The Oklahoma Arts Council sends this information as posted below:
From Amber Sharples, Oklahoma Arts Council Executive Director
Last week, we lost a standard-bearing voice in the world of arts, education, historic preservation, and more in Oklahoma. Louisa McCune most recently served as executive director of the Oklahoma City-based Kirkpatrick Foundation, a private foundation whose namesakes sought to build up the cultural and civic structures of their hometown. In McCune, the foundation found a leader in 2011 whose work would in ways transcend John and Eleanor Kirkpatrick’s original vision.
McCune passed away August 10, and with her memorial service taking place this weekend, the Oklahoma Arts Council joins the chorus of cultural, philanthropic, and civic institutions in central Oklahoma and across the state that are evoking her legacy as a way of carrying on and encouraging others to take up the work about which McCune was so passionate.
Former longtime editor of Oklahoma Today—the official magazine of the State of Oklahoma published by the Oklahoma Tourism and Recreation Department—McCune deservingly received a Media in the Arts Award during our 2003 Oklahoma Governor’s Arts Awards at the State Capitol. She had devoted nearly 14 years to the award-winning magazine during which time she pursued new ways for using it as a vehicle for fostering greater appreciation for how the arts could positively shape perspectives of Oklahoma.
A more recent initiative undertaken by McCune in conjunction with her tenure at the Kirkpatrick Foundation, ArtDesk, an award-winning contemporary art magazine, enabled McCune to further elevate Oklahoma’s arts scene. The exquisitely penned and published magazine, which McCune co-founded and served as editor-in-chief, was developed to have an international scope. It placed Oklahoma in new territory relative to the surrounding cultural landscape, inserting our state into a much larger national arts dialogue.
Louisa’s tireless work on behalf of the arts in Oklahoma, as well as a host of other pursuits, went beyond journalistic and literary endeavors and leadership for the Kirkpatrick Foundation. She also served on the boards of City Arts Center, the Oklahoma Center for Poets and Writers, and the Oklahoma Music Hall of Fame.
On the eve of celebrating Louisa’s life this weekend, on behalf of our appointed Council and agency staff, we share this moment of reflection of a life meaningfully devoted to bettering our state, optimistic it will move others to aspire to such worthy goals.
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