STORY AND PHOTO BY KAREN BOSSICK
Tickets for the Sun Valley Center for the Arts Wine Auction go on sale today—Monday, April 30.
Tickets go on sale at 10 a.m. for Vintner Dinners, the Sun Valley Center for the Arts Wine Auction Gala and the popular Wine Tasting and Vine & Dine.
The Vintner Dinners—intimate dinners in private homes featuring top vintners and acclaimed chefs-- will be held on July 19. The Wine Auction Gala will be will be July 20. And the VIP wine tasting experience and Vine and Dine--a chance to sample wines from 60 wineries while enjoying tastes from local vendors and live music—will be July 21.
The Wine Auction Weekend is one of the main fundraisers for The Center and its arts and music programming for Blaine County students.
The honorary chairs of the 37th annual Wine Auction are Wendy and Alan Pesky who have championed The Center’s educational programs for more than three decades.
They were the founding sponsors of The Center’s Enrichment Program, which brings professional museum educators and artists together with core curriculum classroom teachers to develop projects that integrate the arts into the science, math and English curriculum.
The most recent such project used art to help eighth-graders at Wood River Middle school learn about watersheds.
“I recently had a car full of eighth-graders and, everywhere they looked, they were seeing watersheds,” said Courtney Gilbert, The Center’s curator.
The Peskys founded the Lee Pesky Learning Center, which provides tools to children with learning differences, in 1997. Today it’s recognized throughout the country for its work.
The Peskys also created the Pesky Award for Inspirational Teaching, which is awarded each year at Boise State University’s graduation ceremony in recognition of teachers who have impacted and inspired their students to pursue a teaching career.
To learn more, visit www.sunvalleycenter.org or call 208-726-9491.