Staff writer Duncan Adams visited Center in the Square during “Family Day of Discovery,” and reported back (click this link to read,) and Rebecca Barnett took photos. Did you go yourself? What did you think?

Click the images below to go to the various galleries.

Center in the Square grand reopening

Harrison Museum of African American Culture

History Museum of Western Virginia

Science Museum of Western Virginia

Photo by STEPHANIE KLEIN-DAVIS | The Roanoke Times. The Science Museum of Western Virginia, on the fourth and fifth floors of Center in the Square, is still unveiling its exhibitions in preparation for the May 18 opening.

Aquariums, iPads and flat screen televisions. Chandeliers and sculpted ceilings. Floor tiles arranged to make the shape of a giant butterfly. A skylight with colored glass in irregular shapes that seems to match the late Dorothy Gillespie’s aluminum sculptures ascending toward it.

There’s no question that more than $27 million in renovations has transformed Center in the Square.

At a Tuesday morning news conference, Center President and General Manager Jim Sears talked about how the days are gone for good when all a visitor saw in Center’s atrium were two volunteers seated at a desk.

“This project was a great labor of love,” said David Bandy , president of Roanoke architecture firm Spectrum Design, which designed the building. Flourishes such as allowing the science museum’s new butterfly garden to rise through the roof had to be balanced with conservation of historical features to meet requirements for tax credits, he said.

Center has less than two weeks to go until its May 18 grand reopening, with a preview Grand Affair gala scheduled for Saturday. Though on schedule and on budget, the project’s hectic pace to put on finishing touches has become more frantic than ever.

Click here to read the rest of the story.

Photo by STEPHANIE KLEIN-DAVIS | The Roanoke Times.
The newly renovated Center in the Square building features a rooftop deck with a restaurant space, a koi pond still being lined, the skylight for the butterfly exhibit, and a glass railed staircase to an upper deck with a view of downtown Roanoke.

Hat tip, Jeff Sturgeon. I note that the creation of this program directly led to the Virginia Museum of Transportation’s decision to study whether the J-611 can be restored to track-worthiness (click here to read further.) From my Inbox to you:

Roanoke departure added to 21st Century Steam schedule for March 17

NORFOLK, VA. – A round trip between Roanoke and Lynchburg, Va., on Sunday, March 17, has been added to the previously announced 21st Century Steam excursions. The train, powered by the Tennessee Valley Railroad Museum’s (TVRM) steam locomotive SOU 630, will leave Roanoke at 11 a.m. for a 4.5-hour round trip. Tickets can be purchased at TVRM’s web site at www.tvrail.com.

Tennessee Valley Railroad Museum was founded in 1961 in Chattanooga to create an interpretive operating museum of historic equipment and artifacts in an authentic setting. Today it operates an extensive schedule of historic and scenic trains in Southeast Tennessee and Northwest Georgia, supported by its East Chattanooga shop facility. TVRM is the largest operating
historical excursion railroad in the Southeast. In 2012, more than 100,000 people visited the museum or rode on TRVM-sponsored 21st Century Steam excursions.

21st Century Steam is a partnership between Norfolk Southern and TVRM to operate steam-powered excursions throughout the territory Norfolk Southern serves. More information is available on the 21st Century Steam website at www.21stcenturysteam.com.

Norfolk Southern Corporation is one of the nation’s premier transportation companies. Its Norfolk Southern Railway subsidiary operates approximately 20,000 route miles in 22 states and the District of Columbia, serves every major container port in the eastern United States, and provides efficient connections to other rail carriers. Norfolk Southern operates the most extensive intermodal network in the East and is a major transporter of coal, automotive, and industrial products.

The Virginia Museum of Transportation today announced a feasibility study to look into whether it will be possible to get its world-famous 611 steam locomotive working again. What do you think of the idea? Sound off in the comments.

The 611 engine at the Virginia Museum of Transportation.

Rail fans have long hoped to see the Virginia Museum of Transportation’s historic Norfolk & Western Class J-611 steam engine roll down the tracks again under its own power.

Today, the museum announced that it’s organizing a study to find out what it will take to get the 611 fully operational.

Called “Fire Up 611!,” the study isn’t a guarantee the engine will actually be fired up. The committee will look not just at what repairs and upgrades the 611 might need, but what sort of financial strain a restoration would put on the museum’s day-to-day operations.

If bringing the beloved streamlined 611, which was built in the Norfolk and Western Railway’s Roanoke shops, back to life turns out to be feasible, the transportation museum will have to put out a call to the international rail community to raise the funds, Museum Executive Director Bev Fitzpatrick said. The engine is considered the most modern steam locomotive in existence.

A volunteer team of steam engine enthusiasts has stepped forward to conduct the study. They include Atlanta, Ga. software consultant Cheri George, Birmingham, Ala., historic rail equipment restorer Scott Lindsay and Roanoke rail safety consultant Preston Claytor, all of whom volunteered on the 611’s crew during the interval when Norfolk Southern used it for passenger excursions, 1981 to 1994.

The museum is launching a fund raising campaign today to pay for the study’s expenses, said museum public relations director Peg McGuire. Should the task of getting the 611 operational prove to be out of the museum’s reach, the funds will go into an endowment to pay for the locomotive’s upkeep as an exhibit.

 Click here to read the rest of the story.

Courtesy Patrick Kennerly. The cast of Showtimers’ “A Lesson Before Dying” (l-r): : James Wise, Jr. (Grant), Tim Kennard (Deputy Paul), William Penn (Rev. Ambrose), Barbara Sanders (Emma Glenn), and Mike Johnson (Jefferson).

Thousands in the Roanoke Valley, many of them schoolchildren, read Ernest J. Gaines’ tragic novel of racism and injustice, “A Lesson Before Dying,” in early 2010 as part of The Big Read, a community reading effort led by Roanoke Valley Reads.

Starting Wednesday, Showtimers Community Theatre will bring the novel to life on stage in honor of Black History Month — the first time the 62-year-old theater has put on a play for the observance, said show director Patrick Kennerly.

The play is one of several Black History Month events happening this month in Roanoke and at Virginia Tech.

Kennerly took part in a reading of the theater adaptation of “A Lesson Before Dying” at Studio Roanoke during The Big Read. “I just fell in love with the play. You can’t really watch that play without being affected by it,” he said.

So last summer Kennerly — a veteran of many past Showtimers’ productions — suggested the play to the Showtimers board. It will be the theater’s season’s opener for 2013.

Adapted by Romulus Linney, the play closely follows Gaines’ story of a poor black man falsely convicted of murder and sentenced to die, and rival mentors — a minister and a schoolteacher — who influence how he will live out his remaining days.

Burton Center for Arts and Technology engineering teacher Mike Johnson plays the condemned man, Jefferson; Roanoke jazz musician William Penn portrays the Rev. Moses Ambrose; and James Wise Jr. has the lead role as Grant Wiggins, a teacher in a segregated school for black students.

“This is the first play I’ve done that’s been a major drama,” Penn said. “I love the story. All the characters have a lot to say.”

From Sunday’s column:

“The Mighty Josh” by Kadir Nelson, part of the traveling exhibition “We Are The Ship: The Story of Negro League Baseball,” opening Saturday at Piedmont Arts in Martinsville.

Piedmont Arts at 215 Starling Ave. in Martinsville will celebrate Black History Month in February with an arts exhibition and a one-man play.

“We Are The Ship: The Story of Negro League Baseball,” a collection of 33 paintings and 13 sketches that artist and author Kadir Nelson created for a children’s book of the same name, opens Saturday and will remain on display through March 30.

Nelson’s paintings involved years of research, studying old photographs, interviewing former Negro League players and collecting sports equipment and uniforms.

He photographed himself wearing the uniforms in pursuit of creating accurate depictions. His art and words tell the story of how athletes such as Jackie Robinson, Satchel Paige and Willie Mays and the owners of the clubs they belonged to battled institutionalized racism and segregation to pursue their love of baseball.

Nelson’s book won the 2009 Coretta Scott King Book Award and was named one of the Best Illustrated Children’s Books of 2008 by The New York Times.

In conjunction with “We Are the Ship,” Piedmont Arts will showcase airbrush paintings of vintage scenes from black American life by Axton artist Rupe Dalton.

Furthering the exploration of Negro League history, the art center will present “A Game Apart: Mike Wiley As Jackie Robinson” at 7 p.m. Feb. 11.

Roanoke native, playwright and actor Wiley, a 1991 Patrick Henry High School graduate who teaches at Duke University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, will bring the legendary ballplayer to life in the play, and show the stark conditions he faced as a star on the field who was treated like a second-class citizen everywhere else.

Admission to “We Are the Ship” is free. Admission to “A Game Apart” is $15, students $10. For more information call 276-632-3221 or visit piedmontarts.org.

From my Inbox to you:

“History Is Served”

Christy Coleman on the Road to Emancipation: From Proclamation to 13th Amendment

Christy Coleman

The History Museum of Western Virginia is pleased to present our annual History Is Served luncheon in the Hotel Roanoke’s Crystal Ballroom on Sunday, February 17, 2013.  This event, a favorite “must-do” in the region, includes guest speaker, delicious lunch, and silent auction.

It is our honor to announce as our guest speaker this year Christy Coleman, President and CEO of the American Civil War Center at Historic Tredegar. Ms. Coleman will speak on the Road to Emancipation:  From Proclamation to 13th Amendment.  She will discuss how, on September 22, 1862, Abraham Lincoln published what would become known as the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. This document enraged the South as being unenforceable and further proof that Lincoln intended to end their way of life. Radical Republicans in the Union also raged against the document for not going far enough to end slavery in these United States. When the proclamation was released January 1, 1863, it contained few of the caveats of the preliminary document. The impact has been debated; however, it laid the groundwork for the 13th Amendment which officially ended slavery in the United States.

 “History Is Served” is made possible in part by the generous support of W. Scott Hengerer, CMFC, CPRC, Senior Financial Advisor with Ameriprise Financial and Howell’s Motor Freight.

WHEN:  February 17, 2013, noon – 3 p.m.

WHERE:  Crystal Ballroom, Hotel Roanoke.

COST: $75.00 per person

For more information or to purchase tickets, please call the Museum at 540-224-1206, deadline February 13, 2013 Read more »

I’m honored to have been granted permission by Virginia Tech and poet Nikki Giovanni to reprint her poem, “The Self-Evident Poem,” as a special bonus to accompany today’s story about the upcoming concert by the Diane Monroe Quartet, performed in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. At the concert, which takes place Friday, Jan. 25 at The Lyric Theatre in Blacksburg, jazz violinist Monroe will debut a new song that uses the words of Giovanni’s poem.

The text of the poem follows below.

Nikki Giovanni’s “Quilting the Black-Eyed Pea,” where “The Self-Evident Poem” first appeared.

Diane Monroe has adapted “The Self-Evident Poem” as a song.

The Self-Evident Poem

by Nikki Giovanni

It was never theirs to begin with . . . they came and took it and now it is taken back . . .that much anyone can see . . . it’s self-evident . . . no further explanation needed . . .

This poem is self-evident too . . . this poem needs no further explanation . . . this poem stands on its own as its own for its own sake . . . this poem is happy . . .

Sometimes this poem feels lonely . . . Sometimes this poem yearns for a poem to talk with and laugh with and maybe have a glass of wine with in some nice little neighborhood corner café where everybody knows your name

And sometimes this poem just wants to take a book and go to central park and read

It’s self-evident that life is about the good we do not the evil that is left behind and there is so much evil in the world sitting in so many high places telling so many lies while choking the life out of the vulnerable and the helpless and you’ve just got to love black folks for being able to bury the lynched and the burned for being able to bear the lash and lies for finding a song to lift our spirits and send our souls to a better place

And you’ve just got to feel sorry for white folks who still do not understand this is another century and we just can’t keep bombing the same people over and over again because we don’t want to admit the craziness is home grown

So this poem prays for peace and hopes it can find another poem to peddle for peace and they find a poem which walks for peace and they find a poem which flies for peace and maybe they will all get together and raise a song that drowns the war cries the capital punishment cries and sad cries of lost people looking for an empire that was never theirs to begin with

Nikki Giovanni, from Quilting the Black-Eyed Pea, used by permission of author, ©2002.

At his “Vissi d’arte” blog, Opera Roanoke director Scott Williamson discusses the Metropolitan Opera’s production of  Donizetti’s “Maria Stuarta,” a dramatization of Protestant Queen Elizabeth’s imprisonment and execution of Catholic rival to the throne Mary Stuart.

The central chapter in Donizetti’s trilogy of operatic “Tudor Queens,” Maria Stuarda has one of the most famously explosive scenes in all of opera. It is unbelievable this 1835 musical drama is not reaching the Met stage until 2013. We are lucky to have the chance to experience this gripping historical character drama Saturday, January 19, at 12:55 pm, in the Whitman Auditorium of Virginia Western Community College.

Amy Cofield, Williamson’s wife, will be on hand before the broadcast to talk about her experiences working with mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato, the Kansas native who plays Mary Stuart.

The opera takes some liberties with history, as creative works often do. Though Williamson cites an explosive face-to-face confrontation between Mary and Elizabeth as the the opera’s most infamous scene, in real life the rival queens never met.

UPDATE 1/15: Here’s today’s story on the History Museum’s move.

Here’s my report so far on the first museum to return to Center in the Square. Any thoughts? Feel free to share in the comments.

Today the History Museum of Western Virginia started moving its offices, gift shop merchandise and archives back into Center in the Square’s newly renovated building on Campbell Avenue, the first of the museums to do so.

The museum has resided for the last year and a half in a temporary location a block down the road at the old Shenandoah Hotel building, also owned by Center.

Three Virginia Varsity Transfer vans were parked outside the former hotel, with movers carting out about 400 boxes that were packed last week over a period of four days.

“We are doing this move back with pretty much a week’s notice,” said History Museum Manager Kim Clymer.

The museum expects to have its belongings back in its third floor space in Center by the end of the day. Then, Tuesday, the offices of the Historical Society of Western Virginia, which operates the history museum and the O. Winston Link Museum, will move into the first floor space in Center in the Square’s Church Avenue building that had been home to Arts Council of the Blue Ridge.

Click here to read the rest of the story.