There will be no more School of the Arts at Rhinelander.
The once week-long event has been a key part of the Northwoods summer landscape for 52 years. UW-Madison School of Continuing Studies...the key sponsor... let stakeholders know of the decision this week. The school began in 1964 by UW Professor Robert Gard as a way to bring arts and culture to rural Wisconsin. People from many different areas converged in Rhinelander each July to learn from artists active in the field.
School of the Arts Director Lynn Tarnoff says the landscape for this type of education has changed...
"....there's been waning interest in destination education across our state and other regions. We had a precipitous decline in registrations over the last decade...."
She says it was difficult to run the program from Madison and noted that while there were many great local stakeholders, the interest locally also had been declining. Tarnoff said they looked at and tested other formats, but in the end, it was decided School of the Arts was not sustainable. Vice Provost for Lifelong Learning Jeffrey Russell said the decision to end School of the Arts was not taken lightly and he hoped participants would find a way to carry on their studies.
