti: A Study of Their Material Aspect, Organization, Form, and Function," to the Department of Anthropology at the University of Chicago in partial fulfillment of the requirements for a master's degree, but she never completed her course work or took examinations to qualify for the degree. Devoted to dance performance as well as to anthropological research, she realized that she had to choose between them. Although she was offered another grant from the Rockefeller Foundation to pursue her academic studies, she chose dance, gave up her graduate studies, and departed for the bright lights of Broadway and Hollywood.^[5]

Dancer and Choreographer[link]

In 1928, while still an undergraduate, Dunham began to study ballet with Ludmilla Speranzeva, a Russian dancer who had settled in Chicago, having come to the United States with the Franco-Russian vaudeville troupe Le Théâtre de la Chauve-Souris directed by impresario Nikita Balieff. She also studied ballet with Mark Turbyfill and Ruth Page, who became prima ballerina of the Chicago Opera. Through her ballet teachers, she was also exposed to Spanish, East Indian, Javanese, and Balinese dance forms. In 1930, when she was only 21, Dunham formed a group called Ballets Nègres, one of the first black ballet companies in the United States. After a single, well-received performance in 1931, the group was disbanded. Encouraged by Speranzeva to focus on modern dance instead of ballet, Dunham opened her first real dance school in 1933. Called the Negro Dance Group, it was a venue for Dunham to teach young black dancers about their African heritage.

In 1934–36 Dunham performed as a guest artist with the ballet company of the Chicago Opera. Ruth Page had written a scenario and choreographed La Guiablesse ("The Devil Woman"), based on a Martinican folk tale in Lafcadio Hearne's Two Years in the French West Indies. It opened in Chicago in 1933, with a black cast and with Page dancing the title role. The next year it was repeated with Katherine Dunham in the lead and with students from Dunham's Negro Dance Group in the ensemble. Her dance career was then interrupted by her anthropological research in the Caribbean.

Having completed her undergraduate work at the University of Chicago and having made the decision to pursue a career as a dancer and choreographer rather than as an academic, Dunham revived her dance ensemble and in 1937 journeyed with them to New York to take part in "A Negro Dance Evening" organized by Edna Guy at the 92nd Street YMHA. The troupe performed a suite of West Indian dances in the first half of the program and a ballet entitled Tropic Death, with Talley Beatty, in the second half. Upon returning to Chicago, the company performed at the Goodman Theater and at the Abraham Lincoln Center. Dunham's well-known works Rara Tonga and Woman with a Cigar were created at this time. With choreography characterized by exotic sexuality, both became signature works in the Dunham repertory. After successful performances of her company, Dunham was named dance director of the Chicago Negro Theater Unit of the Federal Theater Project. In this post, she choreographed the Chicago production of Run Li'l Chil'lun, performed at the Goodman Theater, and produced several other works of choreography including The Emperor Jones and Barrelhouse.

At this time Dunham first became associated with designer John Pratt, whom she later married. Together, they produced the first version of her dance composition L'Ag'Ya, which premiered on January 27, 1938, as a part of the Federal Theater Project in Chicago. Based on her research in Martinique, this three-part performance integrated elements of a Martinique fighting dance into American ballet to achieve a remarkable degree of syncretism. This blending of cultures also appeared in the way that Dunham skillfully and stylistically employed choreographic techniques to evoke images of Afro-Caribbean customs and art.

In 1939, Dunham's company gave further performances in Chicago and Cincinnati and then went back to New York, where Dunham had been invited to stage a new number for the popular, long-running musical revue Pins and Needles 1940, produced by the International Ladies' Garment Workers Union. As this show continued its run at the Windsor Theater, Dunham booked her own company in the theater for a Sunday performance. This concert, billed as Tropics and Le Hot Jazz, included not only her favorite partners Archie Savage and Talley Beatty but her principal Haitian drummer, Papa Augustin. Initially scheduled for a single performance, the show was so popular that the troupe repeated it for another ten Sundays.

This success led to the entire company being engaged in the Broadway production Cabin in the Sky, staged by George Balanchine and starring Ethel Waters. With Dunham in the sultry role of temptress Georgia Brown, the show ran for twenty weeks in New York before moving to the West Coast for an extended run of performances there. The show created a minor controversy in the press over whether the torrid dance numbers with bare-midriffed and bare-torsoed performers represented "art" or "sex appeal." Most critics called it a draw.

After the national tour of Cabin in the Sky, the Dunham company stayed in Los Angeles, where they appeared in the Warner Brothers short film Carnival of Rhythm (1941). The next year Dunham appeared in the Paramount musical film Star Spangled Rhythm (1942) in a specialty number, "Sharp as a Tack," with Eddie "Rochester" Anderson. Other movies she appeared in during this period included the Abbott and Costello comedy Pardon My Sarong (1942) and the famous break-through black musical Stormy Weather (1943).^[6]

Later that year, they returned to New York, and in September 1943, under the management of the renowned impresario Sol Hurok, her troupe opened in Tropical Review at the Martin Beck Theater. Featuring lively Latin American and Caribbean dances, plantation dances, and American social dances, the show was an immediate success. The original two-week engagement was extended by popular demand into a three-month run, after which the company embarked on an extensive tour of the United States and Canada. In Boston, the bastion of conservatism, the show was banned in 1944 after only one performance. Although it was well received by the audience, local censors feared that the revealing costumes and provocative dances might compromise public morals. After the tour, in 1945, the Dunham company appeared in the short-lived Blue Holiday at the Belasco Theater in New York and in the more successful Carib Song at the Adelphi Theatre. The finale to the first act of this show was Shango, a staged interpretation of a Vodun ritual that would become a permanent part of the company's repertory.

In 1946 Dunham returned to Broadway for a revue entitled Bal Nègre, which received glowing notices from theater and dance critics. Early in 1947 Dunham choreographed the musical play Windy City, which premiered at the Great Northern Theater in Chicago, and later in the year she opened a cabaret show in Las Vegas, marking the first year that the city became a popular entertainment destination. Later that year she went with her troupe to Mexico, where their performances were so popular that they remained for more than two months. After Mexico, Dunham began touring in Europe, where she was an immediate sensation. In 1948 she opened A Caribbean Rhapsody first at the Prince of Wales Theatre in London, then swept on to the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris, where the company took the city by storm. She and her dancers were treated as members of the jet set, mixing with nobility and celebrities such as famous French actor Maurice Chevalier.

This was the beginning of more than twenty years of performing almost exclusively outside America. During these years, the Dunham company appeared in some thirty-three countries in Europe, North Africa, South America, Australia, and East Asia. Dunham continued to develop dozens of new productions during this period, and the company met with enthusiastic audiences wherever they went. Despite these successes, the company frequently ran into periods of financial difficulties, as Dunham was required to support all of the thirty to forty dancers and musicians.

In 1948, Dunham and her company appeared in the Hollywood movie Casbah, with Tony Martin, Yvonne de Carlo, and Peter Lorre, and in the Italian film Botta e Risposta, produced by Dino de Laurentiis. Also that year they appeared in the first ever hour-long American spectacular televised by NBC when television was first beginning to spread across America. This was followed by television spectaculars filmed in London, Buenos Aires, Toronto, Sydney, and Mexico City.

In 1950, Sol Hurok presented Katherine Dunham and Her Company in a dance revue at the Broadway Theater in New York, with a program composed of some of Dunham's best works. It closed after only thirty-eight performances, and the company soon thereafter embarked on a tour of venues in South America, Europe, and North Africa. They had particular success in Denmark and France. In the mid-1950s, Dunham and her company appeared in three films: Mambo (1954), made in Italy; Die Grosse Starparade (1954), made in Germany; and Música en la Noche (1955), made in Mexico City.

The Dunham company's international tours ended in Vienna in 1960, when it was stranded without money because of bad management by their impresario. Dunham saved the day by arranging for the company to appear in a German television special, Karaibishe Rhythmen, after which they returned to America. Dunham's last appearance on Broadway was in 1962 in Bamboche!, which included a few former Dunham dancers in the cast and a contingent of dancers and dummers from the Royal Troupe of Morocco. It was not a success, closing after only eight performances.

A highlight of Dunham's later career was the invitation from New York's Metropolitan Opera to stage dances for a new production of Aida starring Leontyne Price. Thus, in 1963, she became the first African-American to choreograph for the Met since Hemsley Winfield set the dances for The Emperor Jones in 1933. The critics acknowledged the historical research she did on dance in ancient Egypt but did not particularly care for the results they saw on the Met stage.^[7] Subsequently, Dunham undertook various choreographic commissions at several venues in the United States and in Europe. In 1967 she officially retired after presenting a final show at the famous Apollo Theater in Harlem, New York. Even in retirement Dunham continued to choreograph: one of her major works was directing Scott Joplin's opera Treemonisha in 1972 at Morehouse College in Atlanta.

In 1978 Dunham was featured in the PBS special, Divine Drumbeats: Katherine Dunham and Her People, narrated by James Earl Jones, as part of the Dance in America series. Alvin Ailey later produced a tribute for her in 1987-8 with his American Dance Theater at Carnegie Hall entitled The Magic of Katherine Dunham.

Educator and Writer[link]

In 1945, Dunham opened and directed the Katherine Dunham School of Dance and Theatre near Times Square in New York City after her dance company was provided with rent-free studio space for three years by an admirer, Lee Shubert; it had an initial enrollment of 350 students.

The program included courses in dance, drama, performing arts, applied skills, humanities, cultural studies, and Caribbean research, and in 1947 it was expanded and granted a charter as the Katherine Dunham School of Cultural Arts. The school was managed in Dunham's absence by one of her dancers, Syvilla Fort, thrived for about ten years, and was considered one of the best learning centers of its type at the time. Schools inspired by it later opened in Stockholm, Paris, and Rome by dancers trained by Dunham.

Her alumni included many future celebrities, such as Eartha Kitt, who, as a teenager, won a scholarship to her school and later became one of her dancers before moving on to a successful singing career. Others who attended her school included James Dean, Gregory Peck, Jose Ferrer, Jennifer Jones, Shelley Winters, Sidney Poitier, Shirley MacLaine, Doris Duke, and Warren Beatty. Marlon Brando frequently dropped in to play the bongo drums, and jazz musician Charles Mingus held regular jam sessions with the drummers. Known for her many innovations, Dunham developed a dance pedagogy, later named the Dunham Technique, that won international acclaim and that is now taught as a modern dance style in many dance schools.

By 1957, Dunham was under severe personal strain that was affecting her health, and she decided to live for a year in relative isolation in Kyoto, Japan, where she worked on writing autobiographies of her youth. The first work, entitled A Touch of Innocence: Memoirs of Childhood, was published in 1959. A continuation based on her experiences in Haiti, Island Possessed, was published in 1969, and a fictional work based on her African experiences, Kasamance: A Fantasy, was published in 1974. Throughout her career, she occasionally published articles about her anthropological research (sometimes under the pseudonym of Kaye Dunn) and sometimes lectured on anthropological topics at universities and scholarly societies.^[8]

In 1964, Dunham settled in East St. Louis and took up the post of artist-in-residence at Southern Illinois University in nearby Edwardsville. There she was able to bring anthropologists, sociologists, educational specialists, scientists, writers, musicians, and theater people together to create a liberal arts curriculum that would be a foundation for further college work. One of her fellow professors with whom she collaborated was renowned architect Buckminister Fuller, who has been called the "planet's friendly genius."

The following year, 1965, President Lyndon Johnson nominated Dunham to be technical cultural adviser—that is, a sort of cultural ambassador—to the government of Senegal in West Africa. Her mission was to help train the Senegalese National Ballet and to assist President Leopold Senghor with arrangements for the First Pan-African World Festival of Negro Arts in Dakar (1965–66). Later she established a second home in Senegal and occasionally returned there to scout for talented African musicians and dancers.

In 1967, Dunham opened the Performing Arts Training Center (PATC) in East St. Louis as an attempt to use the arts to combat poverty and urban unrest. It served as a catharsis after the 1968 riots, during which she encouraged gang members in the ghetto to vent their frustrations with drumming and dance. The PATC drew on former members of Dunham's touring company as well as local residents for its teaching staff. While trying to help the young people in the community she was even jailed herself, making international headlines which quickly embarrassed local police officials to release her. She also continued refining and teaching the Dunham Technique to transmit that knowledge to succeeding generations of dance students, and lecturing at annual Masters' Seminars in St. Louis that attracted dance students from around the world every summer until her death. She also established the [Katherine Dunham Centers for Arts and Humanities] in East St. Louis to preserve Haitian and African instruments and artifacts from her own personal collection.

In 1976 Dunham was guest artist-in-residence and lecturer for Afro-American studies at the University of California, Berkeley. A photographic exhibit honoring her achievements, entitled "Kaiso! Katherine Dunham," was mounted a the Women's Center on the campus. In 1978, an anthology of writings by and about her, also entitled Kaiso! Katherine Dunham, was published in a limited, numbered edition of 130 copies by the Institute for the Study of Social Change.

Social Activist[link]

The Katherine Dunham Company toured throughout North America in the mid-1940s, even performing in the then-segregated South, where Dunham once refused to hold a show after finding out that the city's black residents had not been allowed to buy tickets for the performance. On another occasion, in October 1944, after getting a rousing standing ovation in Louisville, Kentucky, she told the all-white audience that she and her company would not return because "your management will not allow people like you to sit next to people like us," and she expressed a hope that time and the "war for tolerance and democracy" would bring a change.^[9] One historian noted that "during the course of the tour, Dunham and the troupe had recurrent problems with racial discrimination, leading her to a posture of militancy which was to characterize her subsequent career."

In Hollywood, Dunham refused to sign a lucrative studio contract when the producer said she would have to replace some of her darker-skinned company members. She and her company frequently had difficulties finding adequate accommodations while on tour because in many regions of the country, black Americans were not allowed to stay at hotels. This was also true elsewhere in the world.

While Dunham was recognized as "unofficially" representing American cultural life in her foreign tours, she was given very little assistance of any kind by the U.S. State Department. She had incurred the displeasure of departmental officials when her company performed Southland, a ballet that dramatized the lynching of a black man in the racist American South, in Santiago, Chile, in 1951.^[10] The State Department was dismayed by the negative view of American society that the ballet presented to foreign audiences. As a result, Dunham would later experience some diplomatic "difficulties" on her tours. The State Department regularly subsidized other less well-known groups, but it consistently refused to support her company (even when it was entertaining U.S. Army troops), although at the same time it did not hesitate to take credit for them as "unofficial artistic and cultural representatives."

The Afonso Arinos Law in Brazil[link]

In 1950, while visiting Brazil, Dunham and her group were refused rooms at a first-class hotel in São Paulo, the Hotel Esplanada, frequented by many American businessmen. Understanding that the fact was due to racial discrimination, she made sure the incident was publicized. The incident was widely discussed in the Brazilian press and became a hot political issue. In response, the Afonso Arinos law was passed in 1951 that made racial discrimination in public places a felony in Brazil.^{[11][12][13][14][15][16]}

Hunger Strike[link]

In 1992, at age 82, Dunham went on a highly publicized hunger strike to protest the discriminatory U.S. foreign policy against Haitian boat-people. Time reported that, "she went on a 47-day hunger strike to protest the U.S.'s forced repatriation of Haitian refugees. "My job", she said, "is to create a useful legacy."^[17] During her protest, Dick Gregory led a non-stop vigil at her home, where many disparate personalities came to show their respect, such Debbie Allen, Jonathan Demme, and Louis Farrakhan, leader of the Nation of Islam.

This initiative drew international publicity to the plight of the Haitian boat-people and U.S. discrimination against them. Dunham ended her fast only after exiled Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide and Jesse Jackson came to her and personally requested that she stop risking her life for this cause. After it ended, ABC News nominated her as Person of the Week.^{[citation needed]} In recognition of her stance, President Aristide later awarded her a medal of Haiti's highest honor and called her the "Spiritual Mother of Haiti".^{[citation needed]}

Private Life[link]

Dunham married Jordis McCoo, a black postal worker, in 1931, but he did not share her interests and they gradually drifted apart, finally divorcing in 1938. About that time Dunham met and began to work with John Thomas Pratt, a Canadian who had become one of America's most renowned costume and theatrical set designers. Pratt, who was white, shared Dunham's interests in African-Caribbean cultures and was happy to put his talents in her service. After he became her artistic collaborator, they became romantically involved, despite the difference in their races. In the summer of 1941, after the national tour of Cabin in the Sky ended, they went to Mexico, where inter-racial marriages were less controversial than in the United States, and engaged in a commitment ceremony on 20 July, which thereafter they gave as the date of their wedding.^[18] In fact, that ceremony was not recognized as a legal marriage in the United States, a point of law that would come to trouble them some years later. In any case, from the beginning of their association, around 1938, Pratt designed every costume Dunham ever wore. He continued as her artistic collaborator and manager of her career until his death in 1986.

When she was not performing, Dunham and Pratt often visited Haiti for extended stays. On one of these visits during the late 1940s she purchased a large property of more than seven hectares in the Carrefours suburban area of Port-au-Prince. Reputed to have once belonged to General Charles Leclerc, husband of Pauline Bonaparte, Napoleon's sister, it was known as Habitation Leclerc and was famous for its tropical forest and flowing spring, a major source of drinking water for the city and a sacred site in the Vodun religion. Dunham used Habitation Leclerc as a private retreat for many years, frequently bringing members of her dance company to recuperate from the stress of touring and to work on developing new dance productions. After running it as a tourist spot, with Vodun dancing as entertainment, in the early 1960s, she sold it to a French entrepreneur in the early 1970s. There was once talk of turning Habitation Leclerc into a botantical garden named in honor of Dunham, but all such hopes were abandoned when the property was virtually destroyed by the great earthquake of 2011.

In 1949 Dunham returned from international touring with her company for a brief stay in the United States, where she suffered a temporary nervous breakdown after the premature death of her beloved brother Albert. He had been a promising philosophy professor at Howard University and a protégé of Alfred North Whitehead. During this time, she developed a warm friendship with famous psychologist and humanistic philosopher Erich Fromm, whom she had known in Europe. He was only one of a number of international celebrities who were Dunham's friends. In December 1951, a photo of Dunham dancing with Ismaili Muslim leader Prince Ali Khan at a private party he had hosted for her in Paris appeared in a popular magazine and fueled rumors that the two were romantically linked.^[19] Both Dunham and the prince denied the suggestion. The prince was then married to glamorous Hollywood actress Rita Hayworth, and Dunham was, at long last, legally married to John Pratt, having wedded him in a quiet ceremony in Las Vegas earlier in the year.^[20] The couple had then officially adopted their foster daughter, a four-year-old girl they had found as an infant in a Roman Catholic convent nursery in Fresnes, France. Named Marie-Christine Dunham Pratt, she was their only child.

Among Dunham's closest friends and colleagues was Julie Robinson, formerly a performer with the Katherine Dunham Company, and her husband, singer and later political activist Harry Belafonte. Both remained close friends of Dunham for many years, until her death. Glory Van Scott and Jean-Léon Destiné were among other former Dunham dancers who remained her lifelong friends.^[21]

Death[link]

Katherine Dunham died in her sleep in New York City from old age on May 21, 2006, aged ninety-six.^[22]

Legacy[link]

Anna Kisselgoff, a dance critic for the New York Times, called Dunham "a major pioneer in Black theatrical dance . . . ahead of her time." "In introducing authentic African dance-movements to her company and audiences, Dunham—perhaps more than any other choreographer of the time—exploded the possibilities of modern dance expression."

As one of her biographers, Joyce Aschenbrenner, wrote: "Today, it is safe to say, there is no American black dancer who has not been influenced by the Dunham Technique, unless he or she works entirely within a classical genre", and the Dunham Technique is still taught to anyone who studies modern dance.

The highly respected Dance magazine did a feature cover story on Dunham in August 2000 entitled "One-Woman Revolution." As Wendy Perron wrote, "Jazz dance, 'fusion,' and the search for our cultural identity all have their antecedents in Dunham's work as a dancer, choreographer, and anthropologist. She was the first American dancer to present indigenous forms on a concert stage, the first to sustain a black dance company. . . . She created and performed in works for stage, clubs, and Hollywood films; she started a school and a technique that continue to flourish; she fought unstintingly for racial justice."

Scholar of the arts Harold Cruse wrote in 1964: "Her early and life-long search for meaning and artistic values for black people, as well as for all peoples, has motivated, created opportunities for, and launched careers for generations of young black artists ... Afro-American dance was usually in the avant-garde of modern dance ... Dunham's entire career spans the period of the emergence of Afro-American dance as a serious art."

Black writer Arthur Todd described her as "one of our national treasures." Regarding her impact and effect he wrote: "The rise of American Negro dance commenced . . . when Katherine Dunham and her company skyrocketed into the Windsor Theater in New York, from Chicago in 1940, and made an indelible stamp on the dance world. . . . Miss Dunham opened the doors that made possible the rapid upswing of this dance for the present generation." "What Dunham gave modern dance was a coherent lexicon of African and Caribbean styles of movement—a flexible torso and spine, articulated pelvis and isolation of the limbs, a polyrhythmic strategy of moving—which she integrated with techniques of ballet and modern dance." "Her mastery of body movement was considered 'phenomenal.' She was hailed for her smooth and fluent choreography and dominated a stage with what has been described as 'an unmitigating radiant force providing beauty with a feminine touch full of variety and nuance."

Richard Buckle, ballet historian and critic, wrote: "Her company of magnificent dancers and musicians . . . met with the success it has and that herself as explorer, thinker, inventor, organizer, and dancer should have reached a place in the estimation of the world, has done more than a million pamphlets could for the service of her people."

"Dunham's European success led to considerable imitation of her work in European revues . . . it is safe to say that the perspectives of concert-theatrical dance in Europe were profoundly affected by the performances of the Dunham troupe."

While in Europe, she also influenced hat styles on the continent as well as spring fashion collections, featuring the Dunham line and Caribbean Rhapsody, and the Chiroteque Française made a bronze cast of her feet for a museum of important personalities."

The Katherine Dunham Company became an incubator for many well known performers, including Archie Savage, Talley Beatty, Janet Collins, Lenwood Morris, Vanoye Aikens, Lucille Ellis, Pearl Reynolds, Camille Yarbrough, Lavinia Williams, and Tommy Gomez.

Alvin Ailey, who stated that he first became interested in dance as a professional career after having seen a performance of the Katherine Dunham Company as a young teenager of 14 in Los Angeles, called the Dunham Technique "the closest thing to a unified Afro-American dance existing."

For several years Dunham's personal assistant and press promoter was Maya Deren, who later also became interested in Vodun and wrote The Divine Horseman: The Voodoo Gods of Haiti (1953). Deren is now considered to be a pioneer of independent American filmmaking. Dunham herself was quietly involved in both the Voodoo and Orisa communities of the Caribbean and the United States, in particular with the Lucumi tradition.

Not only did Dunham shed light on the cultural value of black dance, but she clearly contributed to changing perceptions of blacks in America by showing society that as a black woman, she could be an intelligent scholar, a beautiful dancer, and a skilled choreographer. As Julia Foulkes pointed out, "Dunham's path to success lay in making high art in the United States from African and Caribbean sources, capitalizing on a heritage of dance within the African Diaspora, and raising perceptions of African American capabilities."^[23]

Awards and Honors[link]

Over the years Katherine Dunham has received scores of special awards, including more than a dozen honorary doctorates from various American universities.

• In 1971 she received the Heritage Award from the National Dance Association.
• In 1979 at Carnegie Hall, she received the Albert Schweitzer Music Award "for a life's work dedicated to music and devoted to humanity."
• In 1987 she was received the Samuel H. Scripps American Dance Festival Award, and was also inducted into the National Museum of Dance C.V. Whitney Hall of Fame in Saratoga Springs, New York.
• In 1983 she was a recipient of one of the highest artistic awards in the United States, the Kennedy Center Honors.
• In 1986 the American Anthropological Association gave her a Distinguished Service Award.
• In 1989 she was awarded a National Medal of Arts, an honor shared by only two other University of Chicago alumni, Saul Bellow and Philip Roth.
• Dunham has her own star on the St. Louis Walk of Fame.
• In 2000 she was named one of the first one hundred of "America's Irreplaceable Dance Treasures" by the Dance Heritage Coalition.
• In 2002 Molefi Kete Asante included her in his book entitled 100 Greatest African Americans.^[24]
• In 2005, she was awarded "Outstanding Leadership in Dance Research" by the Congress on Research in Dance.

References[link]

1. ^ Joyce Aschenbenner, Katherine Dunham: Dancing a Life (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2002).
2. ^ VèVè A. Clark and Sara E. Johnson, editors, Kaiso!: Writings by and about Katherine Dunham (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2005). This anthology of writings also contains an abbreviated chronology of Dunham's life and career as well as a selected bibliography, a filmography of her commercial works, and a glossary.
3. ^ Claude Conyers, compiler, Katherine Dunham Timeline (2005), Library of Congress website: http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cocoon/ihas/html/dunham/dunham-timeline.html. This online document comprises notes on all major biographical and artistic events in Dunham's life and career and provides brief essays on all her major choreographic works.
4. ^ Ira E. Harrison and Faye V. Harrison, African-American Pioneers in Anthropology (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999). p. 139.
5. ^ Conyers, Katharine Dunham Timeline (2005).
6. ^ Claude Conyers, "Film Choreography by Katherine Dunham, 1939–1964," in Clark and Johnson, Kaiso! (2005), pp. 639–42.
7. ^ Conyers, Katherine Dunham Timeline (2005).
8. ^ See "Selected Bibliography of Writings by Katherine Dunham" in Clark and Johnson, Kaiso! (2005), pp. 643–46.
9. ^ Clark and Johnson, Kaiso! (2005), p. 252.
10. ^ Constance Valis Hill, "Katherine Dunham's Southland: Protest in the Face of Repression," reprinted in Clark and Johnson, Kaiso! (2005), pp. 345–63.
11. ^ Edward E. Telles, Race in Another America: The Significance of Skin Color in Brazil (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2004), p. 37.
12. ^ Paulina L. Alberto, Terms of Inclusion: Black Intellectuals in Twentieth-Century Brazil (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011), p. 176-8.
13. ^ George Reid Andrews, Blacks and Whites in São Paulo: 1888-1988 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1991), p.184-6.
14. ^ Ronald W. Walters, Pan Africanism in the African Diaspora: An Analysis of Modern Afrocentric (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1993), p. 287.
15. ^ Carl N. Degler, Neither Black not White: Slavery and Racial Relations in Brazil and United States (New York: Macmillan, 1971), p.278.
16. ^ Florestan Fernandes, "The Negro Problem in a Class Society: 1951-1960 Brazil," in Arlene Torres and Norman E. Whitten Jr., editors, Blackness in Latin American and Caribbean (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988), p.117.
17. ^ Time magazine article
18. ^ Katherine Dunham, The Minefield (manuscript, c.1980–1985), book II, 122–123, Box 20, Katherine Dunham Papers, Missouri History Museum Library and Research Center, St. Louis.
19. ^ Jet: The Weekly Negro News Magazine, vol. 1, no. 9 (27 December 1951).
20. ^ Katherine Dunham, The Minefield (manuscript, c.1980-1985).
21. ^ Anna Kisselgoff, "Katherine Dunham's Legacy, Visible in Youth and Age," New York Times (3 March 2003).
22. ^ Jack Anderson, "Katherine Dunham, Dance Pioneer, Dies at 96," obituary, New York Times, May 22, 2006. Includes the often-repeated but mistaken claim that Dunham was the first African-American to choreograph dances at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City but is otherwise accurate.
23. ^ Julia L. Foulkes, Modern Bodies: Dance and American Modernism from Martha Graham to Alvin Ailey (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002), p. 72.
24. ^ Asante, Molefi Kete, 100 Greatest African Americans: A Biographical Encyclopedia (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2002).

Other sources[link]

• Haskins, James, Katherine Dunham. New York: Coward, McCann, & Geoghegan, 1982.
• Kraut, Anthea, "Between Primitivism and Diaspora: The Dance Performances of Josephine Baker, Zora Neale Hurston, and Katherine Dunham," Theatre Journal 55 (2003): 433–50.
• Long, Richard A., The Black Tradition in American Dance. New York: Smithmark Publications, 1995.
• Largey, Michael D., Vodou Nation: Haitian Art Music And Cultural Nationalism, University of Chicago Press, 2006, p. 201–202.
• Library of Congress Information Bulletin: Katherine Dunham Legacy Project, February 2001.
• Breaking Barriers: African American Women in Dance: Smithsonian's Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, March 2001.

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Katherine Dunham

Dance portal

• KatherineDunham.org
• Katherine Dunham at the Library of Congress
• Katherine Dunham at the Internet Broadway Database
• Katherine Dunham at the Internet Movie Database

• Katherine Dunham Centers for Arts and Humanities
• Katherine Dunham Biography at PBS.org
• Recalling Choreographer and Activist Dunham - NPR
• How Katherine Dunham Revealed Black Dance to the World -New York Times
• Katherine Dunham, Dance Pioneer, Dies at 96 Playbill
• Katherine Dunham Collection -- Missouri History Museum Archives
• Katherine Dunham's oral history video excerpts at The National Visionary Leadership Project

Eero Saarinen (Finnish pronunciation: [ˈeːro ˈsɑːrinen]) (August 20, 1910 – September 1, 1961) was a Finnish American architect and industrial designer of the 20th century famous for varying his style according to the demands of the project: simple, sweeping, arching structural curves or machine-like rationalism.^[1]

Biography[link]

Eero Saarinen shared the same birthday as his father, Eliel Saarinen.^[2] They emigrated to the United States of America in 1923, when Eero was thirteen.^[3] He grew up in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, where his father was a teacher at the Cranbrook Academy of Art and he took courses in sculpture and furniture design there. He had a close relationship with fellow students Charles and Ray Eames, and became good friends with Florence Knoll (née Schust).

Beginning in September 1929, he studied sculpture at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris, France.^[1] He then went on to study at the Yale School of Architecture, completing his studies in 1934. Subsequently, he toured Europe and North Africa for a year and returned for a year to his native Finland, after which he returned to Cranbrook to work for his father and teach at the academy. He became a naturalized citizen of the U.S. in 1940. Saarinen was recruited by his friend, who was also an architect, to join the military service in the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). Saarinen was assigned to draw illustrations for bomb disassembly manuals and to provide designs for the Situation Room in the White House.^[4] Saarinen worked full time for the OSS until 1944.^[1] After his father's death in 1950, Saarinen founded his own architect's office, "Eero Saarinen and Associates". Eero Saarinen died of a brain tumor in 1961 at the age of 51.

Personal life[link]

He had two children from his first marriage, Eric and Susan. Following his divorce from the sculptor Lilian Swann Saarinen, his first wife, in 1954, Saarinen married Aline Bernstein Louchheim (March 25, 1914 – July 13, 1972), an art critic at The New York Times. They had a son, Eames, named after his collaborator Charles Eames.

Work[link]

Furniture[link]

Saarinen first received critical recognition, while still working for his father, for a chair designed together with Charles Eames for the "Organic Design in Home Furnishings" competition in 1940, for which they received first prize. The "Tulip Chair", like all other Saarinen chairs, was taken into production by the Knoll furniture company, founded by Hans Knoll, who married Saarinen family friend Florence (Schust) Knoll. Further attention came also while Saarinen was still working for his father, when he took first prize in the 1948 competition for the design of the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial, St. Louis, not completed until the 1960s. The competition award was mistakenly sent to his father. He designed furniture with organic architecture.

During his long association with Knoll he designed many important pieces of furniture including the "Grasshopper" lounge chair and ottoman (1946), the "Womb" chair and ottoman (1948), the "Womb" settee (1950), side and arm chairs (1948–1950), and his most famous "Tulip" or "Pedestal" group (1956), which featured side and arm chairs, dining, coffee and side tables, as well as a stool. All of these designs were highly successful except for the "Grasshopper" lounge chair, which, although in production through 1965, was not a big success.

Buildings[link]

Saarinen's Gateway Arch in St. Louis

One of Saarinen's earliest works to receive international acclaim is the Crow Island School in Winnetka, Illinois (1940). The first major work by Saarinen, in collaboration with his father, was the General Motors Technical Center in Warren, Michigan. It follows the rationalist design Miesian style: incorporating steel and glass, but with the added accent of panels in two shades of blue. The GM technical center was constructed in 1956, with Saarinen using models. These models allowed him to share his ideas with others, and gather input from other professionals. With the success of the scheme, Saarinen was then invited by other major American corporations to design their new headquarters: these included John Deere, IBM, and CBS. Despite their rationality, however, the interiors usually contained more dramatic sweeping staircases, as well as furniture designed by Saarinen, such as the Pedestal Series. In the 1950s he began to receive more commissions from American universities for campus designs and individual buildings; these include the Noyes dormitory at Vassar, as well as an ice rink, Ingalls Rink, and Ezra Stiles & Morse Colleges at Yale University.

He served on the jury for the Sydney Opera House commission and was crucial in the selection of the now internationally known design by Jørn Utzon.

Eero Saarinen and Associates was Saarinen's architectural firm; he was the principal partner from 1950 until his death in 1961. The firm was initially known as "Saarinen, Swansen and Associates", headed by Eliel Saarinen and Robert Swansen from the late 1930s until Eliel's death in 1950. The firm was located in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan until 1961 when the practice was moved to Hamden, Connecticut. Under Eero Saarinen, the firm carried out many of its most important works, including the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial (Gateway Arch) in St. Louis, Missouri, the Miller House in Columbus, Indiana, the TWA Flight Center at John F. Kennedy International Airport that he worked on with Charles J. Parise, and the main terminal of Dulles International Airport near Washington, D.C.. Many of these projects use catenary curves in their structural designs. One of the best-known thin-shell concrete structures in America is the Kresge Auditorium (MIT), which was designed by Saarinen. Another thin-shell structure that he created is the Ingalls Rink (Yale University), which has suspension cables connected to a single concrete backbone and is nicknamed "the whale." Undoubtedly, his most famous work is the TWA Flight Center, which represents the culmination of his previous designs and demonstrates his expressionism and the technical marvel in concrete shells.^[1]

Miller House in Columbus, Indiana

Eero worked with his father, mother and sister designing elements of the Cranbrook campus in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, including the Cranbrook School, Kingswood School, the Cranbrook Art Academy and the Cranbrook Science Institute. Eero's leaded glass designs are a prominent feature of these buildings throughout the campus. http://www.arkitekturanyc.com/cat3.htm

Saarinen died while undergoing an operation for a brain tumor at the age of 51. His wife, Aline, coincidentally, would also die of the same ailment. His partners, Kevin Roche and John Dinkeloo, completed his ten remaining projects, including the St. Louis Arch. Afterwards, the name of the firm was changed to "Kevin Roche, John Dinkeloo, and Associates", or Roche-Dinkeloo.

Reputation[link]

Eero Saarinen was elected a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects in 1952. He is also a winner of the AIA Gold Medal.

Saarinen is now considered one of the masters of American 20th century architecture.^[1] There has been a veritable surge of interest in Saarinen's work in recent years, including a major exhibition and several books. This is partly due to the Roche and Dinkeloo office having donated their Saarinen archives to Yale University, but also because Saarinen's oeuvre can be said to fit in with present-day concerns about pluralism of styles. He was criticized in his own time—most vociferously by critic Vincent Scully—for having no identifiable style; one explanation for this is that Saarinen adapted his modernist vision to each individual client and project, which were never exactly the same.

Bibliography[link]

Main terminal of Dulles International Airport at night

Interior of the MIT Chapel

The Swedish Theatre at night

• Remodelling of the Swedish Theatre, Helsinki (with Jarl Eklund)
• Concordia Senior College campus, now Concordia Theological Seminary, Fort Wayne, Indiana[1]
• The Law School at the University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois.
• The Miller House, Columbus, Indiana.
• Berkshire Music Center, Opera Shed Tanglewood, Massachusetts.
• Gateway Arch, St. Louis, Missouri
• TWA Terminal at JFK International Airport
• Washington Dulles International Airport
• Kresge Auditorium and MIT Chapel at MIT
• Bell Labs Holmdel Complex in Holmdel, New Jersey
• Case Study House #9, the John Entenza House (collaboration with Charles Eames)
• CBS Building (Black Rock) New York
• Vivian Beaumont Theater in Lincoln Center, New York
• General Motors Technical Center, Warren, Michigan
• US Embassies in Oslo and London
• North Christian Church in Columbus, Indiana
• Law School and Woodward Court dormitory (demolished 2002) at the University of Chicago
• Kleinhans Music Hall, Buffalo, New York; designed in collaboration with his father Eliel Saarinen
• Ezra Stiles College, Morse College, and Ingalls Rink (affectionately known as "The Whale") at Yale University
• Noyes House dormitory at Vassar College. Its lounge is affectionately called the Jetsons lounge because of its curved architecture.
• Hill College House at the University of Pennsylvania. Originally a women's dormitory, the building was made with a "drawbridge" to symbolically keep men out.
• IBM Pavilion, 1964-1965 New York World's Fair
• IBM's Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, New York
• IBM Rochester, a plant in Rochester, Minnesota
• John Deere World Headquarters, Moline, Illinois
• The "Tulip chair", popularized by its use on the original Star Trek television series (1966–69).
• The "Womb" chair
• North Campus, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan
• Earl V. Moore Building, housing the University of Michigan School of Music
• East Terminal at Ellinikon International Airport, Athens Greece, posthum finished.
• Milwaukee County War Memorial Center, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
• Medbury, Fitch and Harvey Ingham Halls, Quadrangle Dormitories ("The Quads"), Hubbell Dining Hall, and Oreon E. Scott Chapel at Drake University in Des Moines, IA
• Firestone Baars Chapel at Stephens College in Columbia, Missouri.
• Crow Island School

Selected projects

Washington Dulles International Airport, Dulles, Virginia  TWA Flight Center at John F. Kennedy International Airport  1953 Kresge Auditorium, MIT campus, Cambridge, Massachusetts  North Christian Church, Columbus, Indiana  1953 Emma Hartman Noyes house, Vassar College campus, Poughkeepsie, New York

See also[link]

• Eero Saarinen structures
• Thin-shell structure
• Tensile architecture
• List of notable brain tumor patients

Notes[link]

References and further reading[link]

• A&E with Richard Guy Wilson, Ph.D.,(2000). America's Castles: Newspaper Moguls, Pittock Mansion, Cranbrook House & Gardens, The American Swedish Institute. A&E Television Network.
• Roman, Antonio (2003). Eero Saarinen. New York: Princeton Architectural Press. ISBN 1-56898-340-9. 
• Serraino, Pierluigi (2006). Saarinen, 1910-1961: a Structural Expressionist. Köln: Taschen. ISBN 3-8228-3645-1. 
• Merkel, Jayne (2005). Eero Saarinen. London: Phaidon Press. ISBN 0-7148-4277-X. 
• Pelkonen, Eeva-Liisa (2006). Eero Saarinen. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-11282-3. 
• Saarinen, Aline B. (ed) (1968). Eero Saarinen on His Work. New Haven: Yale University Press. 
• Knight, Richard (2008). Saarinen's Quest, A Memoir. San Francisco: William Stout Publishers. ISBN 978-0-9746214-4-9. 

An exhibition of Saarinen's work, Eero Saarinen: Realizing American Utopia, has been organized by the Finnish Cultural Institute in New York in collaboration with Yale School of Architecture and the Museum of Finnish Architecture. The exhibition will tour in Europe and the USA from 2006 to 2010. The exhibition is accompanied by the book Eero Saarinen. Shaping the Future.

In 1973, the Aline and Eero Saarinen papers were donated to the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, by Charles Alan, Aline Saarinen's brother and executor of her estate. In 2006, these primary source documents on the couple were digitized in their entirely and posted online on the Archives' website.

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Eero Saarinen

• http://www.greatbuildings.com/buildings/Crow_Island_School.html
• Eero Saarinen letter to Florence Knoll Bassett, 1935-1936, Florence Knoll Bassett papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
• Lines of Authority Time Magazine retrospective article
• Eero Saarinen - Design Dictionary Illustrated article about Eero Saarinen
• Saarinen rising: A much-maligned modernist finally gets his due
• Great buildings online entry
• Earl V. Moore Building School building designed by Eero Saarinen
• 860 photos of 19 buildings designed by Saarinen from the Balthazar Korab Collection at the Library of Congress
• Saarinen's Village: The Concordia Campus Through Time
• Digital image database at the Yale University Library, contains 1296 images and drawings from Saarinen's archives
  • Finding aid to the Eero Saarinen Collection at Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library
• Eero Saarinen: Shaping the Future The 50th Anniversary Exhibition of the Museum of Finnish Architecture
• Saarinen Tulip Chair
• Eero Saarinen: Realizing American Utopia
• Eero Saarinen Exhibitions at Cranbrook Art Museum

National Building Museum

• http://www.nbm.org/about-us/publications-news/blueprints/eero-saarinen.html

v t e Architects and artisans of metropolitan Detroit Resident architects Charles N. Agree Gunnar Birkerts Marcus Burrowes Henry T. Brush C. Howard Crane Peter J. Diederichs John M. Donaldson Joseph N. French Yousif_Ghafari Alvin E. Harley William E. Higgenbotham Eric J. Hill John C. Haro Eugene C. Hopkins Albert Kahn Louis Kamper William E. Kapp William Kessler Gordon W. Lloyd William G. Malcomson George D. Mason S. Kenneth Neumann Mark Nickita Harry J. Rill Gino Rossetti Matthew L. Rossetti Wirt C. Rowland Eero Saarinen Wallace Frost Eliel Saarinen Victor Saroki Fred L. Smith Leonard B. Willeke Minoru Yamasaki Visiting architects Henry Bacon John Burgee Daniel Burnham Ralph Adams Cram Paul Cret Henry Engelbert Cass Gilbert Bertram Goodhue Michael Graves Victor Gruen Richard W. Jennings Jens Jensen Alfredas Kulpa-Kulpavičius Philip Johnson Charles Luckman Frederick Olmsted Charles A. Platt John C. Portman, Jr. Henry Hobson Richardson Ludwig Mies van der Rohe Horace Trumbauer Whitney Warren Charles Wetmore Stanford White Frank Lloyd Wright Resident sculptors Romas Banaitis Marshall Fredericks Julius Melchers Carl Milles Isamu Noguchi Corrado Parducci Carlo Romanelli Edward Wagner Visiting sculptors Herbert Adams Donald De Lue Avard Fairbanks Daniel Chester French Robert Graham Lee Lawrie Giacomo Manzù J. Massey Rhind Ulysses Ricci Augusto Rivalta Randolph Rogers Raffaello Romanelli Adolph Alexander Weinman Resident ceramists Horace Caulkins Diana Pancioli Mary Chase Perry Stratton Photographers Michelle Andonian Curt Clayton Don Coles Carlos Diaz Sean Doerr Marge Beaver Roy Feldman Dale Fisher Jeff Garland Steve Hall Balthazar Korab Dave Krieger Laszlo Regos Tony Soluri William Zbaren See also Architecture of metropolitan Detroit

Jackie Joyner

Kersee (in white) standing behind President Barack Obama
Personal information
Full name	Jackie Joyner-Kersee
Nationality	American
Sport
Country	United States
Sport	Athletics
Event(s)	Long jump, Heptathlon
Medal record Women's Athletics Competitor for the  United States Olympic Games Gold 1988 Seoul Heptathlon Gold 1988 Seoul Long jump Gold 1992 Barcelona Heptathlon Silver 1984 Los Angeles Heptathlon Bronze 1992 Barcelona Long jump Bronze 1996 Atlanta Long jump World Championships Gold 1987 Rome Long jump Gold 1987 Rome Heptathlon Gold 1991 Tokyo Long jump Gold 1993 Stuttgart Heptathlon Pan American Games Gold 1987 Indianapolis Long jump

Jacqueline "Jackie" Joyner-Kersee (born March 3, 1962) is a retired American athlete, ranked among the all-time greatest athletes in the women's heptathlon as well as in the women's long jump. She won three gold, one silver, and two bronze Olympic medals, in those two events at four different Olympic Games. Sports Illustrated for Women magazine voted Joyner-Kersee the Greatest Female Athlete of the 20th century, just ahead of Babe Didrikson Zaharias.

After retiring as a competitive athlete, Joyner-Kersee has been involved with many philanthropic efforts and has joined the Board of Directors for USA Track & Field (USATF), the national governing body of the sport.^[1]

Early life[link]

Jacqueline Joyner was born March 3, 1962, in East St. Louis, Illinois, and was named after Jackie Kennedy. As a high school athlete at East St. Louis Lincoln High School, she qualified for the finals in the Long Jump at the 1980 Olympic Trials, finishing 8th behind another high schooler, Carol Lewis.^[2] She was inspired to compete in multi-disciplinary track & field events after seeing a 1975 made-for-TV movie about Babe Didrikson Zaharias. Interestingly, Didrikson, the trackster, basketball player, and pro golfer, was chosen the "Greatest Female Athlete of the First Half of the 20th Century. Fifteen years later, "Sports Illustrated for Women" magazine voted Joyner-Kersee the greatest female athlete of "all time".

UCLA[link]

Joyner-Kersee attended college at the University of California at Los Angeles, where she starred in both track & field and in women's basketball from 1980-1985. She was a starter in her forward position for each of her first three seasons (1980–81, 81-82, and 82-83) as well as in her senior (fifth) year, 1984-1985. She had red-shirted during the 1983-1984 academic year to concentrate on the heptathlon for the 1984 Summer Olympics.

She scored 1,167 points during her collegiate career, which places her 19th all time for the Bruins games.^[3] The Bruins advanced to the West Regional semi-finals of the 1985 NCAA Women's Division I Basketball Tournament before losing to eventual runner-up Georgia.^[3]

She was honored on 21 February 1998 as one of the 15 greatest players in UCLA women's basketball.^[4] In April 2001, Joyner-Kersee was voted the "Top Woman Collegiate Athlete of the Past 25 Years." The vote was conducted among the 976 NCAA member schools.^[5]

Competition[link]

1984 Summer Olympics[link]

Joyner-Kersee competed in the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles and won the silver medal in the heptathlon.

1986 Goodwill Games[link]

Joyner-Kersee was the first woman to score over 7,000 points in a heptathlon event (during the 1986 Goodwill Games). In 1986, she received the James E. Sullivan Award as the top amateur athlete in the United States.

1988 Summer Olympics[link]

In the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, Korea, Joyner-Kersee earned gold medals in both the heptathlon and the long jump. At the 1988 Games in Seoul, she set the still-standing heptathlon world record of 7,291 points. The silver and bronze medalists were Sabine John and Anke Vater-Behmer, both of whom were representing East Germany. Five days later, Joyner won her second gold medal, leaping to an Olympic record of 7.40 m (24 ft 3 in) in the long jump.

1991 World Championships Tokyo[link]

She was everyone's favorite to retain both her World titles earned four years earlier in Rome. However her challenge was dramatically halted when, having won the long jump easily with a 7.32 m (24 ft 0 in) jump no one would beat, she slipped on the take off board and careened head first into the pit, luckily avoiding serious injury. She did, however, strain a hamstring, which led to her having to pull out of the heptathlon during the 200 m at the end of the first day.

1992 Summer Olympics[link]

In the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona, Spain, Joyner-Kersee earned her second Olympic gold medal in the heptathlon. She also won the bronze medal in the long jump which was won by her friend Heike Drechsler of Germany.

1996 Summer Olympics[link]

At the Olympic Trials, Joyner-Kersee sustained an injury to her right hamstring. When the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia began, Joyner-Kersee was not fully recovered by the time the heptathlon started. After running the first event, the 100 m hurdles, the pain was unbearable and she withdrew. She was able to recover well enough to compete in the long jump and qualify for the final, but was in sixth place in the final with one jump remaining. Her final jump of 7.00 m (23 ft 0 in) was long enough for her to win the bronze medal. The Atlanta Olympics would be the last Olympics of Joyner-Kersee's long competitive career.

Professional Basketball Career[link]

In 1996 she signed on to play pro basketball for the Richmond Rage of the fledgling American Basketball League. Although she was very popular with the fans, she was less successful on the court. She appeared in only 17 games, and scored no more than four points in any game.

1998 Goodwill Games[link]

Returning to track, Joyner-Kersee won the heptathlon again at the 1998 Goodwill Games, scoring 6,502 points.

2000 Olympic Trials[link]

Joyner-Kersee made her final bow in track & field competition in 2000. She was sixth in the long jump (21-10.75) at the Olympic Trials.

Awards and honors[link]

• 1986 Jesse Owens Award ^[6]
• 1987 Jesse Owens Award ^[6]
• 2010 NCAA Silver Anniversary Awards honoree.
• 2011 Dick Enberg Award, College Sports Information Director of America (CoSIDA)

Current world records[link]

As of May 2012^[update], Joyner-Kersee holds the world record in heptathlon along with the top six all time best results whilst her long jump record of 7.49 m is second on the long jump all time list. In addition to heptathlon and long jump, she was a world class athlete in 100 m hurdles and 200 meters being as of June 2006^[update] in top 60 all time in those events.

Sports Illustrated voted her the greatest female athlete of the 20th century.

Joyner-Kersee consistently has maintained that she has competed throughout her career without performance-enhancing drugs.^[7][8]

Personal bests[link]

Personal bests 

• 100 metres hurdles : 12.61 s
• Long jump : 7.49 m
• High jump : 1.93 m
• 200 m : 22.30 s
• Shot put : 16.84 m
• Javelin throw : 50.12 m
• 800 m : 2 min 8.51 s

Personal life[link]

Jackie's brother is the Olympic champion triple jumper Al Joyner, who was married to another Olympic track champion, the late Florence Griffith-Joyner. Jackie married her track coach, Bob Kersee, in 1986.

In 1988, Joyner-Kersee established the Jackie Joyner-Kersee Foundation, which provides youth, adults, and families with athletic lessons and the resources to improve their quality of life with special attention directed to East St. Louis, Illinois. In 2007, Jackie Joyner-Kersee along with Andre Agassi, Muhammad Ali, Lance Armstrong, Warrick Dunn, Mia Hamm, Jeff Gordon, Tony Hawk, Andrea Jaeger, Mario Lemieux, Alonzo Mourning, and Cal Ripken, Jr. founded Athletes for Hope, a charitable organization, which helps professional athletes get involved in charitable causes and inspires millions of non-athletes to volunteer and support the community.^[9]

References[link]

External links[link]

• IAAF profile for Jackie Joyner-Kersee

Sports Reference

• USA Track and Field bio
• Jackie Joyner-Kersee's U.S. Olympic Team bio
• The Jackie Joyner Kersee Foundation, founded by Jackie and her husband.

Records
Preceded by Heike Drechsler	Women's Long Jump World Record Holder equalled the 7.45 mark by Heike Drechsler August 13, 1987 — June 11, 1988	Succeeded by Galina Chistyakova
Preceded by Sabine John	Women's Heptathlon World Record Holder July 7, 1986 –	Succeeded by Incumbent
Awards and achievements
Preceded by Marita Koch	Women's Track & Field Athlete of the Year 1986 – 1987	Succeeded by Florence Griffith-Joyner
Preceded by Martina Navratilova	Flo Hyman Memorial Award 1988	Succeeded by Evelyn Ashford
Preceded by Wang Junxia	Women's Track & Field Athlete of the Year 1994	Succeeded by Sonia O'Sullivan
Sporting positions
Preceded by Sabine John	Women's Heptathlon Best Year Performance 1984 — 1988	Succeeded by Larisa Nikitina
Preceded by Larisa Nikitina	Women's Heptathlon Best Year Performance 1990 — 1993	Succeeded by Heike Drechsler
Preceded by Heike Drechsler	Women's Long Jump Best Year Performance 1987	Succeeded by Galina Chistyakova
Preceded by Heike Drechsler	Women's Long Jump Best Year Performance 1994	Succeeded by Heike Drechsler
Preceded by Heike Drechsler	Women's Long Jump Best Year Performance 1996	Succeeded by Lyudmila Galkina

Christine Brewer (born October 26, 1955) is an American soprano. She grew up in the Mississippi River town of Grand Tower, Illinois. She attended McKendree University in Lebanon, Illinois and concentrated on music education. She was a music teacher for several years before embarking on a professional music performing career. She was recently named among BBC's Top 20 Sopranos of the 20th Century.

Brewer began her career in St. Louis, Missouri with the Saint Louis Symphony Chorus. She auditioned in 1981 for the chorus of Opera Theatre of Saint Louis (OTSL),^[1] in the start of her career in opera. Her first OTSL work was in the chorus of "The Beggars Opera" in 1982. Her first major role with OTSL was as Ellen Orford in Peter Grimes in 1990.

In 1989, she participated in a masterclass with Birgit Nilsson, and was one of the 10 winners of the National Council auditions sponsored by the Metropolitan Opera. Whilst her daughter Elisabeth was in school during the academic year, Brewer deliberately limited her work in staged opera productions.^[1] She returned more actively to the opera stage after her daughter's high school graduation. She began to accept roles including a debut in the title role of Richard Strauss' Ariadne auf Naxos at the Metropolitan Opera in 2003, which has become a signature role for Brewer.

Brewer is most famous for her interpretations of roles by Wagner, Strauss and Britten including Isolde, Ariadne, Färberin (Die Frau ohne Schatten), Ellen Orford (Peter Grimes)^[2] and Queen Elizabeth I (Gloriana).^[3] She made her debut at the San Francisco Opera in 2006 singing the title role in Beethoven's Fidelio and returned the following season singing the role of Isolde in Tristan und Isolde.

Brewer is a regular featured singer at The Proms and the Wigmore Hall.^[4]

Brewer and her husband Ross, a retired social studies teacher, live in Lebanon, Illinois. They have a daughter, Elisabeth, is studying nursing in St. Louis. Brewer continues to work with young students in the sixth grade classroom at Marissa, Illinois where she had formerly taught music, in an outreach program in conjunction with the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra.

In late March 2009, Brewer had to withdraw from the complete Ring Cycle at the Metropolitan Opera because of a knee injury.

Recordings[link]

Brewer has made a number of recordings, which include:

• Two contributions to Hyperion’s Schubert series with pianist Graham Johnson^[5]
• One CD in Hyperion's Richard Strauss series with pianist Roger Vignoles
• Echoes of Nightingales encores by British and American composers.^[6]
• Two recital recordings produced and released by OTSL: (a) "Saint Louis Woman”, (b) “Music for a While” with pianist Kirt Pavitt
• Mahler's Eighth Symphony with Sir Simon Rattle and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (EMI)
• Mozart's Don Giovanni with Sir Charles Mackerras and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra (Telarc)
• Richard Strauss’ Four Last Songs/Wagner's "Liebestod" from Tristan und Isolde
• Mozart’s Requiem with Donald Runnicles and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra (Telarc)
• Fidelio (in German) with Sir Colin Davis and the London Symphony Orchestra (LSO Live)
• Barber’s Vanessa (Chandos) with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Leonard Slatkin
• William Bolcom's Songs of Innocence and Experience (Naxos), conducted by Leonard Slatkin
• Fidelio (in English) and “Great Operatic Arias” (Chandos) with the London Philharmonic and David Parry;
• Tristan und Isolde with Donald Runnicles and the BBC Symphony Orchestra (Warner Classics);
• Britten’s War Requiem with the London Philharmonic Orchestra and Kurt Masur (LPO Live).

Brewer was honored at the 48th Annual Grammy Awards for Best Choral Performance and Best Classical Album for her work on Bolcom's Songs of Innocence and Experience.

References[link]

External links[link]

• Official artist homepage
• Askonas Holt agency page
• IMG Artists agency page
• Askonas Holt page, "Making Music Happen"