People, arts and ideas, in six episodes

First, I want to note the passing of Douglas Drake, at 85 on Aug. 3. I visited with Doug during countless intermissions over the years, as he was never far from Thallis Hoyt Drake, his spouse and a tireless presenter and promoter of musical endeavors. (Thallis founded Early Music Now, for example, and remains an important part of the MacDowell Club.) Doug was a talented architect, a dedicated sailor, a faithful supporter of his wife’s endeavors, a keen and enthusiastic patron of the arts and an all-around good guy. Everyone who knew him will miss him. A memorial service is set for 4 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 19, at First Unitarian Church, 1342 N. Astor St.

Second, here’s a second for Matthew Reddin’s review of Jeeves Intervenes, the Milwaukee Chamber Theatre‘s season opener. Matthew saw it on opening night, Friday (Aug. 13). When I saw it Saturday, Jeeves ran like a Swiss watch, with utterly perfect timing of both verbal and physical comedy. This stuff is not easy, but a brilliant cast makes it look easy. This hilarious show runs through Aug. 29 at the Broadway Theatre Center. Playwright Margaret Raether, who drew on several P.G. Wodehouse Jeeves story to craft the play, will be on hand for a talk before the show, at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, Aug. 18. I love the title: Upper Class Twits and the People Who Love Them.

Third, the third episode of Arts Digest, the arts magazine show that Jon Anne Willow and I are working on for Milwaukee Public Television, is in progress. The initial air dates for show 3 are 9:30 p.m. on Oct. 18, 10 p.m. on Oct. 19 and 11:30 p.m. on Oct. 20 on channel 10. Additional showings on channel 36 are TBD. Sneak preview: Show 3 includes segments on the region’s creative economy, artistic plating by three leading chefs, a feature on a Milwaukee visual artist with international reach, and an feature on an important new opera to premiere here this fall. By the way, the entire episode 2 is available online.

Fourth, most of us think of a visit to an art museum as a major field trip. You go to Chicago and spend an entire day at the Art Institute. You go to New York and budget full days for MOMA and the Met. After all, it’s $25 to get into MOMA, so you want to try to see everything.

Most people speed-view under such circumstances; 30 seconds in front of one work is a long time. That’s one way to see art, but maybe not the best way.

My oldest son, Nick, is a photographer and videographer in New York. He has memberships at MOMA, the Met and other museums in the city. A couple of years ago, he spoke to me enthusiastically about the memberships, as they allowed him to drop in whenever he had a few spare minutes or happened to pass by. He liked to go in and spend, say, 20 minutes each with two or three works.

Nick’s practice partly inspired the One Piece at a Time series I’ve been writing this summer. Each week, I’ve gone to the Milwaukee Art Museum, focused on just one work from the permanent collection, taken time to really see it and then posted a little essay about it on Thursday. Membership in the museum makes that approach possible. I can bike down to MAM and drop in whenever I feel like it. I’ve already visited the museum more than a dozen times this summer.

What a luxury, for a mere $75 a year — and that’s for a family membership. I recommend it highly. And note that Milwaukee Art Museum membership involves no painful initiation ritual.

Fifth, New York’s consensus bad-girl choreographer, Ann Liv Young, was in Milwaukee last week. The visit was personal; she and Mike Guerrero, a Milwaukee native, are a couple, complete with daughter. They were here for a relative’s wedding. I was Mike’s first soccer coach. Mike and my son, Nick, played soccer together for years. And Nick was the video documentarian of Young’s residency in France a few years back. What a small, strange world.

Sixth, check out Present Music’s cool new website. I like the elegant look, and it’s pack with great information and links related to its repertoire and featured composers and guests for the coming season (which begins Sept. 18).