Ogle Center

Are you feeling closed-in, locked-down and stressed-out?

The Ogle Center has a way for you to get up and out, without leaving your room.

It’s a coloring book for people of all ages that brings landscape paintings from the James L. Russell Wonderland Way Collection at IU Southeast to your home computer or laptop, allowing you to tap into your creativity while connecting with community history. The Ogle Center’s coloring book initiative dovetails with an initiative launched within the Arts & Culture Alliance (ACA).

The ACA is a network of decision-makers representing arts and cultural attractions in the Greater Louisville Region and Southern Indiana who are working together to identify common goals and pursue projects and events that accomplish common objectives.

To infuse daily life with creativity during the COVID-19 pandemic, the ACA has launched an activity book with projects that people can do at home.

As the Arts & Culture at Home booklet was being discussed, the Ogle Center, an ACA member, agreed to contribute three pages from its own ongoing project.
Read more.

While the Ogle Center’s doors have closed for in-person performances, our mission of creating educational and entertaining events for our community is not cancelled! In a partnership with the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the Indiana Arts Commission, and Traditional Arts Indiana, the Ogle Center presented renowned Indiana Bluegrass musicians Jim Smoak and Michael Cleveland live from the Stem Concert Hall on Labor Day.

Jim Smoak, a resident of Pekin, Indiana, started his career in Knoxville, Tennessee. He moved to Nashville to play with Bill Monroe on the Grand Ole Opry. He did television shows for Martha White Flower with Hylo Brown and The Timberliners and made recordings with Bill Monroe on Decca Records, with Hylo Brown on Capital Records, and with Arthur (guitar boogie) Smith on MGM Records.

Picking up the fiddle at age four, 2020 Grammy winner Michael Cleveland’s musical momentum began to propel him forward towards early success. At age nine, he was invited to sit in with the legendary Bill Monroe at the Bean Blossom Bluegrass Festival. Soon after, he brought his virtuosic style to the Grand Ole Opry as a guest of Alison Kraus and was handpicked for the International Bluegrass Music Association’s Bluegrass Youth All-stars before he was 14. In 2006, he formed his own band Michael Cleveland & Flamekeeper. Michael Cleveland & Flamekeeper performed to a sold-out foot-tappin’ crowd at the Ogle Center on November 2, 2019.

Washington, D.C.’s Kennedy Center recently launched Arts Across America as one of its Social Impact initiatives, a program to uplift artists and showcase art from communities and regions across the country in this time of uncertainty. Over the course of twenty weeks, Arts Across America is featuring free, digital performances from 200 artists who play leadership roles in their communities, exemplify unique regional artistic styles, and are using their medium as a tool for advocacy and social justice.

The incredible Arts Across America program creates opportunities for us to continue offering the human connection we all are craving. The Ogle Center was delighted to partner with Traditional Arts Indiana, the Indiana Arts Commission, and the Kennedy Center in showcasing the arts in southern Indiana and our local acclaimed bluegrass musicians to the world. During the livestream broadcast on Facebook and YouTube, visitors identified their locations while watching. People from the Republic of Panama, Germany, Denmark, Belgium, and from cities all across the United States joined in viewing the performance with Jim Smoak and Michael Cleveland.

Below is the video of the performance that was streamed live from the Ogle Center.