Sandra Lopez de Haro

Soprano Sandra Lopez de Haro performs in a wide variety of roles on the opera stage with companies that include the Metropolitan Opera, Florida Grand Opera, Opera de Oviedo, and Palm Beach Opera. In concerts and recitals with symphonies and at festivals, she also performs Spanish song repertoire and zarzuela. Most recently she appears as Cio-Cio-San in Madama Butterfly with the Opera de Saint-Cere, France in August and as Elisabetta in Don Carlos with the Finnish National Opera, Finland in October. 

Ocean Rescue

Miami Beach Ocean Rescue (a division of the fire department) guards 29 locations along Miami Beach. 

Stands

Beach stands, Miami Beach. 

Cristina Garcia

Singer/songwriter Cristina Garcia and keyboardist/composer Tony Laurencio formed Miami's electro funk duo Afrobeta in 2006. The group blends late '80s and early '90s freestyle, disco and house with electro accents and bass. 

Beginnings?

I'm an MTV baby. Music and dancing have always been a part of my life. I went to a Cuban-American elementary school, called Conchita Espinosa Academy. It was a performing arts school with music and dance classes. I took piano, ballet, tap, jazz, and even flamenco there!

Influences?

Our music is very inspired from our earliest influences. Tony loves Eddie Van Halen, Bach and Erez Eisen. I love Björk, Celia Cruz and Tori Amos. The people and places that inspire our music--our parents, our city, the sound of a cafeteria, and the taste of a croqueta. 

Local bands?

Personally, I have been so inspired by the music scene here. The positive aspect of being a local musician here is that Miami's a small town. If you work hard and gig, you  will get written up in the paper, the college radio will play your songs, people will come to your shows. You'd have to try hard not to be noticed. The local scene is incredibly supportive. Other artists, musicians and dancers will come to each other's shows and are all mutually inspired. 

Luce Foundation Center

The Luce Foundation Center for American Art houses 3500 craft objects, folk art pieces, paintings, sculptures, and miniatures from the Smithsonian American Art Museum's collection. Open storage with art arranged on shelves, hung on screens and in sliding drawers allows visitors to discover artworks by walking through the aisles or by planning a tour at kiosks. Objects have accession numbers that can be researched on the Center's computers to learn more about particular artists and their art. 

Smithsonian American Art Museum (third and fourth floors), 8th and F Streets NW

World War II Memorial

Located on the National Mall in Washington, DC, between the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial, the World War II Memorial honors and commemorates the 16 million Americans who served in a war involving 56 nations.

They have given their sons to the military services. They have stoked the furnaces and hurried the factory wheels. They have made the planes and welded the tanks, riveted the ships and rolled the shells. 

--President Franklin D. Roosevelt

Architect Friedrich St. Florian designed a classically inspired civic space (completed in 2004), a contemporary version of the public square in an amphitheater-like form. Pavilions mark the north and south sides of the memorial, victory arches dedicated to the Atlantic and Pacific theaters of war. 

The essence of the memorial is for future generations. What we want to tell young people now--and a hundred and two hundred years from now--is that there was a generation of Americans that stood up and defended our ideals and principles when challenged. --Florian

Two semicircular colonnades of state and territory pillars outline ramps leading to a central memorial plaza and pool. The pillars' communal base and bronze wreaths depicting oak leaves and wheat spears (designed by sculptor Ray Kaskey) symbolize national unity, the collective power of democratic principles and strength and bounty of the nation. 

The Freedom Wall on the western side of the plaza contains a field of 4,048 gold stars, one for each 100 fallen Americans. More than 400,000 American soldiers, sailors, airmen, and others died in the war. 

The site is the element that will give the memorial its principal power and  meaning. World War II, which has been called the most important event in world history, takes its rightful place on the Mall on the centerline between references to our cardinal moments in each of the preceding centuries--the monuments to Washington and Lincoln.--J. Carter Brown, Chairman, Commission of Fine Arts

17th Street and Constitution Avenue NW. 

New York Academy of Art

Students from the New York Academy of Art in Tribeca, painting at the Met. The Academy's MFA program trains students in traditional methods in figurative and representational art, offering concentrations in painting, drawing and sculpture.