ASPEN ART MUSEUM REJECTED AT THE POLLS; WIEBE WINS CANADIAN DISTINGUISHED ARTIST AWARD
Voters defeated a ballot measure this week that would have cleared the way for the Aspen Art Museum to negotiate with the city council for the possible acquisition of the former youth-center site, reports Wyatt Haupt Jr. for the Aspen Times. A total of 902 people cast ballots in favor of Question 1, while 1,471 voted against the measure, according to unofficial results from the Aspen city clerk’s office. Proponents of Question 1 were hoping to buy the site along with adjacent properties so a thirty-thousand-square-foot museum could be built. The museum would have included six galleries, storage space, offices, a boardroom, workshop space, a library, a café, a bar, a restaurant, and a loading dock. Museum director and chief curator Heidi Zuckerman Jacobson said supporters of the measure “were extremely disappointed in results” of the election. “We feel that sadly Aspen and its citizens have been denied a real opportunity. And for those that voted ‘Yes,’ we thank them,” she said.
In other news, one of Edmonton’s most prolific writers and the former curator of Lethbridge’s Southern Alberta Art Gallery have been named as this year’s winner of the Lieutenant Governor of Alberta Distinguished Artist Awards, reports the CNW Group. Rudy Wiebe, a professor emeritus of Canadian literature and creative writing at the University of Alberta, has written nine novels, four short story collections, two children’s books and six books of nonfiction. The son of Russian immigrants, who wanted to save their children from Soviet oppression, he was born in 1934 in Speedwell, Saskatchewan. His love of this tiny Mennonite community was effectively portrayed in his latest multi-award-winning book, Of This Earth, which was published in 2007. It has since received the Charles Taylor Award for Literary Non-fiction and the Grant McEwan Award, both in the publication year. His latest book is the biography Big Bear, in the Penguin Extraordinary Canadians series.
