( image above) 18 October 2022 riding a public transport boat (Vaporetto) on the Grand Canal in Venice, Italy
This personal annual blog is intended as an informative, colorful, and efficient way to keep in touch and share news with our family and our wide circle of friends, colleagues, and acquaintances. Although posting photos and commentary will never be as personal as a handwritten letter or postcard, we want to convey our hope to keep connected to you, and develop a awareness of our experiences, commonalities and differences, hopes and aspirations. But if you feel like sending us a postcard or letter from time time, you can be sure we’d love that…but please note the new address for our mail service below!
Mark and Dana December, 2022
Celebrating the joys and challenges of 2022, and wishing you the best for the year ahead!
09/09/22 Grand Rapids Art Museum (GRAM) “Live Artfully” event in Grand Rapids, MI… Some of you may recognize that 09/09 is also our anniversary, when we were married in Toronto in 2005 (eloped!), then held a wedding celebration in Portland, Maine in summer 2006.
Dear Family & Friends,
07/21/22, Mark & Dana at Glacier National Park
As we start writing this blog on Christmas Day, December 25, we are enjoying ten days in New England, first a few days in Boston, and then a week in Portland, Maine with Dana’s family. We’ve rented a large sunny attic apartment in a 19th century house in the town of Westbrook, visiting with friends and family, seeing art, sending out holiday cards, planning trips, finishing up various work projects, and shaping this selection of words and pictures about the year ending soon, and the future ahead.
We want to keep in touch! We always apprecicate hearing from friends near and far, and hope that you will share your news, reflections, and aspirations… we will be travelling a lot more, and keeping connected means its more likely our paths will cross.
Please write and tell us how YOU are doing since we last connected!
(The easiest way: scroll to the bottom of this page and leave a comment!)
A Quick Take of Some 2022 Highlights
…a few 2022 bullet points:
We are re-wiring, not retiring! As you may know, last December Dana announced that 2022 will be his last year as GRAM CEO, and in February he will turn to independent curating, writing, and cultural projects, including international exchanges. An extended visit to Japan where we lived 1990-1995 is the first step. Stay Tuned!
We are re-booting Tiny World Tours! Mark has been busy “building back better,” expanding the offerings of Tiny World Tours after the slowdown (and many canceled tours) forced by the pandemic. This past year he lead cultural trips to Idlewild, Michigan in June, and to Mexico in November, as well as reconnaissance journeys and planning for 2023 tours to Japan, Bhutan and Nepal, and Italy.
We are celebrating more time with family! We have been lucky to spend more time with our families this year, gathering in Texas with Mark’s family, and enjoying time with Dana’s family in Maine, and discovering Mark’s relatives in southern Italy.
We are moving! We sold and moved out of our River House city view penthouse condo RH3301 in the fall, and moved our belongings back to the downtown Austin condo that we have owned for decades. During the weeks around New Years, we’ll unpack more boxes and continue to get settled, and make this our “headquarters.”
We want to keep in touch! We always apprecicate hearing from family and friends near and far, and hope that you will share your news, reflections, and aspirations… we will be traveling a lot more in 2023. Keeping connected makes it more likely for our paths to cross!
2022 has been a big year for our families!
11/24/22 Mark’s Immediate Family celebrating Thanksgiving at The Plant at Kyle (all wearing shirts custom-made in Bhutan) (top l to r- Mark, Ellen, Ying Chao) (bottom l to r- Jim, Mary, Tom, Andrew, Alex, Dana)
A few of our family highlights…
We had several wonderful trips to Maine to be with Dana’s family. The highlight was the 100th birthday of Nancy Friis-Hansen on May 7, celebrated with a lively party, and reported in the evening news. We returned in the fall to be together after Nancy took a fall and was in rehabilitation, and again in December, when Nancy moved to a new apartment in Scarborough Terrace the assisted-living facility where she’s lived since 2015. Dana’s sister Sandy Halverson and her husband Ted live in Falmouth, and in the summer enjoy spending time on their boat “Hydrotherapy”in Casco Bay, and enjoying time with a blended family of grandchildren. This year we enjoyed spring and fall visits to the island cottage we share with Sandy and cousins Mark and Scott Johnston.
Mark has been spending more time with family in Texas, and Dana visits whenever possible. His father Tom and partner Mary Kevorkian enjoy life in independent living at Austin’s Westminster Manor. Mary maintains a lively travel calendar, which this year included a river cruise focused on the Oberammergau Passion Play, and to visit friends and relatives in California and Michigan. Mark’s sister Ellen lives in Berkeley, California, and enjoys running and hiking outdoors, and was a co-founder of the Pinkathon San Francisco fundraiser for breast cancer research. Brother Jim and his wife Ying-Chao live in San Antonio, and enjoy family trips with their two sons Alex and Andrew, who are now both engineering students at Rice University in Houston. .
Italy’s population may soon be growing by 53 descendants of Mark’s Italian Great Grandmother! In September of 2020 Mark started working with an Italian law firm to gain Italian citizenship for himself and 52 of his relatives through his great grandmother, Anna Felice Curcio Cozza (1859-1925). Despite moving from Italy to Chicago in 1887, Anna never renounced her Italian citizenship, so her descendants including Mark can claim Italian citizenship. Mark has been gathering documentation to prove his family’s lineage to an Italian judge, and thinks that this court case will succeed in 2023!
We’ve been researching and documenting our genealogy, with some amazing discoveries! In October, Mark journeyed to the iconic Southern-Italian hill towns of his ancestors, Sanza and Rovito, to work with professional genealogists—and meet many wonderful living relatives. It has been meaningful to make connections across the ocean and across generations. We also hired the Maine Historical Society to research Dana’s family relationship to American Impressionist painter Walter Griffin (1861-1935). We found out that Walter Griffin was the brother-in-law of Dana’s great-granduncle. These projects have inspired us to explore future relations, such as Dana’s paternal family in Denmark. Our genealogical discoveries, some going back 7 generations, have been entered into the ancestry.com website. Please ask Mark if you’d like to know more!
Share your best family memories of the year…
Our Lives
We were honored at the annual “Live Artfully” fundraising event at the Grand Rapids Art Museum
Our lives in 2022 were shaped by planning for a wide range of transitions ahead in 2023, as well as responding to unexpected opportunities and challenges that came our way. For example, Dana worked closely with the GRAM Board, senior staff, and an executive coach to create a smooth and intentional transfer of responsibilities before, during, and after the search for a new Director and CEO (expected to be hired this spring.). Although we “staged,” photographed, marketed, and held open houses for our Grand Rapids penthouse condo, it took longer than we expected to get a solid offer. In the end we made the sale to enthusiasts of modern architecture (who even agreed to let us stay for two months in order to pack and move our belongings). After considerable downsizing, two trucks moved most of our possessions to Austin. Dana is living in a Grand Rapids rental apartment until he departs in early February. He’ll pack up remaining possessions and drive our car “home” to Austin.
We are downsizing! The COVID years prompted us to prioritize experiences over ownership, to reduce our footprint, and share books, art, and furnishings we’ve enjoyed so they have a wider impact on others. In the fall, after an extensive process of cataloging and appraisal, we donated over 1,500 international art books to the Kendall College of Art Library. Each volume will have a special book plate designed by our artist and friend, Doug Fitch. In December we donated over 25 works of art to the Grand Rapids Art Museum, and have set aside others as future promised gifts.
The highlight of our year—and perhaps our lives—was to be surrounded by so many friends and family (and viewers online) at GRAM’s 2022 Live Artfully fundraising event celebrating our community contributions. We were thrilled by the special performances by Ritsu Katsumata performing original compositions for electric violin on the grand staircase, a surprise dance spectacle during dinner by the whole Grand Rapids Ballet company, and singer/songwriter Ralston Bowles opening the presentations. We were touched by commentary and congratulations by artists, fellow travelers, board members, and local leaders. To catch the spirit, check out this gallery of photographs, and enjoy a short, playful video that was debuted that evening.
We also enjoyed certain daily or seasonal routines that had been disrupted by the pandemic—or that we came to appreciate during lockdown. For example, when the exercise room was closed, we pivoted to a workout routine focused on climbing the 33 stair flights of our condo building, enjoying the solitude and time to listen to podcasts. We also continued our weekend walks with friends at local parks and along the lakeshore, and started entertaining more frequently at our condo, especially for out of town visitors intrigued to see Grand Rapids through our eyes.
How’s life where you are?
Our Work
05/19/22 Dana and Librarian Ben Boss cataloging 1,500 book donation to Kendall College of Art and Design (KCAD)
While many think (and worry) about “work/life balance,” we prefer to instead think about the contiuum between vocation and avocation, and how we can make the world a better place by blending what we do for a living and how we choose to live. Dana has spent over two decades as an art museum director, with a special focus on making arts institutions more community focused, and the art they show more approachable, socially relevant, and thought-provoking. GRAM’s mission is to “connect people through art, creativity, and design.
Mark has built upon his lifelong love of bringing people together in unique places and global cultural exploration to build two companies, The Plant at Kyle and Tiny World Tours. Focusing on landmark building designed by Lake|Flato Architects, our mission is to steward The Plant at Kyle and serve as a cultural and educational amenity that expands awareness and appreciation of architecture and nature through content, conversations, celebrations, and retreats. Tiny World Tours, with a vision to bring people together in meaningful ways, follows its mission to to steward our planet’s natural and cultural ecosystems via a platform for co-creating and sharing stories, enabling unique experiences, and engendering cherished relationships.
2022 will be Dana’s last full year as Director/CEO of the Grand Rapids Art Museum (GRAM). Late in 2021, the Museum’s board unanimously approved a five-year Strategic Plan, which charts the institutional path through 2026. GRAM organized and travelled the major exhibition, Dawoud Bey & Carrie Mae Weems: In Dialogue which brought together the work of these important and influential photographers who have been exploring and addressing race, class, and representation grounded in African American experience. Currently on view at the Seattle Art Museum, and traveling to The Getty Center in the spring, the project is accompanied by a scholarly illustrated catalogue. Our major summer exhibition celebrated the rich past, present and extension of American Impressionism, In A New Light, comprised of 130 works drawn from the Bank of America Collection. And now for something completely different, The Jim Henson Exhibition: Imagination Unlimited is a dynamic, immersive experience surveying the broad range of Henson’s groundbreaking work for film and television through historic objects and film clips—catch it before it closed on January 15! Looking ahead, Dana’s final project at GRAM is to coordinate, install, and launch Presence: The Photography Collection of Judy Glickman Lauder, a riveting exhibition of 145 photographs that capture the full range of human experience, which travels from the Portland Museum of Art, Maine and opens February 11. Join us opening weekend!
Two Michigan Artist Series were presented, first-time museum exhibitions for talented creatives in our state. An Interwoven Legacies: Black Ash Basketry of Kelly Church and Cherish Parrish presented both traditional basket forms and contemporary approaches to woven sculpture, including many works created during and in response to the COVID pandemic. Carole Harris: Bright Moments showcased the Detroit-based artist’s journey from traditional quilt making to innovative free form works of textile art. and works selected from the exhibition were purchased for the collection. To celebrate a transformative gift of over 65 modern art objects to GRAM’s collection, An Extraordinary Legacy celebrated Miner S. and Mary Ann Keeler and they're the civic and cultural leadership in our city.
At The Plant at Kyle, 2022 was a year for large investment in lighting and electrical upgrades. The results are very satisfying. There are a few before and after in this blog. Lake|Flato architects held their annual 150-person company retreat there in October (click here to view short slide show).
For Tiny World Tours, 2022 was a year for multiple Michigan tours (Detroit and Idlewild) and our first post-pandemic international Tiny World Tour (Mexico City and Interior Mexico - including the surrealist Las Pozas garden in Xilitla).
What are you working on these days?
Expanding Horizons
7/17/22 Banff National Park
During the pandemic while home-bound, we worked on a number of major data-intensive projects including scanning & organizing our digital records (e.g. documents, audio, photos & videos), our Bhutanese commissioned textiles, and our 1,500 KCAD book collection donation. A number of young friends helped us all along the way, including Jacob Starner (20). When Jacob told us that he would be working this summer as an outdoor hiking / camping guide, we signed up for one of his guided experiences in Glacier National Park, two-nights, three-days back country camping. We also visited Banff National Park in Canada on our own. Our COVID-time Grand Rapids stair-walking routine paid off because we were able to participate in some very challenging full-day hikes, and gave us a deeper appreciation of wilderness adventure travel. As international semi-nomads, our navigation and physical endurance skills are an important frontier for us to continue challenging in the years ahead.
Dana’s largest “expanding horizon” will be shaping his time and projects after having worked at a “regular job” as an art museum director and curator for over three decades. He will certainly play a larger role in planning, leading, and shaping Tiny World Tours trips as well as experiences at The Plant at Kyle. He aims to build on past work as a curator and his free lance work in Japan. He is already thinking about opportunities for international collaborations and exchanges to create unique content, experiences, and cross-disciplinary thinking, focused on art and design. “Curating, writing, and cultural projects” will be the tag line on his business card, and he will spend the next year further defining how and what those realms. If anyone has any ideas, please reach out!
Another way that we have been expanding our horizons and challenging ourselves is by intensively refreshing our knowledge of the Japanese language including Mark’sroutine of memorizing the Japanese 2000+ kanji characters. Dana is refreshing basic vocabulary, grammar and basic kanji. We find podcasts, YouTube videos, the Anki app for flashcards to be especially helpful, as well as watching Japanese films and tv shows.
How have you expanded your horizons?
Hopes
10/16/22 Venice Biennale
Looking Ahead…
We know already that 2023 will be like no other year! Our move will be complete, Dana will step away from his museum career, and there is already lots of personal, family, and professional travel booked! The COVID pandemic limited our international travel since 2019, so our spring is focused on Asia, especially Japan, with time to re-connect with colleagues and do reconnaissance. Tiny World Tours will present Walking Mexico in February, Japan Through Artist’s Eyes in March, Walking Japan: Past, Present, Future in April, and Kcymaerxthaere Monuments in Bhutan and Nepal with Eames Demetrious in May, Idlewild, Michigan in June,…. and have just announced a 10-day Walking Japan tour for next November.
We hope to remain connected to all our friends in Michigan! We’re planning a visit in June, and will be offering a Tiny World Tour to Idlewild, and perhaps other sites. We’d love to welcome you in Austin when we are there, or better yet, plan rendezvous on the road.
Beyond that, we have numerous ongoing projects to tend. Mark will continue his pursuit of Italian citizenship for himself and his relatives, currently expected before the end of 2023. If you’re interested in details about Mark’s Italian citizenship journey, please let Mark know! We will continue to gift more books and artworks in institutions around the country. As we steward The Plant at Kyle, we are considering how we might manage it for greater impact and long-term sustainability.
We plan to spend more time with family in Maine this summer and fall, as well as at Christmas. We will be in and out of Austin throughout the year, but know we’ll be celebrating Thanksgiving with family at The Plant at Kyle.
As part of Mark’s efforts to build stronger ties with his family’s Italian heritage, he is planning a Cozza-focused tour October 7-14 for family members in the U.S. to visit the Italian ancestral hill towns and meet their relatives. If you’re one of Mark’s Italian-American relatives, please ask him for details.
And if that’s not enough… we hope to spend more time reading, writing postcards, and appreciating all the blessings in our lives.
What are your hopes for the coming year?
Other Memorable Moments from 2022
In case you don’t have it handy, here’s our contact info:
Mark Holzbach & Dana Friis-Hansen
NEW Mailing address: 2028 E Ben White Blvd #240-8188, Austin, Texas 78741-6931, USA
Mark’s personal email: mholzbach@alum.mit.edu
Dana’s personal email: danafh@gmail.com
Mark’s personal cell for voice & text: 512-689-6777
Dana’s personal cell for voice & text: 512-653-8188
PLEASE LEAVE COMMENTS BELOW AND/OR COMMUNICATE WITH US PRIVATELY VIA MAIL / EMAIL, OR SCHEDULE A PHONE / LIVE VIDEO CATCH-UP CALL WITH US!
You are receiving this because you are on Mark and Dana’s “Friends and Family” mailing list. We also maintain mailing lists for Tiny World Tours and The Plant at Kyle. If you’d like to get on or off any of these mailing lists, or have any special interests or requests, please let Mark know.
If you are interested to see what we published on our recent past year end blogs, please check the links below:
Mark & Dana’s 2021 Year End Blog (December 2021)
Mark & Dana’s 2020 Year End Blog (December 2020)
Mark and Dana’s COVID Pandemic Reach-Out Blog (April 2020)
