The 100 Best Art Towns in America: A Guide to Galleries, Museums, Festivals, Lodging and Dining, Fourth Edition (Paperback)

by John Villani (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
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.

About the Author
John Villani writes about creative communities and creativity-driven individuals. His work has appeared in Art in America, Vanity Fair, The Christian Science Monitor, Art News, Urban Land, Southern Living, U.S. News & World Report, Native Peoples, Sunset, Country Home, Southern Accents, and Southwest Art.

A resident of Santa Fe, New Mexico, he's been a featured speaker at numerous conferences addressing issues in the arts, community development, and downtown revitalization. He's held art sector positions such as visual arts critic for the Arizona Republic newspaper, and Communications Director of the Institute of American Indian Arts, a tribal college and contemporary art museum.

His travels take him across the USA, Canada, Mexico, Hawaii and Alaska in a continuing effort to discover new places to include in upcoming editions of The 100 Best Art Towns in America and to also visit with the painters, artistic directors, poets, glass blowers, music directors, sculptors, actors, fine craftspeople, writers, musicians, dancers, jewelers, and ceramists whose commitment to their communities and careers provide the foundation of civic engagement distinguishing Art Towns from their far less interesting neighbors.

When he's not careening through airport terminals John Villani advises arts organizations, downtown redevelopment entities, and tourism boards in evaluating the attributes of places establishing the presence of artists in their civic life.

Through his travels to Art Towns and engagement with the working artists in communities from Maine to Maui, John Villani brings the informed perspectives of a dedicated traveler and experienced journalist to his writing.

Discovering how innovation in the form of arts-focused creativity combines with the resources and expertise of public entities as well as non-profit organizations and progressively-minded commercial entrepreneurs is another of the underlying themes in The 100 Best Art Towns in America. These locally-tailored, innovative and collaborative efforts have resulted in new ways of thinking about the arts' power to effect far-reaching transformations redefining communities and reshaping their civic fabric as they strive to join the ranks of the nation's leading Art Towns.

Product Details

• Paperback: 504 pages
• Publisher: Countryman Press; 4 edition (April 19, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0881506419
• ISBN-13: 978-0881506419
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #71,400 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Primus Inter Pares of Guidebooks, July 16, 2005

By	Paul S. Soderberg "novelist and art writer" (Scottsdale AZ USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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.

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Splendid guide to art in small-town America, July 11, 2005

By	Oregon Art Lover - See all my reviews

When I first bought John Villani's book, my wife said, "How cool is this...a vacation planner for the art-minded!"

That's exactly what it is: a summary of what there is to see and do in 100 wonderful arts communities across the US and Canada. The author has gathered information about art galleries, art festivals, restaurants, musical events, and live theater to produce a unique compendium, distilling the essence of each town's character. To guide the reader to the best, Villani ranks the top 10 towns of under 30,000 population, along with the top 10 larger towns of 30,000 to 100,000.

Any summary of so many towns must of course must leave some things out. Local partisans may may miss seeing a favorite restaurant listed in this book, or a theater, or a well-known gallery. Others, with equal home-town loyalty, may dispute Villani's rankings.

But this is all beside the point: this book is a splendid guide for visitors, providing enough information to plan a trip or sample a new art venue. Travelers will discover their own delights and favorite places in each of these fine art towns. Villani's book will reward the adventurous with a taste of rural America unlike any other.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Sophisticated, Easy-to-Use Guide to Art Towns !!!, July 14, 2005

By	F. Hanafin Elliott - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

When I travel, I usually need to spend a lot of time reading scores of newspapers, Chamber of Commerce information, and flyers, in order to figure out the highlights and personality of each area. Thanks to "The 100 Best Art Towns in America", the author has distilled this information into an easy-to-read, informative format, which cuts through the advertising and special interest promotional activities, allowing me to experience a more sophisticated vacation.

The book also saves me from wasting time in overly-commercial towns that are usually promoted in most other travel guides. I am a resident of one such overly-commercial town, Sedona, AZ, and am delighted to see that the author has NOT included that town, and therefore, not sold-out to its national efforts to be included in all lists of "Art Towns". This book will steer you clear of timeshare and tommyhawk towns!

Congratulations to John Villani for his helpful guidebook.