Arts leader Jack Kyle moving to Hattiesburg|[3/31/06]

Published 12:00 am Friday, March 31, 2006

Four months after signing on to study the potential for a performing arts center in Vicksburg, Jack Kyle, former executive director of the Mississippi Commission for International Cultural Exchange, said he was moving today to begin a new job in Hattiesburg.

&#8220I love Vicksburg and I wish everyone there much success and much progress,” Kyle said Thursday after returning an advance of $1,000 to the Vicksburg-Warren Community Alliance, which had hired him in December to investigate a possible downtown performing arts center. Kyle described his role as an &#8220intermediary” on that project, conceived to bring various music festivals, ballet and other events to Vicksburg. He had also sought support for building an opera house downtown, but said Thursday he was not currently involved in any projects in the city.

Kyle said his new job is with a private organization, but he would not name the organization or give details on the position. &#8220I’ll be dealing with quality of life issues, and arts is one part of that,” he said.

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The Alliance’s deal with Kyle was for $5,000 total, said board of trustees chairman Bobby Bailess, but only the $1,000 advance had been paid. The idea of moving ahead with plans for developing the performing arts center was discussed at Thursday’s board meeting, he said, but its future is precarious.

&#8220It’s not dead; we’re just not sure how we’re going to revive it,” Bailess said. &#8220Obviously, if you’re going to do it and do it right, you need somebody to take the ball and run. We thought Jack was that person, but he has another opportunity. We’ve got to regroup.”

The Alliance has an annual budget of about $80,000, mostly from private donations.

Kyle, who moved to Vicksburg in June 2005, became the founding director of Mississippi Commission for International Cultural Exchange in 1994.

In that post, he helped bring a string of successful exhibitions to Jackson, beginning with the &#8220Palaces of St. Petersburg: Russian Imperial Style,” whose 554,000-plus visitors made it the highest attended exhibition in the United States in 1996. It was followed by the 1998 &#8220Splendors of Versailles” exhibition, which was designated the &#8220Top Event in the U.S.” by the American Bus Association, and the 2001 &#8220Majesty of Spain: Royal Collections from the Museo del Prado & Patrimonio Nacional,” which attracted more than 300,000 visitors and received the designation as the &#8220Top Event in the U.S.” by the ABA.

The low participation of the &#8220Glory of Baroque Dresden,” however, which was visited by 133,000 people in 2004, caused the MCIC to close its doors and sell all assets.

Kyle, knighted with the French Chedallier of the Order of Arts and Letters in 1999 and decorated with the Order of Isabel the Catholic by the King of Spain in 2001, among other distinctions, purchased in 1999 a building at 1216 Washington St., which he operated as Washington Street Fine Arts Gallery until it closed while Kyle was working on the later exhibitions in Jackson.