St. Louis, MO -- On Sunday, June 16, at 7:00 a.m. (CST), the Arts and Education cable network (A & E) will feature the Grand Center District and the newly founded Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts in a documentary to be aired nationally. The film, entitled "Grand Endeavor: The Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts," will be presented on the well-respected Breakfast with the Arts program. After the film, the program presents an interview by Breakfast with the Arts host Elliott Forrest with Emily Pulitzer and the two internationally acclaimed artists Ellsworth Kelly and Richard Serra, whose commissioned works are a part of the Foundation.
The film showcases the role of the Foundation as part of an ambitious urban redevelopment project of Grand Center, a district in midtown St. Louis in which art, education and entertainment are leading the way in a cultural and architectural revitalization of the neighborhood. Grand Center, only a five-minute drive from St. Louis’s downtown, was once the city’s glittering arts and theatre district in the 1920s and ‘30s. But beginning in the 1950s, as stores, offices, and theatres closed, Grand Center became a symbol of decay in the very heart of the city. Through major efforts by private and public initiatives to restore this critical component of St. Louis’ history, tremendous strides have occurred in the past decades. Grand Center is home to world-class cultural institutions such as the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra, the Sheldon Music Hall, the Fox Theater, the Grandel Theatre, the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, and the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts.
The new film, produced by the Emmy award-winning St. Louis firm Schwartz & Associates Creative, focuses on the project to create the Foundation building, a remarkable architectural masterpiece designed by noted Japanese architect Tadao Ando. The Foundation, conceived by Emily Rauh Pulitzer and her late husband Joseph Pulitzer Jr., opened in October 2001 and aims to generate ideas and discussions about art, architecture, design, and contemporary culture. The experience of the Ando-designed building is central to the Foundation’s mission, serving as a venue for experimentation in contemporary art and architecture and housing selections of artwork from the Pulitzer collection.
Exploring the Foundation project as it evolved over 10 years of planning, the film includes remarkable visual and oral archival footage taken by Schwartz & Associates Creative and the St. Louis public television station, KETC-TV Channel Nine. The piece provides insight on the construction of the Ando building and the installation of the commissioned works by Ellsworth Kelly and Richard Serra, as well as interviews with the architect, the artists, the patron, and the members of the building team. In addition to the national A & E broadcast, the film will also air on KETC-TV. The project was made possible by generous grants from the St. Louis Convention and Visitor’s Commission and the Emerson Foundation.
The airing of the film coincides with the first reinstallation of two of the Foundation’s galleries with Selected Works by Ellsworth Kelly from Saint Louis Collections. The installation was curated by the artist and offers a focused view of his artistic evolution over a fifty-year period. The film also coincides with the launching of an updated and more comprehensive PFA website www.pulitzerarts.org. More extensive information and flash film documentaries on the architecture, commissioned works, programming, and urban context of the Foundation will be available at this site, designed by Bettie Schwartz, also of Schwartz & Associates Creative.
