Emotional event breaks tradition, hands out lone award
Through laughter and tears, area leaders spent much of an annual awards ceremony remembering Montgomery arts scene fixture Helen Steineker. Then they broke from 30 years of tradition to hand out just a single award this year, one that was renamed in her honor.
Steineker was the manager of the Montgomery Symphony Orchestra for more than 25 years. She died in December 2013 after a short illness.
Read more: MSO pays tribute to Steineker
During her time leading the MSO, she proposed that the annual Business in the Arts Awards include an honor for an organization that may not qualify as a traditional business but that goes above and beyond to help the arts environment here. It's been called the Community Award for years. On Thursday, it was christened the Helen Steineker Community Award - and it was the only one given out at this year’s ceremony.
Jackson Hospital won the honor for their efforts to incorporate local artwork into the hospital.
“We are your art museum that never closes,” said Janet McQueen, president of the Jackson Hospital Foundation. “You didn’t plan to visit my museum. You happened to be there.”
Photos by local students and amateur photographers decorate the hospital’s new, $3 million Family Birth Center. Other areas of the hospital are filled with so much unique artwork that there are art brochures in the lobby.
The idea is to help people forget they’re in a hospital.
McQueen told a story about a man who spent three days examining a painting while his wife was in the hospital, and how he developed a love for the painting’s details.
“That said everything I needed to know about the power of the paintings in the hospital and how it can move a person to not focus on their own problems, but to focus on something beautiful,” she said.
The hospital got a new piece of artwork at the ceremony. The award itself was a painting by local artist Barbara Davis of a crowd listening to one of the Montgomery Symphony Orchestra’s outdoor pops concerts.
It was a scene orchestrated by Steineker for years, and one that served as a showcase for her resilient spirit.
Former MSO Board of Directors chairman Charles Stakely recalled a year when rain started falling on the outdoor concert. He said the members of the orchestra started to pack things up and leave, but Steineker stopped them.
“Helen said in a voice loud enough that everyone could hear it, ‘Sit back down. This won’t last but a minute.’ Sure enough, as if some other voice heard it, it quit raining,” Stakely laughed.
“She was one in a million.”
Read more: 2015 award winners thank the artists
