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(More customer reviews)As a lifelong world traveler (106 countries visited, and all 50 States), I consider myself a connoisseur of guidebooks in various languages, and the fourth edition of John Villani's "The 100 Best Art Towns in America" is one of the finest I've ever seen in the English language. Where others are mere compendiums that in essence are glorified phone books, Mr. Villani's is more in the nature of an artwork, for he has deftly sketched 100 communities in a way that reveals each one's soul. (Yes, communities do have "souls," and those guidebooks that do not recognize this fact are wastes of paper, no matter how fancy they've been produced.) A town's soul is manifested throughout it--in its restaurants, its hotels, its public spaces, its historic sites and annual festivals, all of which Mr. Villani covers very nicely in this edition; but the single clearest sign of any community's soul is its art scene, the realm and arena of its total creative force. Some cities, with sad souls, have high crime rates, but the best cities have high art rates, and John Villani has given us a delightfully usable work of art masquerading as a book that identifies the best 100 of those cities and towns. My sole complaint would be that he didn't pick America's best 200 art towns, or 300! At any rate, for tourists or visitors certainly, and for city planners and promoters who want to find the secret to being a successful art town, and definitely for any and all art-lovers, John Villani's "The 100 Best Art Towns in America" is THE best guidebook you can find.
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Do small and medium size communities intrigue you? Are you the type of person who believes there's a pot of gold at the end of every rainbow? Can you envision yourself someday living in a arts-supportive community where there's only one coffeeshop selling decaf lattes? From Maine's lobster shacks to LaJolla's fish taco stands, the North American continent is home to hundreds of tiny towns and small cities where the arts are flourishing. And if you assume that small town art looks like a smiling teddy bear sitting in a miniature rocking chair, and sounds like a barbershop quartet harmonizing underneath a Victorian gazebo, then you're either watching too much television or you're not traveling enough. The reality of small town and small city art scenes in the 21st century is one of surprising strength, vivid diversity, sophisticated expression, and impressive talent. Whether your interests are in the visual arts, contemporary theatre, modern dance, classical music, Shakespeare under the stars, or outdoor art festivals where small town streets are lined with artists' booths, there's an astonishing arts transformation taking place in communities the mainstream art world considers too far off the beaten path.Author John Villani guides you down those pathways and opens the doorways to a C-note's worth of those places in this all-new 4th edition of The 100 Best Art Towns in America. Here's where you'll discover an exceptional contemporary art museum in eastern North Dakota, a Mississippi shrine to one of America's most gifted ceramists, a decommissioned military base in Washington State that's been converted into a short-term residency center for painters, poets, and authors, and a coastal community is South Carolina where a compact business district has become home to more than a dozen art galleries.With each passing year Americans are becoming better informed about the arts and understand the importance of supporting the arts whether they're in downtown storefront galleries, on stages erected in neighborhood parks, or sprawled across the linoleum floors of elementary school classrooms. Discover for yourself the creativity flourishing in 100 of those communities in the pages of this Art Towns travel guide.
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