Arts Beat: Riches at Rollins

LeVar Burton is faithful to his roots.

Burton has had quite the acting career, but he keeps returning to a passion that has been with him since childhood.

"I grew up in an environment where love of the written word was expected,” he says. “My mother is a great teacher and she was my first teacher and one of the things that she taught me, by example, was that a personal relationship with the written word is the key to being an informed human being.”

Burton will address that subject at Rollins College’s Warden Arena at 7:30 p.m. Thursday in a talk titled The Power of Storytelling: Written, Spoken, Lived.

Though probably best known for his roles as Lt. Commander Geordi La Forge in Star Trek: The Next Generation and Kunta Kinte in the groundbreaking 1977 television miniseries Roots, Burton is also host and executive producer of the PBS children’s series Reading Rainbow. 

More recently he has worked toward reviving Reading Rainbow in a free, Web-based format that can be used in elementary schools.

 It will be a busy evening on the Rollins campus. Earlier, photographer Jess T. Dugan (left) will appear at the Cornell Fine Arts Museum to discuss her exhibit, Every breath we drew, which will be on display at the  museum through early January.  The lecture is at 6 p.m. The exhibit explores unconventional sexual  identity head-on, in luminous, startlingly candid photographic portraits of transgender friends.  

 Given the two events, both of which are free, parking may be a bear. Your best bet is the parking garage  directly across Fairbanks Avenue from Rollins.

For more information, click on the links below:

 Burton

 Dugan