August 12, 2009

New Festival to Boost Arts

Baltimore is celebrating its biggest tourist attraction by hosting a new art festival, sponsored by local real estate developer The Cordish Cos., in the heart of the Inner Harbor.

Mayor Sheila Dixon gathered Monday with local artists to announce that the Inner Harbor Arts Festival will take place on the weekend of Aug. 22 near the developer's Power Plant retail center. The festival will feature more than $15 million in artwork on display, ranging from craft-type handmade jewelry to more expensive fine art pieces.

“The most important thing we have going for us is the real estate, which is the Inner Harbor," said Zed Smith, Cordish's director of asset management. "The success of the Inner Harbor is directly linked to its appeal to locals and visitors alike."

Dixon said the new festival is not meant to compete with Artscape, the city-sponsored street fair that features hundreds of artists and artisans, as well as live music and dancing. With a reported 385,000 attendees this year, Artscape drew a record-setting crowd to the city's midtown neighborhoods in July.

"Every way we support artists is going to help maximize our efforts," Dixon said.

Still, there is some public patronage of the arts available. The National Endowment for the Arts recently made a $250,000 grant to the Baltimore Office for the Promotion of the Arts, which will be matched by the city. In September, this $500,000, granted as part of President Barack Obama's stimulus package, will be made available through a competitive process to local artists as part of a national job stabilization effort.

The Inner Harbor Arts Festival will be sponsored mainly by Cordish, which owns the land on which it will take place. It will be produced by Howard Alan Events, a Florida-based organizer of juried art shows.

This year, Cordish collaborated with Howard Alan on its second Art Annual, a show held in Kansas City's Power and Light District - another Cordish retail development. According to a Cordish official, that event drew 50,000 people.

"We knew it worked very well in Kansas City as an economic stimulus," Smith, of Cordish, said.

Several local artists displayed their works in front of the Power Plant Monday. Larry Stevens, an artist who sells his paintings at a shop in Harborplace, said the new festival is just what many local creative types need to generate exposure.

“This is a moment that I never dreamed of, but it's here, and it's just the beginning,' he said. “This is what we need, as artists ... to expose our arts to everyone. We have something special right here in our own city."

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