It’s hard to believe June’s almost here. It’s not hard to believe a June institution is coming with it: the International Festival of Arts & Ideas. Following a drumbeat of events that began in April, the festival’s main stretch starts June 13 and ends June 28, spanning music, food, circus, tours, theater, discussions and more.
In past years, we’ve previewed the festival by skimming across its vast surface. This time, I’m giving a handful of events a deeper look, while pairing them up under dualistic themes—each an homage to the festival’s shorthand title, “Arts & Ideas.”
Here we go:
Plans Fulfilled & Full-of-It Plans
An on-the-ground downtown history tour grounds you, ultimately, in the city’s present, and likely leaves you with a better appreciation for it. “Urban Fun! Joel Schiavone, Your Father’s Mustache, and New Haven’s Downtown Revitalization” explores 1980s and ’90s developer Joel Schiavone’s “ambitious and joyful vision” that ultimately resuscitated the city’s once-dying center.
An “It Didn’t Happen Here” bike tour with a 10-mile route and “easy” fitness rating should deliver both wry laughs and wistful sighs about goals for the city that never panned out. But probably more of the laughs. “A bridge to Long Island? An ‘emerald necklace’ for the Elm City? A heliport in Wooster Square? Since the 17th century, New Haven’s dreamers, schemers, and planners have taken Daniel Burnham’s dictum—‘make no little plans’—to heart. But big plans don’t always pan out. On this tour, we’ll see the sites that might have been.”
Seeing the Show & Being the Show
Less than 24 hours after the solstice, a mainstage performance by the New Haven Symphony Orchestra promises spectators “a magical summer evening” featuring “a vibrant program that honors the voices and stories of our community.”
But the magic actually starts an hour before the symphony does, when an interactive event with different starting points offers a chance to be part of a walking, talking, collective song. “Experience a shifting soundscape as you journey through the city. Can you find other audience members to create a richer sound? … Guided by a bespoke mobile app, make your way through the streets of New Haven listening to fragments of Huang Ruo’s meditative new work,” City of Floating Sounds. “As you get closer to the Green—and other audience members—the sound will expand, revealing more parts of the work.”
Power & Plants
English Station, the decommissioned and derelict, formidable and fabulous power plant, rises from the middle of the Mill River. It also stands at the center of a 1.5-mile guided walk, which sounds like it’ll be guided by “neighborhood leaders, environmental experts, architects and engineers” who may have some powerful things to say about the plant’s future.
Art exhibition Sacred Forest, “a visual meditation on human interaction with our woodland landscapes” invoking “the power of the forest environment,” takes place within the great indoors of stone and stained-glass fortress Trinity on the Green, the “first Gothic-style church in America.” A special tour for the festival convenes some of the 10 exhibiting artists “to show you around and discuss the artistic processes behind the work” as well as “mingle in [the] cool calm of the ambiance.”
Forgiving & Not Forgetting
World-beating painter and Yale School of Art alum Titus Kaphar set down roots here when he co-founded the visual arts and business incubator NXTHVN. But it looks like he quietly added more roots in the founding of Revolution Ready Films, whose recent first feature, Exhibiting Forgiveness, is coming “home” for an “exclusive premiere event.” This largely autobiographical film written and directed by Kaphar, who will be on hand for a post-screening talkback, features a painter, Tarrell (André Holland), whose “path to success is derailed by an unexpected visit from his estranged father, La’Ron (John Earl Jelks), a conscience-stricken man desperate to reconcile. Tarrell’s mother, Joyce (Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor) a pious woman with a profound and joyful spirituality, hopes that Tarrell can open his heart to forgiveness, giving them all another chance at being a family.” Going by the trailer, viewers should expect cinema brimming with beauty, honesty and humanity.
Another film about another artist segues into a panel discussion on “art, memory, and quantum technology.” The event begins with the US premiere of a documentary focused on panel participant Serena Scapagnini, whose “work uniquely blends art and science, exploring the intricacies of memory—from the human brain, synapses, and thoughts to phenomena in quantum computing such as quantum memory, decoherence, and qubit lifetimes in superconducting devices. Her collaborations with neuroscientists at the Higley Lab and quantum researchers at the Yale Quantum Institute enrich her art, taking shape through drawings, paintings, spatial installations, and videos.”
Time & Space
I could keep on going, but with the festival’s main schedule barely two weeks away and many events limited for space, now’s the time to stop reading this article & start reserving your spots.
Written and photographed by Dan Mims. Image features a crowd during the 2024 International Festival of Arts & Ideas.
