College of the Arts Nominated for Artistic Excellence Award

The College of the Arts has been nominated by the Greater Columbus Arts Council to receive a 2009 Artistic Excellence Award which annually recognized a local arts initiative that demonstrates risk, innovation, and excellence. The nomination comes in recognition of the opening of the OSU Urban Arts Space in February 2008 along with its inaugural exhibition, Midnight Robbers: The Artists of Notting Hill Carnival. The award, which carries a $10,000 prize, will be announced at the GCAC's annual Community Arts Partnership Awards luncheon on Friday, March 6 at COSI Columbus.

Established through an initiative launched by The Ohio State University, Batelle Memorial Institute, the City of Columbus, and Columbus Downtown Development Corporations, the 10,000 sq. ft. Urban Arts Space is organized along the Town Street portion of the Lazarus building and includes exhibition space, non-traditional performance and installation space, as well as conference and office space. Its vision is to challenge ways of thinking about the performing and visual arts and their role in everyday lives through conversation, making, and experimentation. Its mission is to bridge the university and the community and function as an arts laboratory for faculty and community artists and serve as a professional launching pad for Ohio State students.

The inaugural exhibition of the Urban Arts Space was the North American premiere of Midnight Robbers: The Artists of Notting Hill Carnival, which explored the nature of Carnival, its artistic process and the connections between the Notting Hill celebration and the original emancipation celebrations of 1807 in Trinidad, West Indies. It included photographs, costume designs, costumes and a timeline of Carnival history as well as Carnival Interactive, a multi-media computer program developed by a student design team under the leadership of OSU Design faculty member Brian Stone. The exhibition was co-curated by Ohio State Theatre Professor Lesley Ferris, and Ruth Tompsett of London and the opening of both UAS and Midnight Robbers was selected as one of the "Best Visual Arts Events" by the Columbus Dispatch.

For more information on the OSU Urban Arts Space and upcoming activities and exhibition, visit their Web site