Clarksville, TN – The Clarksville Arts and Heritage Council will honor two community leaders with Lifetime Achievement in Art and in Heritage awards at its 18th annual membership gathering on Monday, November 27th, 2023.
Charlsie Halliburton will receive the Lifetime Achievement in Art award, and Sarah Darnell will receive the Lifetime Achievement in Heritage Award.
Ms. Halliburton has made outstanding contributions to Clarksville’s artistic culture through her work in ballet and through her support for numerous creative organizations and activities.
From 1983 until her retirement in 2016, she taught classical ballet to hundreds of little girls, who benefitted not only from the skills they learned but also from the knowledge of dance she included in her lessons.
Ms. Halliburton served as chair of the Mid-Cumberland Arts League for a number of years and wrote grants to allow every Montgomery County 4th grader to attend performances by the Nashville Ballet and the Nashville Symphony.
In addition to securing the funds to host these performances in Clarksville, she also made sure that students received additional hands-on experiences in art, music, and theatre with Austin Peay State University faculty and students.
Ms. Halliburton has served as an officer on the boards of the APSU Center of Excellence for the Creative Arts, the Memorial Hospital Auxiliary, the APSU Candlelight Ball, and the Clarksville Arts and Heritage Council and as a member of the Gateway Chamber Orchestra, YMCA, and Nashville Ballet boards of directors.
She and her husband, John, established the Tom Malone Memorial Endowed Art Scholarship, which currently has a balance of nearly $94,000.
For many years, Ms. Darnell kept alive memories of Montgomery County’s heritage as a prominent county in the Black Patch tobacco-growing region. She gave many talks on the history of tobacco growers—including the dark period of the Tobacco Wars in the early 1900s—to school children and to community organizations.
Ms. Darnell also served on the board of The Bell Witch Fall Festival, which hosts productions of “Smoke” and “Spirit,” plays by David Alfred about the Tobacco Wars and the Bell Witch. Her work with these productions included fundraising and publicizing.
She worked with the Clarksville Writers Conference for several years to help organize city tours of places associated with local authors. Ms. Darnell is also a long-time active member of the Montgomery County Historical Society, which her mother-in-law, Anita Whitefield Darnell, helped to found.
In addition to the Lifetime Achievement Awards Ceremony, APSU alumni, David Alford and Paul Binkley, will reprise their beloved “A Christmas Memory,” based on the holiday essay by Truman Capote. Their performance begins at 6:30pm in the APSU Trahern Theatre.
AHC is an organization dedicated to enhancing the quality of life for Clarksvillians by supporting creative activities and celebrating Clarksville’s rich history.
This year’s projects include commissioning the “Last Train to Clarksville” mural on Commerce Street; installing in Bel-Air Park the Storybook Trail of “Wisdom, the Midway Albatross,” illustrated by local artist Kitty Harvill; presenting a series of Tobacco Talks discussing Clarksville’s tobacco-growing legacy; partnering with VisitClarksville to host Create at Collinsville painting and photography competitions; celebrating Dunbar Cave State Park’s 50th anniversary with a plein air paint out in the park’s restored prairie; hosting the 18th annual Clarksville Writers Conference; and administering the Tennessee Arts Commission’s Arts Build Communities grants for a seven-county region.
