Arts and Culture with Diane Stillman
We sat down with our resident Diane Stillman to discuss how she interacts with our arts and culture offerings. Finding senior living with a robust arts and culture offering was important for Mrs. Stillman since the arts were a large part of her daily life when she was an arts educator at The Walter’s Art Museum.
What about Roland Park Place attracts people interested in arts and culture?
I think it attracts people interested in arts and culture because we offer so much for them to take advantage of. For example, in the visual arts, we have original works of art throughout the first floor of the original building and these works of art have been contributed by residents. They are all original and very interesting. We offer studio art classes and drawing and painting. We also have the art gallery devoted to work by resident artists, about seven shows a year. And we offer trips to art museums in Washington and Wilmington, as well as Baltimore. And trips to visit interested in architecture locally and beyond. So people who have a strong interest in culture in terms of visual arts have everything I mentioned, if they’re particularly interested in music there are live concerts every Wednesday evening, and the range is from classical to jazz to folk, as well as trips to the BSO.
What are some of the most popular activities?
The Wednesday evening concerts are generally very nicely attended. And the delightful thing about them is that they’re very varied. So we have performers of classical music, jazz folk music. So there’s bound to be a Wednesday evening concert that will appeal to every two different people. Plus, of course, we go on with the bus and we go to the symphony. That really helps round out the music scene. And another lovely thing is in good weather. They will sometimes be a guitarist or a single instrumentalist playing outside on the patio and with Mimosa to drink at the same time. So we do have I would say absolutely every week, there are some wonderful kinds of music.
In terms of literature, we have the weekly mourning poetry class. We have a class devoted to writing memoirs. That was a book club. We also have a library that is extensive, with lots of every taste accommodated, including, a large print section. There is the Residence Review where residents can submit works of fiction, poetry, memoir, etc. Daily movies are put on the Roland Park TV channel and there are trips to the Charles and Everyman Theatre. And one other thing which is, I think really important and is unique to Roland Park Place is the lectures, namely, One Day University. Residents can watch a lecture and choose from a wide variety daily at 4 pm. There is a new one every day and they can also go into the One Day University online library to watch ones that have been put on in the past. The residents can sit down with a cup of tea or coffee or a glass of wine and listen to a very interesting talk.
As one of the directors of the Roland Park Place art gallery, can you share its history and mission?
Of course, many years there have been a corridor, which residents are usually one or two pieces had been put up. However, when it became clear that that particular space would no longer be available, I proposed the use of Stonehill studio to become the site for our art gallery. At the moment, it’s modest in that it’s basically a long trapezoid shape. But we set it up with a particular installation system that makes it easy to install. Bill Johnston and I were made the co-directors of the art gallery. Both of us come from Art Museum backgrounds from the Walters Bill was a curator of 18th and 19th century art at the Walters and I have served as director of education and public programs. So the two of us, I think I can say, make an excellent team to work with a small space, but we are delighted to have it.
What we have done is to find wonderful artists within our population and we put up shows that go on for about six or seven weeks. We’ve had watercolors, we’ve had ink drawings, and we’ve had photography so we’ve had a wide range of shows. The shows are generally on for about six weeks and then downtime for a couple of weeks. And I promote, promote the shows vigorously, especially through a Google group. With each show, we have an opening with a typical gallery wine and cheese opening. The artist talks about his or her work for could be as much as a half hour. The openings have been incredibly popular. We can’t even fit all the people in the room, I mean, this huge spill over into the whole hallway beyond. So, so far, I think the art gallery has been enormously successful. We look forward to putting up many different kinds of work. What is astounding to me, is the amount of talent at Roland Park Place.
