About Us
Amherst Glebe Arts Response (AGAR)Amherst Glebe Arts Response, Inc. (AGAR) is an Arts and Humanities Virginia non-profit corporation formed in March 2006 that received 501 (c)(3) status in 2008. AGAR's offices are located at 156 Patrick Henry Highway in Amherst, VA. Our MISSION is to commission, research, produce and publicly present educational materials the arts and the humanities, primarily in Amherst County and Greater Lynchburg, Virginia.
AGAR produces and presents arts and humanities programs and exhibitions in collaboration with community venues including the Amherst County Museum, Public Libraries and Public Schools, Second Stage Amherst, the Monacan Nation Cultural Foundation, the Legacy Museum for African-American History, Centra Community Health, Sweet Briar College, UVA Health, various schools, and Fairmont Crossing. During COVID-19, AGAR has brought music, crafts and poetry poems to individuals receiving delivered meals from Central Virginia Alliance for Community Living, Centra PACE and and Blue Ledge Meals on Wheels. AGAR produces and annually presents performances in jazz and chamber music. Between 2009 and 2015, AGAR received three grants from Virginia Foundation for the Humanities to conduct first-person interviews with over 133 individuals involved as students, teachers or parents in Amherst County schools in the years 1915-1975. The interviews were edited into 21 documentaries: “The Three Schools Project” (2010) had three films: “Bear Mountain Indian Mission School,” “Amherst Training School;” and “The Clifford School.” “The African American Schools Project” (2012) consisted of five films: “Small Schools of Northern Amherst County,” “Small Schools of Southern Amherst County;” “Madison Heights Colony Road Schools;” “Central High School 1954-69” and “Early Integration (told from African-American perspectives perspectives.” .AGAR’s open grant, “First Person Accounts of Twentieth Century Amherst County Schools” took place in 2013-2016. AGAR was a presenter for the 250th Anniversary of Amherst County, and the 100th Anniversary of the Town of Amherst. AGAR commissioned Aaron Garber to compose a chamber opera, “Romania: Revolution 1989,” for two singers and two pianists. The chamber opera premiered in 2014 in Clifford, Lynchburg, Moneta, and Roanoke, Virginia. In 2017, the small opera was reprised in Timisoara, Romania, where many of the events occurred. In 2018, AGAR commissioned an expanded version of the opera. The full version of “Romania: Revolution 1989” premiered in the Romanian National Opera House, Timisoara, Romania, on December 15, 2019, the 30th anniversary of the uprising that overthrew Nicolae Ceaușescu. FUNDING FOR AGAR programs has come from the National Endowment for the Arts/Art Works and Big Read, National Endowment for the Humanities, Virginia Commission for the Arts, Virginia Humanities, Greater Lynchburg Community Trust, CENTRA Health, Amherst Woman’s Club. Amherst Glebe Arts Response received 2021 Chamber Music America Digital Residency, and 2022 Presenter Consortium for Jazz Program grant funded by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, working with VCU Health and Gitts of Art/Michigan Medicine/ University of Michigan. AGAR is committed to the idea that unusual quality arts can find an audience in rural Virginia, and that local history can find an audience in many formats and many places. |
Board of Directors
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