Sunday, June 25-29. The artists performing at the five-day festival hail from surrounding towns and distant lands, including the Ivory Coast, England, Cuba, Nigeria and France. Festival activities will be held at both outdoor and indoor locations throughout New Haven. Many will be free of charge. We've assembled an array of thought-provoking programs focusing on the question of what is art and what is not.
Participants are sure to be both challenged and entertained.
This year the Festival of Ideas will present 15 readings, discussions and lecture-concerts on subjects as varied as Thornton Wilder, Charles Ives, MTV culture and P.T. Barnum. The Staple Singers, folk music's The Red Clay Ramblers and Nigeria's Chief Stephen Osita Osadebe, as well as other internationally acclaimed artists. Several activities will take place on the Yale campus, including separate concerts by jazz greats Henry Threadgill and Abbey Lincoln, and a return of last year's popular Festival Studio Classes series. The studio classes offer four days of intensive instruction by Yale faculty members in drama, music, art, architecture or writing. Conceived by Anne Calabresi to help showcase and attract corporate support for New Haven's cultural, arts and educational resources, the 1996 festival featured 378 artists representing 20 cultures in 167 events.