Marketing and Communications

2006 Business Arts Partnership Awards

GCAC annually honors the central Ohio business community's support of the arts through the Business Arts Partnership Awards. Three local businesses were awarded a 2006 Business Arts Partnership Award for their exemplary support of the arts at GCAC's annual meeting in April at the Ohio Statehouse Atrium.

Columbus City Council President, Matthew D. Habash presented the awards to the winners: Wolfe Associates and the Dispatch Printing Company (large business category), nominated by CAPA and the Wexner Center for the Arts, Jones Day (medium business category), nominated by the Columbus Symphony Orchestra, and the Brownstone on Main (small business), nominated by Red Herring. Each winning business received an original work of art by a local artist. The 2006 artists were Greg Galvin, Hani Hara and Leah Wong.

Brownstone on Main – Small Business Category
Since 2003, Brownstone on Main has changed the paradigm for dining and entertainment in Columbus. The restaurant, situated on three levels, showcases the best of brownstone living: intimate spaces, exposed brick walls, expressive lighting themes and great art.

Red Herring Theatre Ensemble, in association with CAPA, partnered with the Brownstone on Main to produce Paul Robeson in their downstairs cabaret space in February/March 2006. The production ran for four weekends. The Brownstone donated the performance space and the sound system used in the production. They also provided wait staff and bartenders to serve theatre patrons during the performances, and they fed the actors and crew on Saturday nights between the early and late performances of the show. The Brownstone promoted the show by featuring table tents on each of the tables in the main bar and dining room, and they offered theatre patrons a dining discount.

Jones Day – Medium Business Category
As one of the largest law firms in Columbus, Jones Day has been in the community for 26 years, specializing in Business Practice, Government Regulation, Litigation, Tax, Technology Issues Practice, Energy Specialized Industry Practice and Health Care Specialized Industry Practice.

Jones Day has offered its support to the Columbus Symphony Orchestra (CSO) in many ways throughout their 22-year partnership. The company has demonstrated its commitment to the Symphony by providing leadership, significant contributions and substantial in-kind services – all of which have made a great impact the future of the organization. The firm moved beyond supporting CSO merely through financial means and maximized the power of personal investment. Jones Day has proven itself to be a reliable asset to the Symphony.

Wolfe Associates/Dispatch Printing Company – Large Business Category
Wolfe Associates/Dispatch Printing Company is a media company that owns daily and weekly newspapers, magazines, radio stations, real estate and development companies and television stations. Wolfe Associates has been in business since 1871 and employs 2,100 in Columbus.

Wolfe Associates/Dispatch Printing Company was nominated by CAPA and the Wexner Center for the Arts. Their annual commitment to CAPA's A Christmas Carol helped to establish a Thanksgiving weekend tradition in Columbus, launching the holiday season for thousands of Columbus residents each year. The Columbus Dispatch and its related companies assisted with a host of promotional campaigns over the years, including Holidays in Columbus, a consortium of downtown arts organizations that pulled together to promote their holiday offerings. The Wexner Center's relationship with Wolfe Associates goes back to the inception of the Wexner Center in 1989. Annual operating support from Wolfe Associates helped to provide a strong foundation for the Wexner Center's programs and activities.

Artistic Excellence Award
In addition to the Business Arts Partnership Awards, GCAC presented its 2006 Artistic Excellence Award, given each year to an organization that demonstrates innovation, risk and artistic excellence in a performance, exhibition or program. The winner, selected by the GCAC Board of Trustees, received $10,000.

2006 Artistic Excellence Award Recipient: King Arts Complex, Cargo: The Middle Passage
In September 2005, the King Arts Complex unveiled a permanent interactive learning area, Middle Passage, an installation of Ron Anderson's painting Cargo. Cargo depicts the cramped, crowded and deadly cargo space of an early slave ship bound for the United States, along with a recreation of the physical space of the middle passage and the sounds of the voyage. Visitors enter the "Middle Passage" – mounted in the King Arts Complex's corridor connecting the East Wing with the West Wing – through a door marked, "No Return." Once inside, they confront Anderson's painting, as well as a space below the painting constructed to replicate the correct dimensions of the enclosed spaces of a slave ship hold. The "Middle Passage" includes weathered wood, portholes, miscellaneous cargo, chains and shackles, ghost silhouettes of others on board. The sounds of waves and water, the creaking of the ship and the cries and moans of slaves onboard surround the visitors. Nationally renowned sculptor Woodrow Nash also created two life-size children's figures that are huddled in the lower deck area.

Educational text highlights important factual information about the years of the slave trade, including the number of African people taken into slavery. The goal of the project is to educate the community about the artistic and cultural contributions and the history of African Americans through the installation of a permanent interactive learning area.

In the words of artist and author Tom Feelings, "If...history could be told in such a way that those chains of the past, those shackles that physically bound us together against our wills could, in the telling, become spiritual links that willingly bind us together now and in the future – then the most painful Middle Passage could become, ironically, a positive connecting line to us all."

The other 2006 Artistic Excellence nominees were:

BalletMet Columbus – Alice in Wonderland
CATCO – You're My Boy
Columbus Bach Ensemble – Southern Theatre Debut
Columbus Museum of Art – Renoir's Women