In the Arts: Jazz Fest Benefits New Orleans School, Video Artist’s Archive Goes to Smithsonian

In New Orleans for the annual Jazz Fest, legendary crooner Tony Bennett yesterday handed out dozens of new tubas, trumpets, and trombones to students at a charter school founded after Hurricane Katrina, the Associated Press reports.

The gift was set in motion by a New York jazz fan who won a $5,000 “Big Give” contest held by Oprah Winfrey’s magazine and decided to put the money toward instruments for New Orleans schools. Mr. Bennett and charitable groups such as Music Rising and the Mr. Holland’s Opus Foundation joined the effort, which procured $100,000 worth of instruments.

In other arts news, The New York Times reports that the estate of the pioneering video artist Nam June Paik will donate his archives to the Smithsonian American Art Museum. The Smithsonian won a competition for the coveted collection, beating out proposals from the Getty, Guggenheim, and Whitney museums and the Museum of Modern Art.

Also, longtime Los Angeles County Museum of Art contemporary-art curator, Lynn Zelevansky, has been named director of Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Museum of Art, reports the Los Angeles Times. She will take office in July, succeeding Richard Armstrong, who left to take over the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation.

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