Scene & Heard: 05.23.19

Pizza Time

Bavaro’s Pizza Napoletana & Pastaria, which broke ground on its renovation of the downtown Sarasota building at 27 Fletcher Ave. on May 7, 2018, opened to the public May 17 after nearly a year of construction. The 2,600-square-foot building has been completely redone to feature 150 seats and serve lunch and dinner seven days a week. The original Bavaro’s opened in March 2009 in Tampa as what the restaurant says was the first traditional Neapolitan Pizzeria in the state of Florida. For more information call 552-9131 or visit bavarospizza.com. 

Grants on grants on grants

Several local arts organizations received large gifts recently, so let’s break it down:

• Sarasota Youth Opera and Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall Education Department both announced May 16 that the organizations will receive a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts — $20,000 for the youth opera and $10,000 for the Van Wezel. The youth opera grant will help fund the group’s 2019 revival of “Brundibár” and the Van Wezel grant will help the growth of its Art Works for Schooltime Initiative.
• The day before, Westcoast Black Theatre Troupe announced the NEA is also awarding the organization with a $15,000 grant that will be used to underwrite WBTT’s 2020 production of “Flyin’ West” and to help fund community outreach activities.
• On May 15, Embracing Our Differences announced that Community Foundation of Sarasota County is awarding EOD with a $2,000 grant issued from the foundation’s McCauley-Brown Fund to help finance EOD’s Unity Days high school initiative, which engages Sarasota County high school students and staff in a day of team-building activities.

New kid on the block

Ringling College of Art and Design announced in a release May 16 that Tricia Mire has joined the college’s Office for Advancement as senior development officer. With more than two decades of fundraising experience — most recently as Asolo Repertory Theatre’s director of development for the last eight years — Mire is ready to be responsible for working with donors to foster strategic fundraising at the school.

“I look forward to helping more people discover what makes Ringling College so unique, and the incredible mark our graduates are making on the world,” Mire said in the release.”

Star of the show

The Arts and Cultural Alliance of Sarasota County announced in a May 16 release that Nancy Roucher will receive the Dr. Mary Palmer Trailblazer Award for Elevating Arts Education at the Florida Alliance for Arts Education’s Annual Summit June 21 in Fort Lauderdale. In response to the cuts to arts education in Sarasota County in 1988, Roucher founded the Arts Education Task Force through the Sarasota Arts Council, which is now the Arts and Cultural Alliance of Sarasota County.

*Correction: The front page of the Observer's A&E section in the 5/23 print issue named the wrong employer for Tricia Mire.