Erin Keane

Director Charles Venable is leaving the Speed Art Museum next month. The Board of Governors of the Indianapolis Museum of Art announced today that Venable has been appointed The Melvin & Bren Simon Director and CEO of the Museum. 

Venable joined the Speed five years ago, leading the museum during the development and funding of a $50 million renovation and expansion project, which will close the museum to the public for three years next month.

In 2010, Chely Wright became the first country music star to come out as gay. Wright’s three-year journey to her coming out day is the subject of a new documentary by filmmakers Bobbie Berleffi and Beverly Kopf.

Gilbert and Sullivan’s “H.M.S. Pinafore” opens Friday at Iroquois Amphitheater. The comic operetta is part of the new “Iroquois Amphitheater Presents” series produced by Metro Parks.

Louisville Repertory Company is changing up its programming with an unauthorized homage to Charles Schulz’s Peanuts gang. Bert V. Royal’s play “Dog Sees God: Confessions of a Teenage Blockhead” re-imagines the Peanuts characters as confused high schoolers. Names are changed, but the characters are still recognizable.

“Van” is a stoner who smoked the last scraps of his beloved blanket. “CB” is still a blockhead, but now he’s questioning his sexuality and possibly in love with his piano-playing classmate. Good grief.

The national tour of the hit musical "The Book of Mormon" will be part of next season’s Broadway in Louisville series. Broadway in Louisville won’t announce their 2013-2014 season until March, but a limited engagement of “The Book of Mormon” will be on the slate. 

There was a time when summer didn't yield such an abundance of theatrical riches in Louisville, with the big houses dark and maybe a handful of small company revivals to sustain us through the long humid season.

Louisville musician Jason Noble died this morning at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md., where he was a patient in a clinical trial for a new cancer treatment. Noble was diagnosed with synovial sarcoma in 2009. He was 40.

It’s fine to hit the downtown First Friday Trolley Hop without a plan. Park, wander in and out of galleries, grab a drink or dinner with friends and hop a TARC trolley from one end of downtown to the next and back—you’re sure to find something to catch your eye or ears.

But with so many events and gallery receptions happening at once, it’s easy to get overwhelmed, so every month we take a look at five don’t-miss art events happening during the hop.

“Like a Man” is singer/songwriter Adam Cohen’s first record since 2004. Cohen had some modest success with his band Low Millions ("Ex-Girlfriends"), but after a promising start, his musical career stalled.  

After decades of trying to distance himself from his famous father’s sound (he's the son of famed songwriter and poet Leonard Cohen),  he’s reclaiming his place in the Cohen legacy. “Like a Man” pays deliberate homage to his father’s songs while allowing Cohen to come full circle with a mature and vulnerable sound of his own.

Despite a recent report by WAVE 3 that the Kentucky Shakespeare Festival is in financial trouble, incoming board president Allen Harris says the company as a whole is financially sound.