| | Abstract: | Nina Freedlander Gibans has been active in Greater Cleveland's arts, culture and educational community for nearly six decades as an arts advocate, administrator, author, and teacher as well as a community volunteer. Gibans was born on July 30, 1932. Her family, the Freedlanders, were, according to family legend, peddlers who headed west in the 1880s from Buffalo, New York. They settled in Wooster, Ohio in the 1940s, where they founded and operated Freedlander's Department Store. After her marriage to architect James Gibans, the family moved to San Francisco where James found work. It was the height of the Beat Era; there Nina often gave poetry readings and had connections with Allen Ginsberg and Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Upon her family's return to Cleveland in 1960, Gibans immersed herself in the local and regional arts community. She has been the executive producer of five video programs, three of which have been shown on local public television. Gibans has also served on many panels, boards and committees of local, state and national cultural and civic organizations. The Nina Freedlander Gibans Family Papers collection consists of awards, a book, booklets, certificates, correspondence, a dissertation, family trees, financial records, incorporation articles, interviews, lesson plans, newspaper clippings, patents, photographs, publications, reports, a scrapbook, scripts, speeches, tapes, and yearbooks. | |
