Andrea Fellenz
School is starting, sweaters are coming out of the closet, the days are getting shorter. And Madison’s fall arts season is kicking into high gear. While the looming election has folks on edge, doomscrolling is no way to cope. The people who mapped out the 2024-2025 arts season see their programming both as a needed distraction and a way to more deeply engage with our neighbors — looking to create unity and prompt discovery with a varied and inclusive palette of theater, music, film, visual art and literature. Leaders in the Madison arts community who talked to Isthmus for this preview issue have a message that is soothing, inspiring, and above all welcoming.
“If you’re troubled, our job is to ease that for a few hours,” says Kathryn Smith, director of the Madison Opera.
Participation is key. Paul Baker Prindle, the new director of the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, sees the museum as in a conversation: “I want to let the community decide where the conversation about the museum goes. The more people you have involved in that conversation, the better the outcomes will be.”
“We have the word ‘laboratory’ in our title,” says Jolynne Roorda of Arts + Literature Laboratory, “because we want it to be a laboratory of ideas and exploration.”
“We want to demystify the art,” says associate director of Kanopy Dance Susanne Voeltz, “and help the audience discover new ways of seeing the world.”
