CHAUTAUQUA, N.Y. (April 9, 2024) — Chautauqua Institution announced a series of events, activities and initiatives that will be part of the quintessential Chautauqua experience in the summer of 2024 to commemorate and celebrate the Institution’s 150th Anniversary.
Organized around the theme The Seasons and Stories of Chautauqua, the anniversary calendar celebrates the dream of our founders, Lewis Miller and Bishop John Heyl Vincent, who together understood the importance of education across a lifetime. Their vision for Chautauqua called for Americans to make their leisure time matter by intentionally engaging in interdisciplinary and intergenerational learning and personal growth experiences. That vision has framed the main idea of Chautauqua’s story and enduring legacy for 150 years.
Chautauqua’s sesquicentennial calendar invites patrons to learn about and experience the history of Chautauqua and the Chautauqua Movement, to capture their own Chautauqua story, to contribute to the future of the organization, and to take part in one-of-a-kind activities curated especially for the 150th Anniversary.
“Chautauqua was imagined by our founders as place where people could make purposeful use of leisure time though immersive experiences with education, religion, recreation and the arts,” said Michael E. Hill, Ed.D., president of Chautauqua Institution.
“Our 150th Anniversary season is designed as a tribute to this vision that is the centerpiece of our mission today. Few things in this world stand the test of time, but our role as pioneers in the lifelong learning movement is as relevant today as it was in 1874,” Hill said.
Chautauqua’s anniversary tribute was officially launched in January with the announcement of the Institution’s $150 million capital campaign, Boundless. The campaign is composed of capital projects and strategic initiatives that will elevate the traditional Summer Assembly experience; expand
Chautauqua’s role as a convener; ensure a thriving Chautauqua Lake; and endow a vibrant future for the Institution through the Chautauqua Foundation.
In addition to investments in Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Accessibility (IDEA) and technological modernization, Boundless will provide support for the first phase of a rehabilitation initiative for the historic Athenaeum Hotel and a complete renovation of Bellinger Hall, which serves as both the summer home for students enrolled in Chautauqua’s Schools of Performing and Visual Arts and as a conference center the rest of the year. Among the other campaign objectives are a new on-grounds, year-round home for the resident Chautauqua Theater Company, a state-of-the-art facility for the Institution’s Buildings and Grounds operations, and housing for the hundreds of seasonal staff and faculty members that allow Chautauqua’s programming to thrive. More than $112 million has been raised to date. The full Case for Support is available at boundless.chq.org.
In May, the Institution launches a partnership with StoryCorps, inviting all who know and love Chautauqua to record and preserve their Chautauqua story in conversation with a friend or family member. Selected conversations will be featured on StoryCorps Mondays at Chautauqua, when edited versions of conversations will be presented in advance of lecture or performing arts programs. StoryCorps CEO Sandra M. Clark will speak on the Chautauqua Lecture Series on Wednesday, August 7 at 10:45 a.m. at the Amphitheater. Chautauqua’s 150th Anniversary StoryCorps Archive will be housed in perpetuity at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., where the StoryCorps archive is the largest collection of recorded conversations in the world.
The youth of Chautauqua will take center stage during the anniversary celebration. On July 10, young Chautauquans will take the lead on crafting a vision for Chautauqua’s future through facilitated conversations captured live by graphic recorder Jo (Johnine) Byrne. Participants’ parents will be invited to take part in a companion activity the next day – creating an understanding of what the youngest Chautauquans and their parents want Chautauqua to be for them and future generations of young families. Anniversary-themed events and programs will also be incorporated into the Play CHQ activities each week on Bestor Plaza and at the weekly Boys’ and Girls’ Club.
Two lecture series will examine Chautauqua’s history. The Chautauqua Heritage Lecture Series will offer seven lectures across Chautauqua’s nine-week season centering on various aspects of the Institution’s history and extended impact. The “Pillar Talks” series will specifically look at Chautauqua’s four program pillars — education, religion, recreation and the arts — through the eyes and perspectives of four former program leaders.
Also providing a window on Chautauqua’s legacy and history will be daily historic bus tours of the grounds, weekly Athenaeum Hotel historic tours, and weekly tours of the Miller-Edison Cottage and Gardens. The Miller-Edison Cottage was the Chautauqua home of famous inventor Thomas Edison and his wife, Mina Miller Edison, the daughter of one of Chautauqua’s founders, Lewis Miller. Chautauqua’s Bird, Tree and Garden Club will host free tours each Wednesday of the cottage’s Ellen Biddle Shipman Garden. A member of the Chautauqua Archives staff will lead the Cottage Tours each Tuesday and Thursday of the Summer Assembly.
Among the most tactile of the history experiences will take place in Miller Park, where a team of volunteers is using tent construction instructions that were discovered in Chautauqua’s Archives to
create a period-honoring replica of Chautauqua’s first form of housing. Many of the historic homes on Chautauqua’s grounds are built on the original tent platforms, some of which were likely constructed using these same instructions.
Old First Night is Chautauqua’s annual celebration of the original first night of Chautauqua’s season, which historically began the first Tuesday of August. In addition to the beloved traditions of this annual celebration, a special participatory performance on Bestor Plaza by puppeteers and band Squonk will bring all generations of Chautauquans to their feet. This will be followed by a giant birthday cake served from the porch of the historic Athenaeum Hotel, from which participants can also view Chautauqua Lake’s first drone fireworks display — a 350-drone animated spectacle in the sky. A drone display was selected over traditional fireworks to align with the Institution’s commitment to Chautauqua Lake conservation and environmental sustainability. Drone display presenters will offer an educational session for all who are interested in learning how drone displays are created and staged.
Chautauqua Lake also serves as the backdrop for four outdoor Chautauqua Opera Company performances of Love and Longing by the Lake, a trio of chamber operas, including two world premieres from The Summer Place, music by Rene Orth, Kamala Sankaram, and libretto by Jerre Dye. An opera inspired by oral histories and true accounts of life across the decades at Chautauqua, the Summer Place was commissioned by Chautauqua Opera Company with support from the Chautauqua Opera Guild.
Chautauqua Theater Company (CTC) invites audiences to experience a very special benefit play reading, featuring the talents of several CTC former artistic directors. Throughout CTC’s history, these visionaries have shaped generations of theater artists and presented unforgettable productions. In August, we welcome them back to the theater that was once their artistic home as we look toward the future. The Company’s 2024 season fittingly includes Chautauqua’s production of “Birthday Candles”, a play that was originally workshopped at Chautauqua and enjoyed its Broadway premiere in 2023. The Company also stages a world premiere in 2024, Kate Hamill’s “The Light and the Dark (the life and times of Artemisia Gentileschi)”, directed by CTC Producing Artistic Director Jade King Carroll.
The Anniversary Summer Assembly concludes with a week in partnership with Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra (JLCO) on the theme “Rising Together.” Marsalis and JLCO will perform three times at the Amphitheater that week, and Marsalis will also open and close the week’s Chautauqua Lecture Series. Wednesday and Thursday performances of Marsalis and JLCO will feature Chautauqua’s Music School Festival Orchestra, the Buffalo Philharmonic Chorus, and other special guests for two performances of Marsalis’s seminal work “All Rise” on the 25th anniversary of its first performance. These performances will be recorded by the Public Broadcasting System (PBS) as part of an hour-long documentary PBS is producing about Chautauqua. The documentary will air nationally in February 2025. The full-length concert will be presented by PBS online.
Chautauqua’s 150th Anniversary celebration concludes Sunday, August 25 with the closing Three Taps of the Gavel speech presented by President Hill. Earlier in the day, The Great Massey Organ Sing-Along will close the institution’s performing arts season, featuring Chautauqua’s historic 1907 Massey Organ — the largest outdoor organ in the world –as it accompanies the community that gathers to “sing out” the season. Chautauqua Director of Sacred Music and Organist and Jamestown native Joshua Stafford will lead the sing-along program. Chautauqua continues to offer free admission every Sunday and free parking until 2:00 p.m.
“This series of events and opportunities alongside our core program of events is our invitation to Chautauquans around the world to come back to Chautauqua — or visit us for the first time — in 2024. It’s an opportunity to be part of a legacy that Teddy Roosevelt described as ‘typical of America at its best’ — a standard to which we aspire every day,” Hill said.
The full calendar of anniversary events is available at http://www.chq.org/150, where updates and additional events and programs will be added as they are confirmed a. Chautauqua’s 150th Anniversary lecture programs will be available live and on demand on the membership channel CHQ Assembly. Gate passes and tickets are on sale now at tickets.chq.org. Overnight accommodations at the Athenaeum Hotel may be booked online, and Chautauqua’s Accommodations Directory provides information on private housing options available on Chautauqua’s grounds.
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