Jackson Free Press

The Jackson Whole Foods Market (4500 Interstate 55 N., Suite 99) will donate 5% of its net sales to Creativity Kitchen, a nonprofit that Jackson chef Nick Wallace founded, on Thursday, Oct. 17, as part of Whole Foods' annual Community Giving Days. Proceeds will support the nonprofit's teaching garden and its work with chefs from the Jackson Public Schools district, a release from Whole Foods says.

Wallace, owner of Nick Wallace Culinary, launched Creativity Kitchen in 2016. As part of the initiative, Wallace meets with JPS kitchen staff and teaches healthy recipes to serve to students. Creativity Kitchen also teaches students about growing and preparing their own food at home.

More than 500 Whole Foods Market locations around the country will also participate in Community Giving Day, the release says, and will donate to organizations and programs that support communities through food.

For more information about Creativity Kitchen, visit the Nick Wallace Culinary website.

Mississippi Museum of Art Receives Arts and Civil Rights Donation

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation recently donated $750,000 to the Mississippi Museum of Art to support the expansion of the museum's role as a resource for museum studies for area universities and colleges, a role that began with the museum's Arts and Civil Rights Initiative. The initiative is a two-year partnership between the museum and Tougaloo College that launched in May 2017 with funding from The Henry Luce Foundation.

Redell Hearn, curator of art and civil rights for the museum and Tougaloo, will oversee the initiative as the museum's new curator of academic affairs.

The expansion will include a post-baccalaureate fellowship program. The museum's Teaching Fellows Program―the first collaboration of the museum and Belhaven University, Millsaps College, Jackson State University and Tougaloo―also received $30,000 from the AT&T Foundation and the Wells Fargo Foundation. Teaching Fellows are undergraduate students trained on the museum's permanent collection and ongoing exhibitions will act as guides for K-12 school group tours.

The Ford Foundation awarded the museum a $250,000 grant for other programs and an upcoming exhibition project that will use art to address issues of race and equity in Mississippi.

Mississippi Opera Hosting "Future Stars of the Stage" Concert

Mississippi Opera will host the "Future Stars of the Stage" concert on Monday, Oct. 21, at 7:30 p.m. at Duling Hall. The concert will include performances from the six winners of the 2019 John Alexander National Vocal Competition, which Mississippi Opera held on Sept. 28. The winners were Chelsey Geeting of Portland, Maine, Whitney Myers of Tahlequah, Oklahoma, Bridget Cappel of Sterling Heights, Michigan, Laura Broscow of Irvine, California, Demi Vanderwerff of Huntsville, Alabama and Esther Atkinson of Bangor, Northern Ireland. The Mississippi Opera Orchestra will perform alongside them with Artistic Director Jay Dean as the conductor.

The Robert M. Hearin Foundation sponsored the John Alexander National Vocal Competition, which is named for Metropolitan Opera star and Meridian native John Alexander. More than 90 singers from across the United States and members of the Mississippi Opera staff and Opera Guild participated in the event.

Tickets for the event will be available at the door or by phone at 601-960-2300. For more information, visit msopera.org.

CORRECTION: A previous version of this story stated that the Mellon Foundation's donation to the Mississippi Museum of Art supported the museum's Arts and Civil Rights Initiative. It actually supports the expansion of the museum's role as a resource for museum studies for area universities and colleges, which began with the initiative. We apologize for the error.