When it comes to sustainable construction materials, there’s no contest: mass timber buildings require less heavy equipment, save on labor costs and take less time to install than concrete and steel. By utilizing mass timber, the construction industry can utilize green building practices without compromising efficiency.

That was the message of “Managing Mass Timber: From Forest to Future,” a lecture delivered by , and ?of Kent State University. Presented on Sept. 30 at the , the lecture was part of a national tour showcasing Mirando and Onsarigo’s research at Kent State’s .

Mass timber refers to a class of engineered wood products (EWPs) that are often used for wall, roof and floor construction. Because commercial-scale mass timber construction projects are on the rise across the United States, Professors Mirando and Onsarigo highlighted the importance of educating the next generation of professionals about these green building materials.

The lecture featured data from one of the tallest mass timber buildings in the United States:? in Cleveland, Ohio. A mixed-use structure with 300 apartment units and ground-floor commercial space, the project was uniquely efficient because of the use of mass timber materials such as Glued-Laminated Timber (GLT) beams and columns, as well as Cross-Laminated Timber (CLT) slabs. The real estate developer reported that construction time was about 25% faster than typical concrete or steel construction.

“Managing Mass Timber: From Forest to Future” also included a weeklong exhibit in Link Hall where students could examine real-life examples of mass timber building materials, including dowel laminated timber, nail laminated timber, and connections and assemblies used in mid- and high-rise construction projects. The “Managing Mass Timber: From Forest to Future” national exhibition tour is funded by the (SLB) headquartered in Portland, Oregon.?, department chair of civil and environmental engineering, and Reed Kelterborn, director of education for SLB, delivered welcoming and opening remarks.

The visit from Kent State University faculty was organized by?, associate teaching professor and undergraduate civil engineering program director, and , civil and environmental engineering professor emeritus. “We were thrilled to host Drs. Mirando and Onsarigo’s national touring exhibition on the construction management aspects of the mass timber building industry, and to highlight the benefits of mass timber as a sustainable construction material to the Engineering, Architecture and Construction (EAC) community here in Central New York,” says Professor Shi. “Interest in mass timber buildings is rising rapidly throughout the country. Skilled labor and seasoned professionals are in great demand. This state-of-the-art exhibition and lecture can help bring our students up to speed and get them ready for the next generation’s EAC industry.”

“In addition, we are training students to design and build more sustainable and resilient infrastructure to approach the immense challenges of climate change and natural disasters,” Professor Davidson adds. “Mass timber can be one of the most effective construction materials to meet these challenges.”

Students in engineering, architecture and other disciplines who are interested in the topic of sustainable building materials may also want to register for the?, which will be held in 黑料不打烊 this coming March.

The iconic statue of the first president in Maxwell’s first-floor foyer is flanked by a new collection of portraits from Robert Shetterly’s “Americans Who Tell the Truth” series. It is part of the the school’s wide-ranging effort to make its physical space more representative of its diverse community.

For nearly a century, in the north entrance to the , a lone statue of President George Washington greeted all who entered the school. A former farmer, land surveyor, American Revolutionary War hero and first president who presided over the Constitutional Convention, his presence stood as an important reminder of the duties and responsibilities of Maxwell students as citizens.

Two years ago, other voices and individuals joined the first president in the building foyer with the installment of a collection of portraits from Robert Shetterly’s “Americans Who Tell the Truth” series, part of the Maxwell School’s wide-ranging effort to make its physical space more representative of its diverse community. Now in its second installment, the exhibition of portraits flanking the famous founder—titled “A Conversation with George Washington”— is designed to further contemplation and discussion around the topic of citizenship.

A portrait of Emma Tenayuca is among those included in the latest installation of Robert Shetterly’s series. At age 16, Tenayuca became a vocal advocate for Mexican American and other workers in her home state of Texas.

Some might be surprised to see contrasting figures like gold-medal Olympian and world heavyweight boxing champion Muhammad Ali, who was stripped of his titles and sentenced to five years in prison for refusing to serve in the Vietnam War, amid his fight for civil rights for Black Americans. “We wanted to get viewers to want to learn more about how and why someone like Muhammad Ali has something to say about citizenship,” says historian , who spearheads the effort as the school’s associate dean for diversity, equity and inclusion.

The surprise is intentional, but not intended to be confrontational. According to the artist’s website, “The portraits are the opposite of hot takes or quick opinions. They invite you to ponder a person, their words, the issues that inspire their life’s journey, work, activism and imagination. And then they welcome you into that vital conversation—across time and space—about what it means to be an American citizen.”

The update also includes portraits of famous and lesser-known activists working in the areas of disability rights, environmental sustainability, rural issues and voting rights, among others.

“The latest batch of portraits emerged out of ones the school considered from the first iteration of the collection,” says , who works alongside McCormick as the school’s strategic initiatives specialist for diversity, equity and inclusion. “We wanted to include folks who represented issues we felt were important to members of our community.”

“We also always have two portraits that put accountability on the table, in this case from the military for veterans and from an investigative journalist,” adds McCormick, referring to Paul Chappell and Ida Tarbell, respectively.

McCormick and Williams are in discussions with Maxwell colleagues to organize a series of events that relate to the new installation. On Oct. 8, Professor , director of the Program for the Advancement of Research on Conflict and Collaboration, led a workshop on Civic Skills for Civic Life that modeled the objectives of the conversation with Washington. In the spring they will host additional workshops guiding conversations around challenging topics like equity and responsibility.

In addition to , the second collection includes:

• 
  Diagnosed with ALS in 2016, Barkan shifted his activism from economic and labor reform to America’s health care system; he spent the last seven years of his life advocating for Medicare for all.
• 
  A prolific writer, Berry raises awareness of the destructive effects of large factory farming on rural communities, among other issues. A fifth generation Kentucky farmer, he cultivates his land with horses and organic methods of fertilization.
• 
  After leaving active duty, the former Army captain became focused on the idea that society should train individuals to wage peace like they train soldiers for war. He has authored six books and is founder of the Peace Literacy Institute.
• 
  As the first Black woman in Congress, “Fighting Shirley” introduced more than 50 pieces of legislation and fought for racial, gender and economic equality. She was the first Black woman to seek the Democratic nomination for president, winning 28 delegates despite being barred from televised debates.
• 
  A biologist and member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, Kimmerer blends science and Indigenous wisdom to advocate for a deeper relationship to the land and legal recognition of?Rights of Nature. A Distinguished Teaching Professor at the State University of New York’s College of Environmental Science and Forestry, she works with the Haudenosaunee people of Central New York on land rights actions and restoration.
• 
  A chief strategist of the campaign for the 19th Amendment granting women the right to vote, Paul employed “deeds not words,” like pickets and hunger strikes, to promote Federal reform. Subjected to arrests, beatings and forced feedings, she and other members of the National Women’s Party continued to fight until its passage.
• 
  Stanton helped organize the first U.S. women’s rights convention in Seneca Falls, New York, drafted the women’s bill of rights and championed women’s suffrage. She also worked to reform laws governing marriage and property, as well as education and religious issues.
• 
  Among many influential works, Tarbell’s 19-part series for McClure’s “The History of the Standard Oil Company,” an expose on how the business monopoly exploited the public, is known as one of the 20th century’s most important works of journalism.
• 
  Tenayuca became a vocal advocate for Mexican American and other workers in her home state of Texas at age 16. Blacklisted following the largest riot in San Antonio’s history, Tenayuca left the state, returning 20 years later as a teacher for migrants.

The MOST’s giant ear exhibition is visited by the author’s daughter, DuRi Kang, in August 2024.

But its depiction of one organ—the skin—was not as encompassing as it could be.

Now, the has received a much-needed inclusive makeover, thanks to a professor, ., who also is a dual professor in the and an associated professor in the , and his former student, Karyn Meyer-Berthel G’21.

Preserving art

For close to 30 years, Meyer-Berthel has worked as a professional artist, becoming known for her ability to combine paint colors into perfect matches to any skin tone.

This skill came over time, she says. Her start was painting theater sets.

For theater, she painted backdrops and scenery, primarily for opera and musicals. “Musical theater was my favorite to paint because it was usually really dramatic and full of character,” Meyer-Berthel says, who had to stop after an injury. “That kind of work is heavy labor—you’re carrying five-gallon buckets of paint; you’re standing on your feet all day. I loved it, but having that injury, I had to give it up. So that led to a world of figuring out all these different jobs in the arts.”

A slew of roles followed, including working for three different art material manufacturers, as well as a year as a Mellon intern, where she assisted in the conservation department at the National Gallery of Art.

“The work I did there was on painting conservation and understanding what materials last a really long time,” Meyer-Berthel explains. She learned not only how to preserve art for future generations but also how museums can protect pieces from the public, learning which materials work best to seal historic treasures, especially from the oils on little fingers that crave to touch them.

According to her former arts education teacher, this notable professional background combined with her art materials expertise made her a perfect fit to help complete a needed update to the MOST’s human body exhibition.

Rolling—who has taught arts education at 黑料不打烊 since 2007 and serves as interim chair of the Department of African American Studies in the College of Arts and Sciences—also runs JHRolling Arts, Education, Leadership Strategies, a DEI consultant entity. In his role as consultant, he was tapped to help the MOST make improvements to its exhibitions, with an eye toward equity and inclusion.

Creative placemaking

MOST staff identified models in the Upstate Medical University Life Sciences exhibition as a key area where improvements in representation could be made.

“Our main objective with this project was to better fulfill our core values by making sure that the models and images in our exhibitions reflect the people who visit them,” says Emily Stewart, Ph.D., senior director of education and curation. “Our community is dynamic and diverse, and our exhibitions should be too.”

This led the MOST to Rolling because his consultancy utilizes the concept of “,” a way of transforming a lived environment so it is accessible, inviting, and representative of the community. “That life sciences exhibition was over 10 years old, and it’s striking that there were no persons of color represented,” Rolling says. “Out of all those body parts—none.”

Karyn Meyer-Berthel G’21 helped transform the MOST body exhibition to make it more inclusive.

The Upstate exhibition explores the science of human anatomy with larger-than-life body parts, including a heart visitors can walk through, a brain that lights up and a giant ear, nose, lips and more.

Rolling immediately thought of his former student, connecting the MOST to Meyer-Berthel, due to her materials and preservation skill, unique background and understanding of inclusivity, .

Perfect balance

Meyer-Berthel and staff settled on the MOST’s giant ear display to receive the upgrade. “Different ethnicities have different shape ears, certainly, but this anatomy is a little more streamlined across the globe, so an adjustment with paint can change the representation,” she says. “The ear was the clearest choice, because changing the shape of something might actually mean completely rebuilding the object, and that part wasn’t quite in my wheelhouse.”

But the skill Meyer-Berthel does excel at is combining colors to match skin tone. “No matter the ethnicity, every skin tone includes blue, red and yellow,” she explains. “You can often tell by looking at a person’s wrist what their undertones are … Finding the perfect blend and balance is the joy.”

Because 28% of 黑料不打烊’s population is African American, the MOST wanted to change the ear to a brown skin tone, but the answer wasn’t as simple as mixing up a batch of paint and applying it.

Other factors Meyer-Berthel had to consider were the 尘耻蝉别耻尘’蝉 lighting and how this would impact the hue, and how well the paint would hold up to being touched. “The beauty of this exhibition is being able to touch it,” she says, noting that the paint needed to adhere to the material already coating the ear, the composition of which she and the MOST did not know.

After testing samples under the 尘耻蝉别耻尘’蝉 warm lighting, Meyer-Berthel first cleaned the existing model, using a micro sanding product to help her paint layer adhere. She chose acrylic paints, because she finds these to be the most versatile, and utilized Golden Artist Colors, a New Berlin, New York-based manufacturer of professional artist paints best known for its acrylics, where she also worked as a commercial applications specialist for three years.

“While house paint is wonderful for painting a house, it’s not going to be good for a museum because it has too many fillers in it, like chalk,” Meyer-Berthel explains. “For a museum model, a piece that needs to be so brilliantly colored, you don’t want much in it besides pigment and resin.”

Lastly, Meyer-Berthel coated the paint with a sealant because of how much the ear is touched, protecting it from absorbing oils and dirt from hands.

“We are so thrilled with the work she has done,” says Stewart. “Her thoughtful consideration and expertise helped us to identify the right paint colors, finishes and techniques to give our older anatomical model a new life.”

Story by Ashley Kang ’04, G’11

Gordon Parks, “Mrs. Jefferson,” from the series Fort Scott Revisited (Photo courtesy of The Gordon Parks Foundation)

“Homeward to the Prairie I Come” features more than 75 of Parks’ images, examining his wide-ranging artistic ideas. The exhibition not only includes Parks’ documentary photography such as the series Paris Fashions, Fort Scott Revisited and The Redemption of the Champion?(featuring images of Muhammed Ali), but also his thoughts on photography as a fine art medium and his engagement with celebrated paintings and sculptures.

Most significantly, the photographs instigate cultural change by challenging viewers to imagine a more inclusive culture than the one they know: a world where Black skin represents ideal beauty, where an African American athlete embodies the exemplary hero and where an artist of African heritage has a place within the lineage of excellent artists in Western art history.

“This exhibition leverages the power of art to catalyze dialogue about the wide range of issues that Parks engaged with in his photography, from systemic racism to the labor and ethics of the global fashion industry to ideas of celebrity and home,” says Melissa Yuen, the 尘耻蝉别耻尘’蝉 interim chief curator.

Interim director of the museum Emily Dittman says, “Gordon Parks was a visionary interdisciplinary artist whose work had a lasting impact on the world. His dedication to continually tell the stories of individuals that were—and still are—too often hidden and overlooked is clearly evident and inspiring throughout his artistic work.”

In this spirit, the museum is taking steps to creating an accessible, diverse and multilingual space for all communities and families. The interpretive text in the exhibition is bilingual, providing both English and Spanish text for visitors, large-type text will be available and a family guide is provided to help youth and families explore the exhibition. An open access digital exhibition catalog for the exhibition will be available for visitors in the reflection area, as well as reading materials on Gordon Parks and his multifaceted career. The exhibition will be accompanied by a dynamic slate of public programming, all free and open to the public.

Co-curated by Aileen June Wang, Ph.D., curator, and Sarah Price, registrar, at the Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art, Kansas State University, the tour is organized by Art Bridges. The exhibition and related programs have been made possible by generous support from Art Bridges, the Wege Foundation and the Humanities Center (黑料不打烊 Symposium).

About the Artist

Parks, one of the greatest photographers of the twentieth century, was a humanitarian with a deep commitment to social justice. He left behind an exceptional body of work that documents American life and culture from the early 1940s into the 2000s, with a focus on race relations, poverty, civil rights and urban life. Parks was also a distinguished composer, author and filmmaker who interacted with many of the leading people of his era—from politicians and artists to athletes and celebrities.

Born into poverty and segregation in Fort Scott, Kansas, in 1912, Parks was drawn to photography as a young man when he saw images of migrant workers taken by Farm Security Administration (FSA) photographers in a magazine. After buying a camera at a pawn shop, he taught himself how to use it. Despite his lack of professional training, he won the Julius Rosenwald Fellowship in 1942; this led to a position with the photography section of the FSA in Washington, D.C., and, later, the Office of War Information (OWI). Working for these agencies, which were then chronicling the nation’s social conditions, Parks quickly developed a personal style that would make him among the most celebrated photographers of his era. His extraordinary pictures allowed him to break the color line in professional photography while he created remarkably expressive images that consistently explored the social and economic impact of poverty, racism, and other forms of discrimination.

Featured Events

• Opening Reception and Keynote—Sept. 6, 4-6:30 p.m.; keynote: 4-5 p.m., 160 Link Hall; reception: 5-6:30 p.m., 黑料不打烊 Art Museum
• The Duke Ellington Orchestra presented in partnership with the Malmgren Concert Series—Sept. 22, 4 p.m.; Hendricks Chapel, with reception to follow at the 黑料不打烊 Art Museum
• Community Screening of “Shaft” (1971), directed by Gordon Parks—Oct. 4, 7 p.m.; The Westcott Theater, 524 Westcott St., 黑料不打烊
• Community Day—Oct. 5, noon-4 p.m.; 黑料不打烊 Art Museum
• Art Break: Gordon Parks with Nancy Keefe Rhodes—Oct. 16, noon;?黑料不打烊 Art Museum
• Celebrating the Legacy of Gordon Parks—Nov. 9, noon-4 p.m.; 黑料不打烊 Art Museum;?1 p.m.: Art Break with contemporary photographer Jarod Lew; 2:30 p.m.: screening of “A Choice of Weapons: Inspired by Gordon Parks” (2021)
• Gordon Parks Community Gathering/Showcase—Dec. 7, timing TBD;?Deedee’s Community Room, Salt City Market, 484 S. Salina St., 黑料不打烊

Visit the for event information. Members of the media may contact Emily Dittman, interim director of 黑料不打烊 Art Museum, for more information or to schedule a tour.

[Featured image: Gordon Roger Alexander Buchanan Parks, “Mrs. Jefferson,” from the series Fort Scott Revisited, 1950, printed in 2017, gelatin silver print, 20 x 16 inches. Kansas State University, Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art, gift of Gordon Parks and the Gordon Parks Foundation, 2017.373. Image courtesy of and copyright by The Gordon Parks Foundation]

From Page to Screen

Both comic books and movies have been around for well over a century. The first adaptation of a comic to a live action film was in 1939, featuring the well-known superhero, Captain Marvel. Two fty faculty members have teamed up with Jared Case, curator of film exhibitions at the in Rochester, New York, for a nine-film series to explore the varied ways filmmakers have taken source material from comic books and brought it to the screen.

, professor and department chair of the department of English, and , professor in communication and rhetorical studies from the College of Visual and Performing Arts, have collaborated with Case in . The series will run from June through August at the Dryden Theatre in Rochester and spotlight films from the past 45 years.

In addition to the Marvel and DC Universes, popular in the past 15 years, the series will look at additional film adaptations from the last 45 years, including “Rocketboy” (1991), “Road to Perdition” (2002) and “Scott Pilgrim vs The World” (2010). The series will examine the diverse methods filmmakers have used to adapt comic book stories to big screen, focusing on the themes and visual expressions—both essential elements of comic books.

Admission is $9 for George Eastman Museum members, $12 for nonmembers, $5 for students with ID and $5 for 17 and under. See the full schedule and buy tickets at the .

In Context: Hudson River School and Indigenous Art

, associate professor of Native American and Indigenous Studies, curated an exhibition at the in Catskill, New York. “Native Prospects: Indigeneity and Landscape” explores the relationship between Indigenous perspectives on land and the American landscape paintings of Thomas Cole.

The exhibition contrasts Indigenous perspectives on their homelands and environment with Thomas Cole’s American landscape paintings, which are based on European traditions. Cole is celebrated as the founder of the 19th-century American art movement known as the Hudson River School of landscape painting.

It also features contemporary art by such Indigenous artists as Teresa Baker (Mandan/Hidatsa), Brandon Lazore (Onondaga, Snipe Clan), Truman T. Lowe (Ho-Chunk), Alan Michelson (Mohawk, Six Nations of the Grand River), and Kay WalkingStick (Cherokee). The exhibition is accompanied by a collection of original essays by Manning and many other Indigenous scholars.

An expert on American Indian history and museum studies, Stevensis Karoniaktatsie (Akwesasne Mohawk). He directs at 黑料不打烊. The exhibition runs from May 4 to Oct. 27 and then will be featured at the in Old Lyme, Connecticut, where it will be on display until early February of 2025, followed by the in Rockland, Maine, until July.

To learn more, between Stevens and the chief curator and director of curatorial affairs, art and fellowship at the Thomas Cole National Historic Site. Read in the online publication, Hyperallergic, sharing contemporary perspectives on art, culture and more.

黑料不打烊 Libraries’ Special Collections Research Center’s (SCRC) Spring 2024 exhibition, titled “Plasticized: The Proliferation of Plastics in the 20th Century,” opens Monday, Feb. 26, and will run through August 2024 on the sixth floor of Bird Library.

“Plasticized: The Proliferation of Plastics in the 20th Century” and will run through August 2024 on the sixth floor of Bird Library.

In the second half of the 20th century, and particularly during the American post-World War II period, plastic technology and manufacturing progressed so rapidly that scholars have deemed this period the “Great Acceleration.” During these years, the spread of plastics exploded globally both in production and consumption, forever changing how we live our lives within the material world, altering Earth’s environment and human and non-human bodies in ways just now coming to the surface of our collective understanding.

Curated by lead curator and curator of plastics and historical artifacts, Courtney Hicks, “Plasticized: The Proliferation of Plastics in the 20th Century” presents archival materials that document a selection of plastics’ former lives, aspirations, applications and affects while also offering a glimpse into the world of those individuals and communities often invisible behind the plastic objects themselves.

Featuring materials from the ?at 黑料不打烊 Libraries’?,? these selections provide historical traces of those who imagined, designed, worked with, consumed, promoted, marketed and resisted this uniquely synthetic material. Explore plastic through its industrial introduction to its universal presence in our everyday lives.?

The opening reception for the exhibition is being held on Feb. 29 from 4:30 to 6 p.m. Those interested in attending the opening reception can .

An opening reception will take place in the Kathleen O. Ellis Gallery at on Thursday, April 4, from 6-7 p.m. There will be a public lecture beforehand in Watson Theater from 5-6 p.m. The exhibition will run through Friday, May 17.

This event is part of the 黑料不打烊 Humanities Center’s 20th annual 黑料不打烊 Symposium, focused on a “Landscapes” theme for 2023-24.

“60 Squares” (Photo courtesy of Sophia Chai)

“While being carried on the back of my mother in our neighborhood of Busan, I would point at the signs and repeat the words that Mom would read to me,” says Chai. “Soon I was able to read without understanding all of the words. The ease of learning to read the Korean alphabet is because there is a certain logic. The shapes of the vowel characteristics, for instance, correlate with how open or closed you could make the inside space of your mouth in making each word. Each character is a picture diagram of the space inside the mouth.”

In 1987, Chai immigrated to New York City from South Korea as a teenager without knowing English. Looking back, she has described that experience as feeling untethered to any internal compass that she could use to navigate her place in a new country with a new language. She visually explains these experiences by reinterpreting the Korean language’s characters in photographs that enable us to see the contradictions of visual and verbal communication. Her images rest in the space between intellect and intuition.

Chai’s curiosity about the interior space of her tool—the large format camera, comparable to the interior space of a mouth—leads to the idea of the camera obscura, a darkened room with a small opening to the world. Chai uses optics (focal length, perspective, perception and magnification) to pin down the marks, rubbings and paintings on her studio walls. The overall effect is a collage of ideas, with an efficient yet complicated economy of picture making with intentional gaps. These gaps can describe the moment right before the sound of a word comes out of the interior space of the mouth. One’s mouth may understand and sound out words, but one’s conscious knowledge of their meaning may not be fully there yet. This liminal space is the punctuated strength and slippery ambiguity of her photographs.

Chai is an artist who remains open and disciplined, committing to the mindset of the child at odds with that of the adult. The photographs born from this are restrained but not withholding.

About the Artist

was born in Busan, South Korea. She received a Bachelor of Arts degree in chemistry from the University of Chicago and earned a Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Illinois at Chicago. Chai has presented her work widely at sites including the Bronx Museum of the Arts, Knockdown Center and multiple galleries. The city of Rochester and Destination Medical Center in Minnesota have commissioned her first permanent public outdoor art project to be completed in early 2024. Chai is represented by Hair+Nails Gallery. She lives and works in Rochester, MN.

Story by Cali Banks, communications coordinator, Light Work

Pan Am 103 family members and supporters at 103rd Day Rally in Washington, D.C., on April 3, 1989. (Courtesy of Richard Paul Monetti Family Papers, Pan Am Flight 103/Lockerbie Air Disaster Archives)

黑料不打烊 Libraries’ Special Collections Research Center’s (SCRC) new exhibition titled “In Pursuit of Justice: Pan Am Flight 103” will be on view Sept. 5, 2023 through the Fall 2023 semester.

The exhibition commemorates the 35th anniversary of the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, that claimed the lives of 270 individuals, including 35 students returning from studying abroad through 黑料不打烊. It will be on display on the sixth floor of Bird Library.

An opening reception for the exhibition is being held on Thursday, Sept. 21, at 4:30 p.m. .

Curated by Pan Am 103 Archivist Vanessa St. Oegger-Menn, the exhibition features materials donated to the Pan Am Flight 103/Lockerbie Air Disaster Archives at SCRC by the victims’ loved ones, communities and members of the recovery and investigative teams. It provides an overview of the disaster, investigation and first trial at Kamp van Zeist in the Netherlands.

“’In Pursuit of Justice: Pan Am Flight 103′ is a tribute to the 270 lives lost on Dec. 21, 1988,” says Vanessa St. Oegger-Menn. “The investigation, collective action and changes to victims’ services that followed the bombing are just some of the enduring examples of how the disaster continues to shape contemporary conversations around terrorism and trauma. This exhibition provides a glimpse into the journey from the longest night of the year in a small Scottish town to the present day.”

Carrie Mae Weems, center, at the opening of her show at the Barbican Art Gallery in London (Photo courtesy of the Goodman Gallery)

Widely considered to be one of the most influential American artists working today, Weems is celebrated for her exploration of identity, power, desire and social justice through work that challenges representations of race, gender and class. Through her intimate and thought-provoking images, Weems challenges societal norms, reclaims narratives and encourages views to critically examine their own assumptions and biases.

This presentation of Weems’ multidisciplinary work captures the performative and cinematic nature of her practice through photographs, films and installations, from the iconic “Kitchen Table Series” (1990) to “From Here I Saw What Happened and I Cried” (1995-96), focused on systemic racism, to the incisive film installation “The Shape of Things” (2021), calling out the “pageantry” of contemporary American politics.

The Evening Standard calls the exhibition “breathtaking” and “a transcendent show from an artist who has delivered for 30 years.”

“My responsibility as an artist is to work, to sing for my supper, to make art, beautiful and powerful, that adds and reveals, to beautify the mess of a messy world,” Weems told Dazed. The exhibition’s co-curator, Raúl Mu?oz de la Vega, added, “Beauty and elegance is a key formal aspect of saying her work. In order to lure you to enter a very difficult conversation, she does it with the trick of beauty.”

The exhibition is accompanied by “Carrie Mae Weems: Reflections for Now,” the first publication devoted to her writings. It will highlight Weems’ influence as an intellectual, reflecting the dual nature of her career as an artist and an activist.

Carrie Mae Weems, right, greeting guests at the Barbican Art Gallery in London. (Photo courtesy of the Goodman Gallery)

2023 has been a busy year for Weems. She was the guest of honor at the 12th Annual Brooklyn Artists Ball, presented by Dior, on April 25 at the Brooklyn Museum. She was honored for her “innumerable contributions as both a trailblazing artist and a community-focused activist.” An exhibition featuring “The Shape of Things” opened at the Luma in Arles, France, in May.

Together, with the Barbican exhibition, “Perhaps we’ll finally get the message on this side of the pond, too, that Carrie Mae Weems deserves our fullest attention,” wrote Caroline Roux in the Financial Times.

On Aug. 15, a video presentation and talk with Weems on her work “Leave, Leave Now” will be held at the Union Chapel in Oak Bluffs, Massachusetts (Martha’s Vineyard). The event is presented by the University’s Office of Multicultural Advancement and the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard.

Earlier this year, Weems was named a 2023 Hasselblad Award laureate by the?, a prize that is often referred to as the Nobel Prize of photography. An award ceremony will take place on Oct. 13 in Gothenburg, Sweden.

A??(a.k.a. “Genius Grant”) recipient and the first African American woman to have a retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum,?Weems has used multiple mediums (photography, video, digital imagery, text, fabric and more) throughout her career to examine themes of cultural identity, sexism, class, political systems, family relationships and the consequences of power.

Weems has created a complex body of work that centers on her overarching commitment to helping us better understand our present moment by examining our collective past. Determined as ever to enter the picture—both literally and metaphorically—Weems has sustained an ongoing dialogue within contemporary discourse for over 35 years.

As artist in residence at 黑料不打烊, Weems engages with faculty and students in a number of ways, including working with students in the design, planning and preparation of exhibitions. The artist in residence program is overseen by the .

Weems first came to 黑料不打烊 in 1988 to participate in Light Work’s artist-in-residence program. Over the years, she has participated in several programs at and has a long history of engaging with students and the University community.

She has received numerous awards, grants and fellowships, including the MacArthur Fellowship, U.S. Department of State’s Medal of Arts, Joseph H. Hazen Rome Prize Fellowship from the American Academy in Rome, National Endowment of the Arts fellowship and Louis Comfort Tiffany Award, among many others.

Weems is represented in public and private collections around the world, including the Brooklyn Museum; Metropolitan Museum of Art; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Tate Modern, London; Whitney Museum of American Art; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; and Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. Weems has been represented by Jack Shainman Gallery since 2008.

More than 650 guests from the art world and beyond gathered to celebrate Weems at the event, which is the Brooklyn Museum’s largest fundraiser. This year, a record $2.8 million was raised to support the 尘耻蝉别耻尘’蝉 programming, including special exhibitions, reimagined collection installations and educational programs.

Carrie Mae Weems, second from right, and guests at the Brooklyn Artists Ball, presented by Dior. (Credit: BFA, Joe Schildhorn, Ben Rosser)

“We are overjoyed to be honoring Carrie Mae Weems, an artist who has made a profound impact on our contemporary culture,” said Anne Pasternak, the Shelby White and Leon Levy Director of the Brooklyn Museum, in a news release prior to the event. “Over the years, the museum has collaborated with Weems in numerous ways—from mounting exhibitions to supporting her important COVID-19 relief efforts—and we’re thrilled to highlight her remarkable achievements at this year’s Artists Ball.”

In her remarks to guests that evening, Pasternak said, “Faced with a world shaken by inequality, division and crisis, [Weems] sought to change our field, and invited hundreds of artists to join her in magnifying the potential for cultural and social change.”

“Almost 20 years ago, I began photographing myself standing in front of museums, wondering about their function, failures and future, and remembering the forgotten ones,” Weems says. “Museums are meant to collect, serve, preserve, reveal and educate; the best of them open their arms in welcome providing respite, deep reflection and consideration. The least of them close us out and seem to exist to remind us of the power of privilege.”

“I have stood outside many museums and other cultural institutions—wondering how to get in,” she says. “Then one day, someone who understood the limits of power, and the winds of change, heard me knocking and led me in.”

The event’s creative art advisor, Brooklyn Museum trustee and artist Mickalene Thomas, worked with Dior to select table settings and décor inspired by Weems’ series “Slow Fade to Black” (2010), which highlights Black women in popular culture.

In celebration of the evening, Weems’ immersive video installation “Leave! Leave Now!” (2022) will enter the 尘耻蝉别耻尘’蝉 collection. The artwork is currently on view in the 尘耻蝉别耻尘’蝉 exhibition “A Movement in Every Direction: Legacies of the Great Migration.”

A??(a.k.a. “Genius” grant) recipient and the first African American woman to have a retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum,?Weems has used multiple mediums (photography, video, digital imagery, text, fabric and more) throughout her career to explore themes of cultural identity, sexism, class, political systems, family relationships and the consequences of power.

Weems has created a complex body of work that centers on her overarching commitment to helping us better understand our present moment by examining our collective past. Determined as ever to enter the picture—both literally and metaphorically—Weems has sustained an ongoing dialogue within contemporary discourse for over 35 years.

In 2019, in Weems’ first solo exhibition in Toronto, Canada, curator Sarah Robayo Sheridan wrote of her work, “With a sensibility honed to the rhythms and workings of power, Weems points to a tidal pull of oppressions, inextricably linked, recurrent and indelible.”

Weems was recently named a 2023 Hasselblad Award laureate by the?, a prize that is often referred to as the “Nobel Prize” of photography. An award ceremony will take place on Oct. 13 in Gotherburg, Sweden.

As artist in residence at 黑料不打烊, Weems engages with faculty and students in a number of ways, including working with students in the design, planning and preparation of exhibitions. The artist in residence program is overseen by the Office of Academic Affairs.

The table settings and décor for the evening were inspired by Weems’ series “Slow Fade to Black” (2010), which highlights Black women in popular culture. (Credit: BFA, Joe Schildhorn, Ben Rosser)

Weems first came to 黑料不打烊 in 1988 to participate in Light Work’s artist-in-residence program. Over the years, she has participated in several programs at Light Work and has a long history of engaging with students and the University community.

She taught at 黑料不打烊 previously, and out of her two courses Art in Civic Engagement and Art and Social Dialogue came the innovative and popular?. She previously was artist-in-residence in the College of Visual and Performing Arts (2005-06) and she was a distinguished guest of the University Lectures in 2014.

In 2018, the 黑料不打烊 Art Galleries (now 黑料不打烊 Art Museum) acquired three significant works by Weems through a generous gift from alumnus Richard L. Menschel ’55 and the artist: “People of a Darker Hue” (2016), a 15-minute video, and “All the Boys (Blocked 1)” and “All the Boys (Blocked 2)” (2016), archival photographic prints with screenprint.

Recently, through her nonprofit organization, Social Studies 101, Weems created RESIST COVID/TAKE 6!, a public-art campaign that addresses the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on Black, Latino and Indigenous communities, which has been activated by museums across the nation and abroad. In July 2020, she was honored by the City of 黑料不打烊 for the project.

Weems has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions at major national and
international museums, including the Brooklyn Museum, New York; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Frist Art Museum, Nashville; Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo, Seville, Spain.

She has received numerous awards, grants and fellowships, including the MacArthur Fellowship, U.S. State Department’s Medals of Arts, Joseph H. Hazen Rome Prize Fellowship from the American Academy in Rome, National Endowment of the Arts fellowship and Louis Comfort Tiffany Award, among many others.

Weems is represented in public and private collections around the world, including the Brooklyn Museum; Metropolitan Museum of Art; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Tate Modern, London; Whitney Museum of American Art; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; and Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. Weems has been represented by Jack Shainman Gallery since 2008.

She was bestowed an honorary doctorate by the University in 2017 (along with honorary degrees from Bowdoin College, the California College of Art, Colgate University, the New York School of Visual Arts, Maryland Institute College of Art and Smith College).

Weems earned a B.F.A. degree at the California Institute of the Arts and an M.F.A. degree at the University of California, San Diego, and studied in the Graduate Program in Folklore at the University of California, Berkeley.

2023 is the 50th anniversary of this program, organized by CNY Arts, and faculty and staff are invited to showcase their talents along with other employers and businesses in the region.

All eligible artwork submitted will be displayed on campus in the Noble Room in Hendricks Chapel in a special exhibition titled “On My Own Time–Celebrating the Artistic Talents of 黑料不打烊 Faculty and Staff.” The exhibition will run from May 30-June 8.

Faculty and staff are encouraged to support their colleagues by visiting the exhibition and casting a ballot for their favorite piece to win the People’s Choice Award. Also, during the on-campus exhibit, a selection panel of adjudicators—including a CNY Arts representative—will select pieces for an “On My Own Time Grand Finale” exhibition. The finale is a five-week exhibition at the Everson Museum of Art* from Oct. 7-Nov. 11 and will include a reception for artists, University colleagues, family and friends on Oct. 12. Tickets to the finale are available starting in September at .

*Grand Finale exhibition location and timing subject to change

Eligibility for Participation

All active full-time and part-time faculty and staff are eligible to submit artwork for adjudication. Fine arts faculty and professional artists are eligible to submit works outside of their discipline.

Criteria for Submission of Artists’ Work

• All artwork submitted must be original creations. Copies of published work or craft kits will not be accepted.
• All artwork must have been completed within three years of entry.
• Artwork must be finished and display-ready, to include mounting hardware (if applicable). Please submit display instructions or materials as necessary.
• Each faculty or staff member may submit one piece per category, not to exceed three pieces total.

Submission categories include:

• Painting (oil, acrylic, watercolor)
• Metalwork
• Drawing (pen, pencil, ink, charcoal)
• Jewelry
• Collage/assemblage
• Printmaking
• Computer art
• Photography (color or black-and-white)
• Woodwork
• Glasswork
• Sculpture
• Mixed media
• Ceramics
• Fiber art

Registration and Submission Instructions

All artists must register with their intent to participate by May 19 by completing a . Artwork submissions must be delivered to the Noble Room on May 26. Additional details will be shared upon registration. Artists are responsible for delivering and collecting artwork on schedule.

Volunteers Needed

Faculty and staff volunteers are also needed to staff the “On My Own Time” exhibition at Hendricks. If you would like to volunteer, email OMOT@syr.edu as soon as possible with your availability May 26-June 8. General questions about the exhibition can also be directed to OMOT@syr.edu.

A previous “On My Own Time” faculty and staff exhibition held on campus

Point of Contact is a nonprofit collaborative initiative exploring contemporary visual and verbal arts.

Originally founded in 1975, Point of Contact (POC) is a nonprofit collaborative initiative exploring contemporary visual and verbal arts. Through forums, readings and exhibitions, POC has provided opportunities for writers, scholars and artists to display and explore diverse cultures and identities. Initially conceived by its founder, the late Professor Pedro Cuperman in the College of Arts and Sciences, as an arts journal, it evolved into a series of books and bilingual poetry editions and, eventually, a gallery and multicultural arts education program.

“We look forward to a new age for Point of Contact and the opportunity to expand the reach of its exhibition programs and annual celebration of poetry month,” says Tere Paniagua ’82, who studied under Cuperman when she was a student at the University. Paniagua is now executive director of the , overseeing both Point of Contact and . “With POC’s new collaboration with the museum studies program, we will have the opportunity to use the gallery space in the Nancy Cantor Warehouse, where Point of Contact will present an exhibition each fall and its poetry readings program in April.”

POC has plans to present “The Border Is a Weapon” in the fall of 2023 to mark Hispanic Heritage Month. This contemporary art installation show features work by a collective of artists in a project initiated at the Laredo Center for the Arts, curated by Gil Rocha. The show has received a grant from the and will be part of the 2023-24 黑料不打烊 Symposium on “Landscapes.”

POC’s board president, , associate professor of studio arts in the School of Art at VPA, and a native of Laredo, Texas, is working in collaboration with the museum studies program to bring this exceptional work representing the arts and culture of the border regions to the community.

“Point of Contact’s transition to the provost’s office positions us in a broader context and gives us an opportunity?to share our unique brand of interdisciplinary arts to a larger?audience,” says Juarez. “POC’s unique blend of creative writing and visual arts is an excellent platform to engage with 黑料不打烊’s commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion. With the provost’s office support, we will be able to expand what we can offer the University, local and international communities.”

, assistant professor and program coordinator of museum studies in the , is excited about the partnership between museum studies and POC.

POC has plans to present “The Border Is a Weapon” in the fall of 2023 to mark Hispanic Heritage month.

“The ongoing partnership between museum studies and Point of Contact represents one of the most valuable community collaborations for our students,” says Saluti. “Both within the exhibition space and beyond the gallery walls, the work that our programs engage in intersect on multiple levels. This newly formalized relationship will not only enhance our practical approach to educating emerging cultural heritage professionals but will forge invaluable relationships across the University and greater 黑料不打烊 community.”

Paniagua believes POC’s collaboration with the museum studies program will greatly benefit students and faculty in interdisciplinary studies throughout the University, exposing them to international scholars, resources and art and literary collections. Historically, POC has engaged students from across the academic spectrum in such programs as creative writing, Latino-Latin American studies, public relations, nonprofit management, arts leadership, art collections management, design and printmaking, among others.

“POC reaches across the campus and around the globe and aligns well with 黑料不打烊’s commitment to provide students with diverse cultural experiences and international connections,” says Paniagua. “POC’s board recently welcomed several new members, including representation from the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Buenos Aires, Argentina, with whom we have partnered for years.”

The new members include Matías Roth, from the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and José Sanjinés G’90, professor of communication, media and culture at Coastal Carolina University.

The art collection accumulated by POC will be available for study and research and will travel to other museum spaces in the U.S. and across Latin America and the world. One of its signature pieces, the “Tower of Babel,” by Argentine artist Joseph Kugielsky, will be featured in a tour next fall, traveling to the Munson in Utica, New York, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and the Mattatuck Museum, for a co-curated show: “Between Worlds: Stories of Artists and Migrations.”

Each spring, POC hosts Cruel April, a series of events that takes its title from T.S. Eliot’s 1922 poem “The Waste Land”: “April is the cruelest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain.” This program complements the release of POC’s annual poetry collection, Corresponding Voices, currently a 15-volume series.

After a yearlong process of review and reorganization, plans are in place to publish a new poetry collection in 2024 and resume the Cruel April poetry reading series featuring some of the best poets from around the world. POC will be innovating its long-established program by leveraging textual and visual content with new online platforms and technologies to make poetry accessible to a wider audience.

“We believe that making poetry accessible, regardless of location or access to resources, is key in creating meaningful conversations and experiences around poetry and across cultures. The program’s aim is to draw attention and appreciation for the art form while creating a platform for poets, both established and aspiring, to share their work across cultures,” Paniagua says.

Working with obsidian mirrors, and using movement, meditations and reflections, the artists will explore Smithson’s biography and land art. They will embody the deeper meanings of Smithson’s piece, which is commonly seen as a clear example of his indoor earthworks. Tracing histories of colonialism, extraction and the landscape, Rojas and Melo’s performance will attempt to contest Smithson’s idea of the non-site by connecting with layered notions of site, land sovereignty, and ritual.

Emilio Rojas

After the performance, Rojas and Melo will be in conversation with Assistant Professor , in the Department of English, at 4 p.m. This daylong performance and dialogue are free and open to the public.

On Thursday, April 6, the museum will host a workshop with Rojas. Taking Smithson’s “Double Nonsite, California and Nevada”?as a starting point, the workshop will look at the history of obsidian in Smithson’s practice and will lead participants in a series of exercises to embody the symbolism of this rock in its pre-Hispanic context. The participants will discuss the history of land art as well as ideas and contemporary critiques around indigeneity, colonialism, landscape and the environment. Open to the 黑料不打烊 and SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry communities. is required for the workshop, and more details are available on the museum

These programs have been generously supported by a Learning and Engagement Grant provided by .

About Emilio Rojas

Emilio Rojas is a multidisciplinary artist working primarily with the body in performance, using video, photography, installation, public interventions, and sculpture. As a queer, Latinx immigrant with Indigenous heritage, it is essential to his practice to uncover, investigate, and make visible and audible undervalued or disparaged sites of knowledge. He utilizes his body in a political and critical way, as an instrument to unearth removed traumas, embodied forms of decolonization, migration, and poetics of space. His research-based practice is heavily influenced by queer and feminist archives, border politics, botanical colonialism, and defaced monuments.

He holds an M.F.A. in Performance from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a B.F.A. in Film from Emily Carr University in Vancouver, Canada. He is currently a visiting professor at Cornell University in the School of Art, Architecture and Planning. His traveling survey exhibition “Tracing A Wound Through My Body,” accompanied by a bilingual catalogue, is currently exhibited in its third iteration at the Usdan Gallery at Bennington College in Vermont. It will also travel to SECCA, North Carolina, and Artspace, New Heaven.

About Katiushka Melo?

Katiushka Melo

Katiushka Melo is a Brooklyn-based interdisciplinary artist, born in New York and raised by Chilean parents. Her work often addresses the challenging questions about the role and representation of women in modern society. She gathers historical artifacts from other women, incorporating them into her performance practice. She finds meaning in the daily rituals of different cultures, collaborating with woman from different tribes and breaking bread in order to understand cultures distant from her own.

Melo’s work dissects issues of gender identity and beauty ideals as well as challenging the domestic roles of women in modern society. Her work creates a space for contemplation, whilst her own emphasis on physical endurance provides a backdrop for more visceral understanding of the body as material and its capabilities. Her work has been exhibited in the Americas, Europe and Asia, most recently at Miami Art Basel and a solo show at Veracruzana Cultural Center for the Arts in Mexico.

About Robert Smithson and “Double Nonsite, California and Nevada”

Born in Passaic, New Jersey, Robert Smithson (1938-1973) produced paintings, drawings, sculpture, earthworks, architectural scheme, films and video, photographs and slideworks, and writings.

In 1969, Smithson traveled to Chiapas and Yucatán, in Mexico, retracing the travels of writer John Lloyd Stephens. He believed he was impersonating the Aztec deity Tezcatlipoca, whom he claims spoke to him. After returning from his trip, he finished “Double Nonsite, California and Nevada” using obsidian from Truman Springs, Nevada. Obsidian is the rock that symbolizes Tezcatlipoca, or Smoking Mirror, an indigenous Mexican god of death, war, beauty, youth, and fatality.

Carrie Mae Weems ? Rolex/Audoin Desforges

“黑料不打烊 is proud to have Carrie Mae Weems, one of the most prolific, influential and intriguing artists of our time, as a member of our community,” says Chancellor Kent Syverud. “She has a way of challenging cultural norms and shedding light on injustices that push us to question our own perspectives and beliefs. Her contributions to the world of art, and on communities and our broader society are extraordinary. On behalf of 黑料不打烊, I extend my deepest congratulations on this once-in-a-lifetime achievement.”

The Hasselblad Award is an international photography prize that is granted annually to a photographer recognized for major achievements. It was presented for the first time in 1980 to Swedish photographer Lennart Nilsson. The award includes a monetary prize of SEK 2,000,000 (about $188,000) and gold medal. The award also includes a medium format Hasselblad camera from the Gothenburg-based camera company Hasselblad.

An award ceremony will take place on Oct. 13 in Gotherburg, Sweden. That same day, an exhibition of Weems’ work will open at the Hasselblad Center and a new publication about Weems will be released.

“Carrie Mae Weems’s work has for decades anticipated salient issues of our time—the struggle for racial equality and human rights—with unflinching visual and ethical force. Her artistic practice is inherently activist, poignant and lyrical. She creates evocative, potent tableaux and confronts painful histories, institutional power and social discriminations,” the Hasselblad Foundation said in a statement. “At the core of Weems’s wide-ranging oeuvre is the still photograph, but she also deftly employs video, text, immersive multimedia installations and performance. She often inserts herself in her work, thus embodying and commemorating the Black female subject.”

“The Shape of Things” Installation View, 2021. ?Dan Bradica. Courtesy of Carrie Mae Weems and Jack Shainman Gallery

“In the midst of the radical shifts taking place across cultural institutions, and as the first African American woman to receive the Hasselblad Award, some might say, ‘it’s about time!’ Nevertheless, receiving the Hasselblad Award has left me speechless. I don’t have the words to express the depth of my gratitude. To have my family name inscribed on this historic roster, alongside some of the most outstanding photographers of our time, is a cherished honor,” Weems says. “To be recognized comes with the continued responsibility to deliver on the promise made to myself and to the field, which is to shine a light into the darker corners of our time and thereby, with a sense of grace and humility, illuminate a path forward.? For this honor, I thank the Hasselblad Foundation and the jury.”

A??(a.k.a. “Genius” grant) recipient and the first African American woman to have a retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum,?Weems has used multiple mediums (photography, video, digital imagery, text, fabric and more) throughout her career to explore themes of cultural identity, sexism, class, political systems, family relationships and the consequences of power.

“Untitled (Colored People Grid),” 2019. ?Silver Street Studios. Courtesy of Carrie Mae Weems and Jack Shainman Gallery

As artist in residence, Weems engages with 黑料不打烊 faculty and students in a number of ways, including working with students in the design, planning and preparation of exhibitions. The artist in residence program is overseen by the Office of Academic Affairs.

Weems first came to 黑料不打烊 in 1988 to participate in Light Work’s artist-in-residence program. Over the years, she has participated in several programs at Light Work and has a long history of engaging with students and the University community.

Weems taught at 黑料不打烊 previously, and out of her two courses Art in Civic Engagement and Art and Social Dialogue came the innovative and popular . She previously was artist-in-residence in the College of Visual and Performing Arts (2005-06) and she was a distinguished guest of the University Lectures in 2014.

Weems also was bestowed an honorary doctorate by the University in 2017 (along with honorary degrees from Bowdoin College, the California College of Art, Colgate University, the New York School of Visual Arts, Maryland Institute College of Art and Smith College).

In July 2020, Weems was honored by the City of 黑料不打烊 for “Resist COVID Take 6,” her project to raise public awareness about the impact of COVID-19 on people of color, promote preventative measures and dispel harmful falsehoods about the virus.

Through image and text, film, video, performance and her many lectures, presentations and culturally significant convenings with individuals across a multitude of disciplines, Weems has created a complex body of work that centers on her overarching commitment to helping us better understand our present moment by examining our collective past. Determined as ever to enter the picture—both literally and metaphorically—Weems has sustained an ongoing dialogue within contemporary discourse for more than 35 years.

“Untitled (Woman and Daughter with Makeup),” from the series The Kitchen Table, 1990. ?Carrie Mae Weems. Courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery.

Weems has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions at major national and international museums, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Frist Center for Visual Art, Nashville; The Cleveland Museum of Art; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; The National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; The Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and the Centro Andaluz de Arte Contempora?neo in Seville, Spain. Most recently, Weems curated “What Could Have Been” in the Guggenheim Museum’s first-ever, artist-curated exhibition titled “Artistic License: Six Takes on the Guggenheim Collection.”

One of her photographs, “The Shape of Things,” was the title piece in a 2016-17??in New York featuring works from the collection of alumnus Robert B. Menschel ’51, H’91.

She is represented in public and private collections around the world, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Tate Modern, London; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; National Gallery of Canada; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.

In total, seven publications of her work have been produced: “Kitchen Table Series” (2016), “Three Decades of Photography” (2012), “Social Studies” (2010), “Carrie Mae Weems: Constructing History” (2009), “The Hampton Project” (2000), “Carrie Mae Weems: Recent Work, 1992-1998” (1999) and “Carrie Mae Weems” (1994).

In addition to the MacArthur Fellowship, Weems has received numerous other fellowships, grants and awards, including the prestigious Prix de Roma, the Frida Kahlo Award for Innovative Creativity, the WEB DuBois Medal, the Louis Comfort Tiffany Award, the BET Honors Visual Artist Award, the Lucie Award for Fine Art Photography, the ICP Spotlights Award from the International Center of Photography, and she was named an honorary fellow of the Royal Photographic Society.

In 2012, Weems was awarded one of the U.S. Department of State’s first Medals of Arts in recognition of her commitment to the State Department’s Arts in Embassies program. In 2013, she received the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation’s Lifetime Achievement Award. She was one of four artists honored at the Guggenheim’s 2014 International Gala.

In 2018, the 黑料不打烊 Art Galleries (now 黑料不打烊 Art Museum) acquired three significant works by Weems through a generous gift from alumnus Richard L. Menschel ’55 and the artist: “People of a Darker Hue” (2016)—a 15-minute video—and “All the Boys (Blocked 1)” and “All the Boys (Blocked 2)” (2016), archival photographic prints with screenprint.

Weems earned a B.F.A. degree at the California Institute of the Arts and an M.F.A. degree at the University of California, San Diego, and studied in the Graduate Program in Folklore at the University of California, Berkeley.

About 黑料不打烊

黑料不打烊 is a private research university that advances knowledge across disciplines to drive breakthrough discoveries and breakout leadership. Our collection of 13 schools and colleges with over 200 customizable majors closes the gap between education and action, so students can take on the world. In and beyond the classroom, we connect people, perspectives and practices to solve interconnected challenges with interdisciplinary approaches. Together, we’re a powerful community that moves ideas, individuals and impact beyond what’s possible.

The exhibition, which is free and open to the public, was organized by School of Design faculty members and . A reception will be held on Friday, Feb. 24, from 6-8 p.m.

A pair of shoes on display as part of the new exhibition, “Footwear by School of Design Alumni.”

The School of Design, housed in the , has a long history of graduates working within the footwear industry, and this exhibition?showcases these talented designers’ experiences, philosophies and approaches to footwear design.

Current IID students were tasked with researching and interviewing the participating alumni to inform the creation of shoeboxes meant to reflect the personality and process of each designer.

“This exhibition is an opportunity to showcase the incredible work of these talented designers and to learn about what drives them to propel the industry forward,” says Carr, a professor and program coordinator of IID and the master’s of fine arts (MFA) in design degree program.

The new exhibition, “Footwear by School of Design Alumni,” features the work of over 20 designers representing more than 50 years of alumni from the school’s industrial and interaction design program.

Included are product examples ranging from athletic gear to designer shoes to specialized equipment for space capsule missions. The designers represent a wide network of industry from brands including Nike, New Balance, Clarks, Under Armour and others.

“The industrial design program at 黑料不打烊 was formative in shaping my foundation as a professional,” says participating designer Matt Heller ’98, senior director for accessories and footwear at Peloton New York City, when reflecting on his experience at the University.

“My classmates and I were lucky to have an amazingly diverse and complementary design faculty on hand, each bringing a completely different and equally valuable perspective to the program, spanning from future technologies to material explorations to user research to sustainability.”

Guanyu Xu

Debuting at Light Work this week is “”?by Chicago-based photographer Guanyu Xu. Opening on Thursday, Oct. 27, in Light Work’s Kathleen O. Ellis Gallery, this solo exhibition depicts an artist caught in a web of red tape. The work on view for this exhibition comprises images from Xu’s ongoing series, “Resident Aliens,” as well as a large grid of images that he calls “Suspension.”

Both bodies of work use visa status in the United States as a means of framing images that depict people who are suspended between countries and cultures. Their futures hang on faceless state agencies in a churning political current.

Xu’s practice examines the production of power in photography as well as the fate of personal freedom and its relationship to political regimes. He negotiates these questions from his perspective as a Chinese gay man. Xu makes use of photography, new media and installation, and his work across media intentionally reflects aspects of his displaced and fractured identity.

“Suspended Status” runs through Thursday, Dec. 15. A reception with Xu and his gallery talk takes place on Thursday, October 27, at 6 p.m. in Light Work’s Kathleen O. Ellis Gallery. The reception is free and open to the public, with light refreshments. Find Light Work in the Robert B. Menschel Media Center at 316 Waverly Ave.

(Photo courtesy of the artist)

About the Artist

Born in Beijing in 1993, currently makes Chicago his base. He is a lecturer at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His major influences are the production of ideology in American visual culture and a conservative familial upbringing in China. He is the recipient of the CENTER Development Grant (2021), Chicago DCASE Artist Grant (2022), Hyéres International Festival Prize (2020), Kodak Film Photo Award (2019), Lensculture Emerging Talent Award (2019), Philadelphia Photo Arts Center Annual Competition (2019) and PHOTO-FAIRS Shanghai Exposure Award (2020). He has been an artist-in-residence at ACRE (Chicago), Latitude (Chicago) and Light Work.

Ed Kashi “Uchapalli, India,” 2016 (Courtesy of the artist)

Featuring 15 photographs recently gifted to the museum by the artist, this exhibition considers Kashi’s practice of what he terms “advocacy journalism”. It highlights three projects, ranging in subjects from aging in America, to oil in the Niger Delta, to the global epidemic of chronic kidney disease. In each of these bodies of work, Kashi depicts individuals with great sensitivity and compassion. Through his creative framing and compelling method of visual storytelling, Kashi seeks to instill a sense of hope in the viewer.

Organized by museum interim chief curator Melissa Yuen, the special weeklong exhibition will be accompanied by programming, including a teaching workshop and a lunchtime lecture, both with the artist, in the pop-up exhibition space. All programs are free and open to the public. Advance registration is required for the teaching workshop and information is available on the .
This exhibition and related programs are organized in conjunction with the Newhouse School’s 2022 Alexia Fall Workshop and is co-sponsored by the Center for Global Engagement, Newhouse School of Public Communications and Light Work, and supported in part by the Robert B. Menschel ’51, H’91 Photography Fund.

About the Artist

Ed Kashi is a renowned photojournalist, filmmaker, speaker and educator who has been making images and telling stories for 40 years. His restless creativity has continually placed him at the forefront of new approaches to visual storytelling. Dedicated to documenting the social and political issues that define our times, a sensitive eye and an intimate and compassionate relationship to his subjects are signatures of his intense and unsparing work. As a member of VII Photo Agency, Kashi has been recognized for his complex imagery and its compelling rendering of the human condition.

Kashi’s innovative approach to photography and filmmaking has produced a number of influential short films and earned recognition by the POYi Awards as 2015’s Multimedia Photographer of the Year. Kashi’s embrace of technology has led to creative social media projects for clients including National Geographic, The New Yorker and MSNBC. From implementing a unique approach to photography and filmmaking in his 2006 Iraqi Kurdistan Flipbook, to paradigm shifting coverage of Hurricane Sandy for TIME in 2012, Kashi continues to create compelling imagery and engage with the world in new ways.

Along with numerous awards from World Press Photo, POYi, CommArts and American Photography, Kashi’s images have been published and exhibited worldwide. His editorial assignments and personal projects have generated eleven books. In 2002, Kashi, in partnership with his wife, writer and filmmaker Julie Winokur, founded Talking Eyes Media. The nonprofit company has produced numerous award-winning short films, exhibits, books and multimedia pieces that explore significant social issues.

Special Events

Teaching Workshop
Oct. 24, 2-4 p.m.
Co-taught by Ed Kashi and Kate Holohan, curator of education and academic outreach, this workshop will provide 黑料不打烊 faculty and graduate students with key information and pedagogical tools that will help them to teach with Kashi’s work as well as with related objects in the Museum’s collection. .

Lunchtime Lecture: Ed Kashi ’79
Oct. 25, 12:15-1 p.m.
Hear Kashi speak about his work. Space is limited to 25 people, first come, first served.?

Members of the media, please contact Emily Dittman, associate director of 黑料不打烊 Art Museum, at ekdittma@syr.edu, for more information or to schedule a tour.

(Photo by Matt Coulter)

At the start of the fall semester, members of the Maxwell School community were greeted by new figures joining the statue of George Washington that has served as the focal point of the school’s north entrance since the building was completed in 1937.

Framed prints of iconic changemakers like Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass, alongside lesser-known advocates for social justice and other “Americans Who Tell the Truth” from the collection of artist Robert Shetterly flank the first president’s stately figure.

The new exhibition, titled “A Conversation with George Washington,” is part of an ongoing, wide-ranging effort to foster inclusion and elicit conversations over a central theme of importance to the Maxwell community: citizenship. One of several initiatives to make Maxwell’s building space more representative of its diverse community, the project was born from extensive conversations with students, alumni, faculty and staff during the past two years as leadership has developed a ?are integrated into all aspects of the school’s mission and operations.

“Through this exhibition, we hope to encourage our community to think critically about how we can dialogue from a place of respect and active listening over thorny and complicated issues,” says Gladys McCormick, associate professor of history and associate dean for diversity, equity and inclusion. “To have difficult conversations and acknowledge the shades of grey is inherent in our work as social scientists, teachers, researchers and students.”

McCormick, also the Jay and Debe Moskowitz Endowed Chair in Mexico-U.S. Relations, says she is heartened by feedback from colleagues and students who’ve shared how they’ve had discussions about how citizenship has evolved since Washington and others drafted the Constitution in 1787. “Over the past two centuries, we have witnessed individuals—including those depicted in the portraits—struggle for inclusion and demand access to the rights that come with citizenship,” she adds.

The 10 portraits displayed in the foyer include, left, author and activist Grace Lee Boggs, and right, Latino community organizer Gladys Vega. (Photo by Matt Coulter)

Shetterly’s “” collection has traveled the country since 2003, and has been displayed in university museums, grade school libraries, sandwich shops, the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine in New York City, and the Superior Court in San Francisco. All told, the collection includes over 260 portraits, painted over the past two decades. Historic icons like Helen Keller and Rosa Parks are joined by contemporary changemakers such as author and climate activist Naomi Klein and civil rights lawyer Van Jones.

McCormick collaborated with a team of Maxwell colleagues including Laura Walsh, academic operations coordinator, to select the 10 portraits?to be displayed in the Maxwell foyer. The display includes Grace Lee Boggs, a community activist who in 1992 founded Detroit Summer, a community movement bringing together people of all races, cultures and ages to rebuild Detroit—a city Boggs has described as “a symbol of the end of industrial society.” Also included is Louis Brandeis, who served as a Supreme Court Justice from 1916 to 1939 and came to be known as the “People’s Attorney” for taking on causes such as workplace conditions, the fairness of banks and insurance companies, government corruption, and the unreasonable restraint of trade.

“We considered how each caused us to think through citizenship as an ongoing process as people push to be included and/or demand accountability,” says Walsh, noting that Brandeis and Sibel Edmonds were selected because they illustrate ways people have “defended citizenship from inside and outside government.”

Shetterly has shared through the years how the portraits have given him an opportunity to speak about the necessity of dissent in a democracy, the obligations of citizenship, sustainability, history and how democracy cannot function if politicians don’t tell the truth, if the media don’t report it and if the people don’t demand it.

According to the website for “Americans Who Tell the Truth,” Shetterly’s work uses “the power of art to illuminate the ongoing struggle to realize America’s democratic ideals and model the commitment to act for the common good.”

Dean David M. Van Slyke points to the closing of the Athenian Oath behind the Washington statue: “We will transmit this city not only not less, but greater, better and more beautiful than it was transmitted to us.” “It is representative of the diversity of the Maxwell School and our collective goal of creating an inclusive learning and working environment for the campus community,” he says.

McCormick and Walsh say the Maxwell community can expect to see new portraits periodically rotated into the exhibit. Meanwhile, other projects underway to promote inclusivity in Maxwell and Eggers halls include an installation called “Voices of Maxwell.” It recently went up in the entryway to Eggers Hall from the Lincoln courtyard and will feature a rotating display of quotes by Maxwell community members who have made significant contributions to the school throughout its history.

Marguerite Fisher, the first woman to be promoted to full professor at the Maxwell School, is among those featured in a new display, “Voices of Maxwell.” (Photo by Ross Knight)

The first series of displays honor the contributions of retired women faculty and staff such as Marguerite Fisher, the first woman to be promoted to associate and then to full professor in Maxwell.

“These physical changes are part of a wider effort to signal our commitment to ensuring all members of our community feel represented,” says Van Slyke. “They make diversity, equity and inclusion part of our collective everyday lived experienced in Maxwell.”

? Molly Hunker and Greg Corso

As a flagship program of , Exhibit Columbus is an exploration of community, architecture, art and design that activates the modern legacy of Columbus. Through a two-year cycle of events, conversations are convened around innovative ideas, and then site-responsive installations are commissioned to create a free, public exhibition.

Now in its fourth cycle, this year’s theme, “,” builds on the legacy of Columbus to explore how collaborations between communities and designers can revitalize and reimagine historic downtowns as equitable, beautiful, healthy and joyful places.

Fellows were selected through a national, open call competition for full-time university professors whose work is deeply rooted in design research. Applicants were asked to “respond to, enhance and/or critique” downtown activation strategies recommended by James Lima Planning + Development (JLP+D) within the firm’s city of Columbus-commissioned .

“City Thread” (2018) is a public space that re-envisions an unused alley in downtown Chattanooga, Tennessee. Credit: Benjamin Chase

Shortlisted contenders were selected by six curatorial partners and then chosen by a 13-member jury of community stakeholders. While the UDRF is not a new component of Exhibit Columbus, this is the first time the fellows have been selected via an open competition—and one juried by a cohort of community members.

“These fellows represent a cross-section of artists, architects and landscape architects working in the U.S. at this moment. It’s an impressive group whose research is advancing important work on sustainable materials and community-based design in the public realm,” says the six curatorial partners in a joint statement.

The fellows, along with , will place the many communities of Columbus at the center of the conversations and do this in a public format by creating specific opportunities for engagement between the designers and the citizens of Columbus.

Winning fellows can request a budget of up to $10,000 to support the design and building of an academic research-showcasing public installation that explores the enhancement of modernist architecture-rich Columbus, Indiana’s downtown corridor.

As founders of the award-winning design collaborative, , based in 黑料不打烊, New York, Hunker and Corso’s work focuses on creating compelling spaces that are catalysts for social activities. Much of their work has been public interventions that leverage the possibility for simple design and fabrication gestures to have significant urban and community impacts.

“The theme of Public Design makes us think of design that privileges possibilities and multiple perspectives, rather than a specific way something should be understood or used,” says Hunker and Corso.

Hunker and Corso’s design approach for the fellowship is centered around an exploration of three main elements—context, flexibility and atmosphere. Building on the unique physical/architectural context of Columbus, they propose to frame their installation as infrastructural—an architectural intervention that supports and promotes a range of unique and exciting possibilities within the community.

“By embracing color, form and material effects in our project, we aim to a create a vibrant design that allows people to rediscover familiar spaces downtown with new atmospheres and experiences,” says Hunker and Corso.

Approaching the installation as an educational experience, Hunker and Corso anticipate engaging students in various aspects of the process and realization of the project. Such participation gives students a unique perspective of architecture outside of the classroom.

“Rounds” (2016) is an outdoor theater pavilion for the Ragdale Foundation in Lake Forest, Illinois. Credit: Nick Zukauskas

Further, acting as a provocation for visitors and locals alike, Hunker and Corso see an incredible opportunity to engage the community in the process of the project, particularly through physical interactions and programs designed to deepen their relationship with the space.

“We’re excited by the value that the city and community of Columbus sees in design,” says Hunker and Corso. “What a special perspective—to see extraordinary design work that makes up the built environment as ordinary parts of daily life.”

The UDRF partner sites will be announced later in the month, around the 2022 Exhibit Columbus Symposium, which will be held in downtown Columbus Oct. 21–22.

Dancers in the Ailey II Dance Company (Photo by Nir Arieli)

The , a unit of the Department of African American Studies in the College of Arts and Sciences, celebrates its 50th anniversary with a performance by the Ailey II – Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, featuring emerging dance talent and artistic director Francesca Harper.

The Ailey II performance will take place Wednesday, Oct. 26 at the historic Landmark Theatre in 黑料不打烊. Doors open at 6 p.m. and tickets can be purchased or at the Landmark Theatre box office. with premium seating are available through CFAC. Seating is limited.

VIP ticket holders are invited to a luncheon and art auction fundraiser on Oct. 22 at noon at the CFAC Gallery located at 805 E. Genesee St., 黑料不打烊. An exhibition of creative works from the cofounders of CFAC and historical photos of the organization will also be on display for viewing.

CFAC was founded in 1972 by the late Herbert T. Williams, professor of African American studies at 黑料不打烊, in collaboration with other faculty and students, as well as local artists and City of 黑料不打烊 residents.

Under the leadership of the Department of African American Studies, CFAC has become a thriving hub in 黑料不打烊 and the greater community for developing and promoting creative exploration of the African diaspora. Its mission is to exalt cultural and artistic pluralism by collecting, exhibiting, teaching and interpreting the visual and expressive arts. In addition to Williams, CFAC founders include Shirley Harrison, Jack White, George Campbell Jr., Mary Schmidt Campbell, David MacDonald and Basheer Alim.

“For 50 years, CFAC has helped share, preserve and continue the histories and stories of the African diaspora through the arts,” says Tanisha M. Jackson, Ph.D., executive director of CFAC, creator of Black Arts Speak and professor of African American studies. “We are proud of the community we serve, the setting for dialogue and interaction we provide, and the incredible programs and artists we support.”

CFAC planted its roots in a small storefront, then relocated to a converted auditorium on the East side of 黑料不打烊, before finally settling into its current space in the heart of the Connective Corridor, where the building now functions as a multidisciplinary community art center and venue for community members to gather in the spirit of creative expression.

Public programming offered by CFAC includes exhibitions, film screenings, gallery talks, workshops and courses in studio and performing arts, and more. CFAC also offers a robust that provides a gateway to the arts to middle school and high school students in the community.

In addition to the Ailey II performance, CFAC will celebrate its 50th anniversary with a variety of additional events. To learn more about events, . For more information about the gallery or tickets to the Ailey II performance, contact cfac@syr.edu. To support CFAC artistic and educational programming, .

?

One of the dolls from the collection on view at La Casita

The new exhibition features work by artists , and ; a collaborative piece by ; and a 9-foot mural by , teaching artist at La Casita, who created the piece with the children in this year’s summer programs.

“Toys contain stories about all of us,” saysTere Paniagua ’82, executive director of the Office of Cultural Engagement for the Hispanic Community and co-curator of the project. “This showcase serves to establish a common thread that unites us as a community by examining the vast range and depth of experiences that have an imprint on who we are and shape our future generations.”

Toys are a testimony not only of human creativity but also of intercultural connections across generations. In a toy that we recall from our childhood, there are memories associated with our collective and personal stories. Toys live in our stories, our journey, and our history. Their significance lies in their capacity to contain stories from one generation to another.

This new exhibition is at the center of a series of inter-generational community dialogues that will be taking place at La Casita and will be preserved by the center’s digital Cultural Memory Archive, established in 2013 as a resource for education and scholarly research.

“Caribbean Dreams” runs through Thursday, Oct. 13. The reception with Samantha Box and her gallery talk takes place on Thursday, Sept. 1, at 6 p.m. in the Kathleen O. Ellis Gallery. The reception is free and open to the public, with light refreshments. Find Light Work in the Robert B. Menschel Media Center at 316 Waverly Ave. in 黑料不打烊.

Construction #1(1), 2018 (Photo by Samantha Box, courtesy of Light Work)

About “Caribbean Dreams”

How can artwork be risky? In artistic practice—as opposed to the way that art-speak often reduces “risk” to non-meaning and/or applies the term ubiquitously—risk is often about expectations. This meaning is front and center in Samantha Box’s new solo exhibition. In conversation with exhibition curator Dan Boardman during a studio visit, Box reflected on her new body of work. “I started to really appreciate risk in the last couple of years of this work, when I started to want to make pictures that were going into spaces that felt strange, wild and uncharted,” Box says. “I had to give myself permission to make pictures that made sense only to me—a total risk.” With “Caribbean Dreams,” Box deftly traverses this edge, expanding her approach to making images and to her new subject matter. This allows her to blend personal, familial and relevant regional materials into raw, experimental and unpredictable compositions. She fills each image with discovery, intuition and restless innovations that explore and overlay multiple diasporic Caribbean histories and identities.

Exhibition Catalog

Samantha Box’s exhibition catalog, “Contact Sheet 218,” and signed limited-edition fine prints titled “Tropical Family Portrait, 2020” will be available for purchase after the reception and in Light Work’s online shop.

Samantha Box (portrait courtesy of the artist)

Artist Biography

is a Jamaican-born, Bronx-based photographer. She has exhibited work at the DePaul Art Museum, Houston Center of Photography, the ICP Museum and the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art. Box has been an artist-in-residence at both the Center of Photography at Woodstock and Light Work. She received an M.F.A. in advanced photographic studies from the International Center of Photography/Bard College (2019) and a certificate in photojournalism and documentary studies from the International Center of Photography (2006). She has twice received the NYFA Fellowship in Photography (2010 and 2022)

Related Programming

Light Work hosts supplemental programming in its gallery spaces to support exhibition-related events, conversations and tours. With great excitement, we announce the “2022 Light Work Grants in Photography: Carlton Daniel, Jr. Lacey McKinney, Sarah Phyllis Smith”?will be on view concurrently in Light Work’s Hallway Gallery.

Gallery Hours, Admission and General Information

Find Light Work’s galleries in the Robert B. Menschel Media Center, 316 Waverly Ave., 黑料不打烊. Gallery hours are Monday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Saturday and Sunday from 1 to 9 p.m. Light Work closes on all major holidays. Contact Light Work to schedule a guided tour of the galleries or the Light Work Lab. Follow Light Work on, and . For general information, please visit , call 315.443.1300, or email info@lightwork.org.

Parking
Limited metered parking is available on Waverly Avenue and paid parking is available in the Booth Parking Garage. Visit ?for more information on parking and directions to the galleries.

Sharif Bey

, an associate professor of studio arts in the College of Visual and Performing Arts’ School of Art, will lead a gallery tour of his exhibition, “,” on Saturday, June 18, 2:15 to 3:15 p.m. at the Everson Museum, 401 Harrison St., 黑料不打烊. The tour will begin in the Sculpture Court.

The tour is part of the on June 18, in celebration of Bey’s exhibition and Juneteenth. The day will include educational activities and events that celebrate African and African American culture and heritage. Visitors can enjoy the gallery walk with Bey, listen to stories of liberation from the Onondaga County Public Library, create Pan-African flags with educator Vanessa Johnson, and attend presentations and performances by James Gordon Williams, 黑料不打烊 Stage and others.

During his tour, will give an in-depth look at his work and into his process and practice. “Facets” is the largest solo exhibition to date for Bey, a nationally acclaimed artist, educator and activist. He was by United States Artists, an organization that illuminates the value of artists to American society and addresses their economic challenges.

With funding from a grant awarded by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), “Sharif Bey: Facets” is a three-decade retrospective of Bey’s body of work in ceramics and glass that explores the visual heritage of Africa and Oceania. Much of Bey’s work investigates the meaning of African symbols and artifacts and the ways in which colonialism stripped them of their original purpose and power.

“I was raised in an anti-imperialist household—that was the culture, a culture of asking, of questioning, of pushing back on the narratives that media has fed to us,” Bey says.

Since accepting a teaching position at 黑料不打烊 in 2009, Bey has become a vital part of 黑料不打烊’s social fabric. Coming on the heels of an exhibition at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, where he was born and raised, the Everson presents a survey of Bey’s work, starting with the functional pottery that has served as a touchstone throughout his career, and continuing through his most recent body of large-scale figurative sculptures in clay.

“Protest Shield #2,” 2020

“With Manhattan gallery representation from Albertz Benda Gallery in Chelsea and a recent exhibition at the Carnegie Museum, the rest of the world is finding out what we have long known in 黑料不打烊—that Sharif is a generational talent with a rare combination of skill, intellect and fearlessness,” says Garth Johnson, the Everson’s curator of ceramics. “We’re grateful to the National Endowment of the Arts for recognizing Sharif’s work and making it possible for the Everson to showcase it in the context of his own community.”

Borrowing works from across the country, including his first major statement, “Assimilation? Destruction?” (2000), to an early pot that dates back to his years as a teenage potter, “Sharif Bey: Facets” is a hometown celebration of Bey’s immense swell of national and international acknowledgment and growing stature within contemporary art.

Bey lives and works in 黑料不打烊, where in addition to this studio practice he is an associate professor in studio arts in the College of Visual and Performing Arts. Bey earned a B.F.A. in ceramics from Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania, an M.F.A. in studio art from the University of North Carolina and a Ph.D. in art education from Penn State University. He has participated in many artist-in-residencies and fellowships to hone his craft, and is included in numerous public collections, including The Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; Smithsonian American Art Museum and Renwick Gallery, Washington, D.C.; the Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio; and the United States Embassies of Khartoum, Sudan; Kampala, Uganda; and Jakarta, Indonesia.

Collectively, the shows and added events focus attention on important concerns for the 黑料不打烊 community, especially relating to the history of the 15th Ward and the impact of the construction and impending dismantling of the I-81 overpass.

The main components of the partnership are stage’s production of resident playwright Kyle Bass’ “salt/city/blues,” “The Most Beautiful Home . . . Maybe” by artists and activists Mark Valdez and ashley sparks and the Everson Museum exhibition “15-81,” featuring architect and urban designer Sekou Cooke’s project “We Outchea: Hip-Hop Fabrications and Public Space.”

“A rich array of artistic work marks the conclusion of 黑料不打烊 Stage’s 21/22 season,” says Bob Hupp, artistic director, 黑料不打烊 Stage. “These works highlight what 黑料不打烊 Stage does best as we shine a spotlight on issues that affect all of us who call 黑料不打烊 home. Through our creative lens we explore and give voice to the obstacles and opportunities that engage our community. Through new work, discussions and collaborative interactions, we strive to give everyone a new way of thinking about and addressing seemingly intractable challenges.”

‘蝉补濒迟/肠颈迟测/产濒耻别蝉’

Directed by Gilbert McCauley, “salt/city/blues” is a contemporary drama set in a downtown bar in a fictionalized 黑料不打烊 where a controversial highway project that has long divided the city is due to be dismantled. What comes next for the city, the once thriving neighborhood destroyed by the highway and the individuals who frequent the local watering hole Tipsy’s Pub threads through the narrative of the play.

With gentrification underway in the neighborhood and more change coming soon, the fate of Tipsy’s is uncertain, as are the fates of those whose lives are connected to it. This includes Prof D (Leo Finnie) a Black man who claims to be 81 years old and who lives in an apartment above the bar. He is a storyteller and a blues aficionado with a killer collection of vintage vinyl, who also claims to be a retired professor. Carrie (Joey Parsons) is the bartender, 30s, white and a veteran of the Iraq war, who has her eye on a small parcel of land with apple trees. The resident barfly is a fiftyish white man named Fish (Rand Foerster) who likes his drink too much and can make enough trouble to occasionally get himself barred from Tipsy’s.

The newcomer to the scene is Yolonda Mourning (Chantal Jean-Pierre), a Black woman in her 40s, who is a consultant for the city on the highway project. She is not typical of Tipsy’s clientele. She has recently moved to a new apartment in the downtown neighborhood after separating from her husband. Her son Malcolm (Jeremiah Packer), 17, is the fifth character. He aspires to be a blues musician and has a tense relationship with his mother.

“This is a story about a town and a bar at a crossroads, and five people who are at crossroads in their lives,” McCauley says. “We often arrive at places where we have to make decisions and figure out what direction to take. That’s what facing these characters, and what we face that today, even as a nation, as a country. Where are we going?”

Bass based Tipsy’s on a real Downtown 黑料不打烊 pub and many parallels exist between the Salt City of the play and 黑料不打烊. But Bass points out, the Salt City of the play is more of a fraternal twin to 黑料不打烊. The play, he says, is inspired by this community.

“salt/city/blues” runs June 9-26. Tickets are on sale now at .

‘The Most Beautiful Home…Maybe’

“The Most Beautiful Home . . . Maybe,” is an original work of devised theater whose goal is to use the imaginative resources of theater to explore solutions to chronic housing problems plaguing the country.

Through workshops that bring together stakeholders involved in housing policy—politicians, developers, advocates, activists, the homeless—Valdez and sparks seek creative solutions to housing insecurity by challenging participants to consider the question “What if everyone in this country had a home?” The input collected at the workshops forms the basis for the performance piece.

黑料不打烊 Stage has hosted four workshops in the lead up to the performance and local participants have included Deka Dancil, diversity, equity and inclusion specialist, St. Joseph’s Health; Lanessa Chaplin, Esq., project counsel, New York Civil Liberties Union; and author and playwright Juhanna Rogers, among others.

To date, “The Most Beautiful Home . . . Maybe” has performed in Minneapolis, Minnesota, at the Mixed Blood Theatre, and recently at Los Angeles’ REDCAT in the Walt Disney Concert Hall Complex. In speaking with the Los Angeles Times, sparks said that the skills theater artists have “are actually superpowers for solving community problems and creating spaces for people to have hard conversations.”

“What would we create?” Valdez asks. “What kind of high density, co-op driven models of housing could we create? How do we build the additional 68 million homes that we need? How do we incentivize mom-and-pop landlords to keep their units affordable?”

Valdez and sparks note that the pandemic has exacerbated an already widespread and chronic problem, with many middle-class Americans experiencing housing insecurity.

“I can feel my body get lighter when I imagine that world where people are not living in the fear and stress of being unhoused or losing their home, or worried about where they’re going to live when they’re old,” sparks says. “Our country would actually just be healthier and more prosperous if there was housing stability.”

“The Most Beautiful Home . . . Maybe” runs for three performances only, June 16, 17 and 18 at 7:30 p.m. in the Arthur Storch Theatre at 黑料不打烊 Stage. Admission is free.

Everson Museum of Art and Juneteenth Partnerships

The exhibition “15-81” presents Cooke’s project “We Outchea: Hip-Hop Fabrications and Public Space” alongside documents relating to the 15th Ward. Commissioned by New York’s Museum of Modern Art in 2021 as part of the exhibition “Reconstructions: Architecture and Blackness in America,” “We Outchea” focuses on the legacy of placement and displacement of Black residents in 黑料不打烊 and considers various events in the city’s history—the razing of the 15th Ward, the building of multiple public housing projects and the construction of Interstate-81—while simultaneously critiquing recent proposals to replace low- income communities with mixed-income housing.

By contextualizing the “We Outchea” project with photographs and ephemera that tell the story of the once vibrant 15th Ward, Cooke points to a post-81 黑料不打烊 future of entrepreneurship and innovation.

“15-81” is on display through Aug. 21.

Patrons of the “15-81” exhibition and members of the Everson will receive $10 off admission to “salt/city/blues” at 黑料不打烊 Stage. Stage patrons get free admission to the Everson with proof of purchase of “salt/city/blues” tickets.

Events at Stage and the Everson will also be officially part of 黑料不打烊’s annual Juneteenth celebration. The June 12, 7:30 p.m. performance of “salt/city/blues” will be Juneteenth Night at 黑料不打烊 Stage. Juneteenth Festival organizers will be available at 黑料不打烊 Stage with information about the upcoming festival on June 17 and 18.

Discount tickets will be available for “salt/city/blues” and the Everson will host a free screening on June 18 of Bass’ one-person play “Citizen James, or the Young Man without a Country” as part of the Juneteenth celebrations. Originally, commissioned for 黑料不打烊 Stage’s Backstory educational program, the play depicts young James Baldwin at La Guardia airport awaiting a flight to Paris that will give him refuge from the racist violence of America in the 1940s and set him on the path to becoming a towering influence in the Civil Rights movement.

“The path to creating new work is not always predictable, especially today, but the rewards of this effort can be immeasurable,” adds Hupp. “We’re honored to produce resident playwright Kyle Bass’s powerful new play and to present our participatory co-production with Minneapolis’ Mixed Blood Theatre. Taken as stand-alone works, they offer exciting and unique theatrical opportunities. Taken together, ‘蝉补濒迟/肠颈迟测/产濒耻别蝉’ and ‘The Most Beautiful Home…Maybe’ afford the one-of-a-kind experience we are committed to creating for Central New York.”

Curated by Pan Am 103 Archivist and Assistant University Archivist Vanessa St.Oegger-Menn, the digital exhibition includes photographs, correspondence, newspapers, student protest flyers, and other items from the 黑料不打烊 Archives documenting this time of significant student activism on campus. The exhibition includes a variety of perspectives on the strike, including those of student activists, their supporters and critics, and University administration.

Students and campus community members gathered in front of Hendricks Chapel during the May 4, 1970 Student Strike Rally.

Cover of the Fall 2014 issue of Perception Magazine.

黑料不打烊 Libraries’ Special Collections Research Center (SCRC) spring exhibition, “Student Voices in Print,” is now on display on the 6th floor of Bird Library. The new exhibition features the University’s rich history and variety of student voices and student publications, which have been part of the fabric of the campus since its early days.

Curated by University Archivist Meg Mason, the exhibition includes articles, poetry, fiction and other writings, as well as illustrations, cover art and cartoons. Newspapers, magazines, newsletters and other publications, all from the University Archives, will offer a glimpse into the history of 黑料不打烊’s student voices—expressing humor, art and class solidarity, as well as documenting student activism, campus news, student organizations and the voices of underrepresented communities on campus.

The exhibition is open to the public during regular SCRC hours, Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., throughout the spring semester.

Throughout her career, Weems has produced a prolific and complex body of work, pushing the boundaries of photography and blurring the line between art and activism. Her new work, “The Shape of Things,” builds on the convening of the same name and accompanying public programming that Weems hosted at the Armory during her residency in 2017, using art as a lens to probe the political and social issues of the day.

Carrie Mae Weems, University Artist in Residence at 黑料不打烊, will premier “The Shape of Things” Dec. 2 at the Park Avenue Armory in New York City.

Reflecting the “circus-like” quality of contemporary American political life, Weems conjures a dark setting in the Armory’s Wade Thompson Drill Hall with an exhibition that encompasses the breadth of her artistic output—including new multimedia installations and iconic works from the past decade, as well as a performance series and convening of artists. This timely project, which will be situated in the Drill Hall from Dec. 2-Dec. 31, was conceived as a platform for collective investigation and reflection on the complexity of the American experience.

“I am fascinated by 19th century media, so for the Drill Hall I created a cyclorama that contains a new film that pits the rise of the right along with its puppeteers, clowns, jokers and two-faced speakers and spies, charlatans and prophets of fake news, conspiracy theorists against the emerging forces of progress. In this world, ‘normal’ is turned on its head and all bets are off,” says Weems. “It is a time of murder, mayhem and mass protest and when covert operators of corruption bear their heads for all to see. My work centers on what happens when all facades are stripped away, and the people are left standing face to face with the realities of our time.”

Celebrated for her insightful photography, investigations of social dynamics, and ability to convene leading thinkers and artists through her work, Weems presents major new works alongside existing works that explore the circus of politics and, in Weems’ words, “the push for a just society, along with the starts and stops on the long slow road towards progress.” At the center of the exhibition is a new, large-scale video installation evoking a 19th-century cyclorama that offers new film material by Weems with original music by Jawwaad Taylor.

Other installation elements include a large-scale photographic installation; a memorial wall dedicated to victims of anti-Black violence; Lincoln, Lonnie, and Me (2012), a “Pepper’s Ghost” illusion with music by Jason Moran, the longtime curator for the Armory’s Artists Studio Series; and additional sculpture and installation works suggestive of a 19th-century side-show, including a peep show and dioramas.

“Roaming-When and Where I Enter Ancient Rome” is one of the photographs that will be featured at “The Shape of Things” exhibition. (Photo courtesy of Carrie Mae Weems and Park Avenue Armory).

“Carrie Mae Weems has been a dynamic partner of Park Avenue Armory since her residency in 2017, which culminated in her convening (also called “The Shape of Things”) of fellow artists and cultural thinkers working at the intersection of art and social practice,” says Rebecca Robertson, Founding President and Executive Producer of Park Avenue Armory. “It is a full-circle moment to have her now take over the Drill Hall to bring such a significant body of work to fruition and extend her acute commentary on the social and cultural developments that have played out since her last major engagement here.”

“Park Avenue Armory has long sought to empower artists who, like Carrie Mae Weems, push and break the boundaries within their chosen milieu,” says the Armory’s Marina Kellen French Artistic Director Pierre Audi. “This major solo exhibition takes her practice another step forward as she makes full use of the expansive Drill Hall, in which she can realize her vision with no rules. Cultivating these kinds of long-lasting and evolving relationships with artists has been a cornerstone of the Armory’s work since its founding.”

Building on the convening and public programming developed as part of the 2017 collaboration between Weems and the Armory, “The Shape of Things” incorporates a weekend-long convening in a nod to what has become a trademark of Weems’ practice. This two-day gathering of performers, thinkers and activists, entitled “Land of Broken Dreams,” will explore what it is to be American in this time of turmoil and disruption through conversation, interventions and engagements throughout the exhibition and the building. Spanning two full days, the convening will feature a robust line up of discussions and performances. Additional details and a full schedule will be announced at a later date.

“The Shape of Things represents an insightful, thought-provoking reflection on recent social and political events, as seen through the lens of Weems’ distinctive vision and expansive, multidisciplinary approach,” says exhibition curator Tom Eccles. “By inviting the public to experience the work through media spanning video, performance and music, she embraces the concept of community as a path forward through these turbulent times. And by presenting a more holistic view of Weems’ expansive and incisive practice, ‘The Shape of Things’ will be a monumental display of her artistic prowess and keen powers of observation.”

About Carrie Mae Weems

Carrie Mae Weems (born 1953, Portland, Oregon) is widely renowned as one of the most influential contemporary American artists living today. Over the course of nearly four decades, Weems has developed a complex body of work employing text, fabric, audio, digital images, installation and video, but she is most celebrated as a photographer. Activism is central to Weems’ practice, which investigates race, family relationships, cultural identity, sexism, class, political systems and the consequences of power.

Over the last 30 years of her prolific career, Weems has been consistently ahead of her time and an ongoing presence in contemporary culture. Her work is organized into cohesive bodies that function like chapters in a perpetually unfolding narrative, demonstrating her gift as a storyteller. “The Kitchen Table Series” (1990), one of Weems’ most seminal works, is widely considered one of the most important bodies of contemporary photography. Through her work, Weems tackles a number of complex contemporary issues, demanding reconsideration of predominant narratives throughout our history.

Weems has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions at major national and international museums,? including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Frist Center for Visual Art, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, and the Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo in Seville, Spain. She is represented in public and private collections around the world, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City; The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the Museum of Modern Art, New York City; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; and The Tate Modern, London.

Installation Dates and Schedule

“The Shape of Things” is on view at Park Avenue Armory Dec. 2-Dec. 31.

• Tuesdays-Thursdays, noon-7 p.m.
• Fridays noon-9 p.m.
• Saturdays and Sundays noon-6 p.m.
• Open Monday, Dec. 27, noon-7 p.m.

Check website for special holiday hours. Tickets at $18 and free for Armory members.

Health and Safety Protocols

The health and safety of the public is of paramount concern to the Armory. All ticket-holders must be fully vaccinated. “Fully vaccinated” means that you received your final dose at least 14 days before your performance date. At check-in, ticket-holders will be required to show proof of full vaccination (the New York State Excelsior Pass or a hard copy or photo of your vaccination card) and a government-issued photo ID. Masks must be properly worn inside at all times. Park Avenue Armory surpasses Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and New York Standards for ventilation, observes strict cleaning and disinfecting protocols, and provides disinfecting stations throughout the public areas.

Organized by the School of Architecture in cooperation with in Shanghai, the grand opening of the exhibition celebrated all of those who made it possible for 黑料不打烊 Architecture to provide a unique hybrid pedagogical model for more than 150 undergraduate students who were unable to travel to 黑料不打烊.

“Over the last 18 months, our school organized in-person studios in Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen; curated exhibitions; ran workshops and traveling programs for incoming freshmen; held in person portfolio reviews; and conducted high school visits,” says Michael Speaks, dean of the School of Architecture.

“All of this was overseen by Fei Wang, School of Architecture assistant teaching professor and director of China programs,” says Speaks. “Wang’s extraordinary efforts, along with those of our faculty here in 黑料不打烊, provided our students in China with the opportunity to continue their studies without interruption and gave them and their parents confidence in our school and university.”

The School of Architecture was among the very few architecture schools in the nation that was able to continue teaching in person and recruiting in China during the pandemic.

Dr. Qi Fang, founder of Tontsen, and Professor Fei Wang welcomed more than 100 in-person guests—as well as 5,000 virtual attendees participating via a livestream broadcast—to the opening of the exhibition that included presentations by some of China’s leading young architect-designers who taught 黑料不打烊 Architecture students amid the pandemic.

Curated by Tontsen founding partner, Dr. Wang Xia and Professor Fei Wang, “Challenge and Opportunity: 黑料不打烊 Architecture Education Innovation in the Pandemic” is divided into three sections and showcases design drawings and models made by the students in the fall 2020 and spring 2021 semesters.

The first section focuses on work done in four distinct Beijing and Shanghai-based visiting critic studios taught by and (Drawing Architecture Studio, Beijing), (GEIJOENG?, Shanghai), (Natural Build, Shanghai), and (Pills, Beijing).

The second section features student projects from Professor Fei Wang’s integrated design studio course in Shanghai, as well as from “branding for architecture,” an elective course taught by graphic designer, .

The third section of the exhibit displays highlights from “Introduction to Architecture and Architecture Practice,” a unique course offered in fall 2020 for incoming freshmen living in China who deferred admission to January 2021. Led by Professor Fei Wang, students enrolled in the course traveled to three of China’s major cities where they visited 47 of the top architecture offices, met firm principals, toured important architecture projects and learned the fundamental principles of architecture.

“Thank you to all our students and faculty in China and 黑料不打烊 whose hard work and dedication transformed challenge into opportunity,” says Speaks. “The work produced was truly exceptional and we look forward to future collaborations in China.”

“Challenge and Opportunity” is on display in Shanghai through Nov. 15. Visit to view additional photos of the exhibition.

Throughout the 2020-21 academic year, Wang, the school’s fifth Boghosian Fellow, has taught an architecture studio and two professional electives devoted to the study of the superblock. The results of Wang’s studio and other courses taught over this last year are catalogued and published in two large volumes, which are part of the exhibition. But those materials tell only part of the story.

The centerpiece of the exhibition is a large model of multiple scales—urban, architecture, interior—that comes in and out of focus depending on how and from what vantage point it is viewed. Indeed, depending on the vantage point, the scales appear not only to be multiple, but indeterminate. To be more precise, the model encourages our eye to move seamlessly between scales and accede to the ambition of “seeing all” named by “superblock,” a vantage point that might be best described as a mobile, 3D approximation of the views provided by Song Dynasty landscape paintings.

Ultimately, the exhibition demonstrates that “superblock” is not so much a term, concept or reality, but is instead the name for an ambition, shared by the architect and the urbanist alike, to “see all”: to represent, name and thus comprehend the seemingly incomprehensible complexity of the contemporary city.

“I’m thrilled to present this exhibition as the culminating event of my fellowship, which has been a truly collective and collaborative process,” says Wang. “In many ways, this project is a design manifestation of intellectual curiosities, endeavors and findings in excavating the conceptual and representational apparatus of architectural and urban imaginations today.”

“Wang, like all previous Boghosian Fellows, has enriched the intellectual and design culture of the school,” says Michael Speaks, dean of the School of Architecture. “He and his students worked for more than a year researching the superblock and its development in the west and in China. Last spring, Wang organized an impressive that included scholars from all over the world. His exhibition promises to be equally impressive for students, faculty and scholars interested in this important urban typology.”

Wang will give a at 5:30 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 11, in Slocum Hall’s first floor atrium. A public reception will follow.

Peter Piening’s 1952 record album cover for “Trois Poemes Juifs/Concerto for Cello and Orchestra.”

According to exhibition curator Meri A. Page, assistant professor of communications design in the College of Visual and Performing Arts’ School of Design, “Peter Piening: Abstract Visions in Modernist Graphic Design” “will highlight Piening’s significant contributions to the field of modernist graphic design from the 1930s-60s and his role as a teacher and mentor at 黑料不打烊 (1958-73). The exhibition will bring together for the first time his logo and trademark designs as well as dynamic abstract commercial work created for numerous publications and record albums.”

The exhibition will be on view at the Genet Gallery, located on the first floor of the Nancy Cantor Warehouse at 350 W. Fayette St., from Oct. 29-Dec. 19. Gallery Hours are noon to 5 p.m. Tuesday-Friday or by appointment. A public reception at the gallery will be held from 5 to 7 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 11.

M. Peter Piening (1908-1977) was a German American graphic designer and educator. Born in Grabow, Germany, he studied at the Bauhaus and received his doctor of philosophy degree from the University of Berlin in 1931. After graduation, Piening began working in publishing in Berlin and was among many European artists of his era who fled the Nazi occupation of Germany. He traveled to Paris and worked for Conde Nast before coming to the United States in 1934.

Peter Piening’s August 1944 Fortune magazine cover “Reconversion in Typewriters.”

In New York, Piening began working at Vogue magazine and later worked with numerous New York advertising agencies and publishing houses. He was the art editor for Life magazine in 1937, and from 1941-44 he was the art director at Fortune magazine. His editorial expertise led to freelance work for additional publications such as Architectural Record, Town & Country and Cosmopolitan. He also produced creative work for Lincoln, Ford, Shell Oil and Ballantine Beer.

In addition to his design practice, Piening was also an educator who taught at the Art Students League and New York University before being appointed professor of advertising design at 黑料不打烊 in 1958. He taught at the University until his retirement in 1973.

This exhibition is supported by a 黑料不打烊 College of Visual and Performing Arts Research Grant.

For more information, contact Lisa Soltren at lmsoltre@syr.edu.

About the Sue and Leon Genet Gallery

Based in the School of Design at the Nancy Cantor Warehouse, the Sue and Leon Genet Gallery is a student-managed space hosting exhibitions from the school’s students, faculty and alumni. Programing seeks to engage the University and downtown 黑料不打烊 community with exhibitions inspired by, and related to, the field of design.

Photographs, artwork, images and artifacts are on display in colorful collage at La Casita Cultural Center’s 10th anniversary exhibition.

La Casita Cultural Center hosted a reception Sept. 18 for the opening of a new exhibition, “Corazón del Barrio (Heart of the Barrio),” celebrating the center’s 10th anniversary. The exhibition’s opening reception, held in person and via Zoom, coincided with the launch of 2021 National Hispanic Heritage Month, observed mid-September through mid-October.

Evident throughout the celebration was a profound sense of family, community, history and rich cultural heritage. Photographs, artwork, images and artifacts covered the walls and display spaces in colorful collage. Multiple small display shelves of vibrant folk art showed snippets reflective of Hispanic culture.

Expressions of gratitude abounded among the collection. Stories of students finding their home away from home at La Casita told of journeys and learning, of building bridges and finding the true meaning of collaborative community. And not just students volunteer and participate at La Casita. Add in faculty, area residents, artists, dancers, performers and musicians.

Noel Qui?ones

The opening event included food, music, dance and even a spoken word performance by poet Noel Qui?ones, a Puerto Rican writer, educator and community organizer from the Bronx.

So many people, so much memorabilia! Ten years of memorabilia—not your ordinary collection—this is La Casita’s Cultural Memory Archive. Working with 黑料不打烊 Libraries, La Casita has undertaken an effort to digitize and widen access to numerous pieces of their archive, reflective of the history, cultural heritage and experience of Central and Upstate New York’s Latinx/Hispanic communities. The digitized material aids preservation and research purposes within the New York Heritage Digital Collections. Here at La Casita, much of it is now on display.

The goal of “Corazón del Barrio (Heart of the Barrio),” according to Tere Paniagua, executive director of the Office of Cultural Engagement for the Hispanic Community in the College of Arts and Sciences and co-curator of the exhibition, is to honor the people who contributed to La Casita over the past decade, giving from their hearts, devoting time and their stories to that shared and common space.

And the hearts are everywhere, built right into La Casita. From the large milagro heart rendering over the entryway, created by artist Bennie Guzmán in 黑料不打烊 colors, to the many smaller hearts interspersed among the frames and displayed images and artworks. Guzmán, a media and communications professional at La Casita, focuses his art on the narratives and lived experiences of marginalized communities.

Ten years ago, La Casita co-founders Inmaculada Lara-Bonilla and Silvio Torres-Saillant, both faculty members in the College of Arts and Sciences at the time, might only have imagined how far a bridge La Casita would travel. And it has, with strength of heart, with all its hearts. “Corazón del Barrio” comes highly recommended from this quarter.

The opening event was part of this year’s 黑料不打烊 Symposium series, “Conventions.” Support also comes from the College of Arts and Sciences, the Latino-Latin American Studies Program, the Office of Cultural Engagement for the Hispanic Community, PLACA (Program on Latin America and the Caribbean, Maxwell School) and the 黑料不打烊 Humanities Center.

Located at 109 Otisco Street in 黑料不打烊, La Casita Cultural Center’s regular hours are Monday, 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.; Tuesday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Thursday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.; and Friday, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. The center is closed Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday. The exhibition will run through April 2022. In compliance with public health guidelines and protocols, La Casita’s Art Gallery and facilities currently offer guided visits and talks by appointment only. Proof of vaccination against COVID or a negative COVID test of 48 hours or less is required. Face coverings and social distancing are also required. The gallery offers live or recorded virtual tours of its exhibits. Please contact La Casita via email for more details.

Far left: photograph of Grace Hartigan painting in her studio, circa 1940’s. Center: novellae of Pope Innocent IV and Decretales of Pope Gregory IX, (Italy), 13th century. Top right: cover of Porrina de Badajoz a la guitarra Ramon Montoya, Fontana, 1961. Bottom right: letter from Frederick Douglass to Gerrit Smith, Nov. 1852.

Engaging with SCRC’s rare and archival collections allows students, faculty, and researchers to explore and question historical evidence and testimonies while connecting with the innovative and enduring ways people have communicated, documented their experiences, and recorded personal memories throughout history. “Explore and Connect” is on display on the 6^th floor of Bird Library in the main gallery and the Robert Ortwine Gallery until January 2022.

SCRC is a vibrant research and learning environment for 黑料不打烊 students, faculty, staff, and the local and world-wide communities, providing access to the University’s world-renowned rare and archival collections and expert guidance in their use to facilitate personal discovery and the creation of new knowledge. For more information about SCRC, including open hours, collections, and services, visit the .

Image credit: Synthetic Collective

SCRC’s Curator of Plastics and Historical Artifacts Courtney Asztalos will be participating in the “Plastic Heart” exhibition public programming as a member of the panel discussion “Dialogue #3: The Plastic Conservation Conundrum: Preserving Plastics in Museum Collections and Plastics’ Durability in the Environment” on Wednesday, Oct. 13, 6–7:30 p.m. EDT. Asztalos says, “The Synthetic Collective’s groundbreaking work in their experimental exhibition ‘Plastic Heart: Surface All the Way Through’?brings necessary awareness to the plastics lifecycle in exhibition-making, art and collections while proposing exciting alternative models and methods forward for change. I am thrilled to participate in a conversation on how plastic cultural artifacts within the context of special collections pose unique challenges and opportunities, emphasizing how SCRC’s plastics collections are rich resources for researchers and artists to investigate for activism, and unearth for the creation of new scholarship and artmaking. As a special collections curator, I am committed to bringing greater awareness to the broader public about how our collections can support innovation, change and agency within our current global plastics pollution crisis.”

“The Plastics Collection,” initially conceptualized as an umbrella term for the plastics-related collections at SCRC, serves as a research and programming resource to advance the study and understanding of plastics in modern society. These collections include manuscripts, photographs, time-based media, books, periodicals and over 5,000 plastic objects produced from the late 19th century to the present day. To learn more about the SCRC’s collections in this subject area, visit the .

More information regarding the “Plastic Heart” exhibition, public programming and registration information can be found at the .

“Mary McFadden: American Fashion Designer” is on view at the Sue and Leon Genet Gallery through Oct. 15, 2021.

A new exhibition at 黑料不打烊’s Sue and Leon Genet Gallery at the School of Design features distinctive garments that reflect an avid study of ancient and ethnic cultures.

“Mary McFadden: American Fashion Designer” showcases the work of a “design archeologist” as she gathers inspiration from diverse cultures and ancient civilizations. From African tribes to the Egyptian pharaohs, ancient Greece and Rome to Byzantium, they all act to inform her collections. McFadden realizes these design elements through the use of hand painting, quilting, beading and embroidery.?McFadden says, “I’ve done 60 collections, each based on an ancient civilization, and I went to all those places.”

Born in 1938 into a textile family, McFadden studied in Paris, earned a degree in fashion design from the Traphagen School of Design in New York City and a degree in sociology from Columbia University. She began a freelance design business in 1973 and in 1975 she patented a new process to pleat synthetic charmeuse into irregular pleats reminiscent of those created at the turn of the 19th century by Italian designer Mariano Fortuny. In 1976 she formed Mary McFadden Inc. and continued her business until closing in 2002.

Her patented fabric, called “Marii,” is created of synthetic charmeuse woven in Australia, dyed in Japan and machine pleated in New York City. Her concept was to create fabric that “falls like liquid gold on the body.”

Mary McFadden first spoke at 黑料不打烊 as part of the Genet Lecture Series in 1992 and returned in 2010 to the School of Design to lecture, as well as to host a fashion show of her original designs.

“Mary McFadden: American Fashion Designer” was curated by fashion design professor and features 17 original designs by McFadden dating from the late 1970s through the 1990s. The exhibition is on view through Oct. 15, 2021, and is located in the Sue and Leon Genet Gallery on the first floor of the Nancy Cantor Warehouse in downtown 黑料不打烊. All garments are from the Sue Ann Genet Costume Collection housed within the fashion design program in the School of Design, College of Visual and Performing Arts.

About the Sue and Leon Genet Gallery

Based in the School of Design at the Nancy Cantor Warehouse, the Sue and Leon Genet Gallery is a student-managed space hosting exhibitions from the school’s students, faculty and alumni. Programing seeks to engage the University and downtown 黑料不打烊 community with exhibitions inspired by and related to the field of design.?Gallery hours are Monday through Friday from noon to 5 p.m. and by appointment.

(from left) Greg Allen, A. Alif Muhammad and John Godbolt, circa 1969. 黑料不打烊 8 Collection, University Archives. Gift of Greg Allen.

黑料不打烊 Libraries’ Special Collections Research Center recently released a new digital exhibition titled “A Courageous Stand: The Story of the 黑料不打烊 8.” The 黑料不打烊 8 was a group of Black student-athletes who boycotted the University football program until it addressed their allegations of racism in 1970. Miscounted by the media, the 黑料不打烊 8, comprising Greg Allen, Richard Bulls, John Godbolt, Dana “D.J.” Harrell, John Lobon, Clarence “Bucky” McGill, A. Alif Muhammad, Duane Walker and Ron Womack, made their stand at a significant personal cost. However, they made their mark on 黑料不打烊 history by serving as a voice for social justice. The is available online.

Curated by University Archivist Meg Mason, “A Courageous Stand: The Story of the 黑料不打烊 8” includes photographs, correspondence, newspapers, student protest fliers and other documents from the 黑料不打烊 Archives. Different perspectives and voices are included in this exhibition, including the members and allies of the 黑料不打烊 8 , as well as Chancellor John Corbally and Coach Ben Schwartzwalder.

“Fifty-one years later, sharing the story of The 黑料不打烊 8 through these primary source materials available from the University Archives in the Special Collection Research Center provides clarity and context on the struggle of students against racism,” says Petrina Jackson, director of the Special Collections Research Center. “Looking through archives is a way to not only reflect but to understand current circumstances.”

As part of this year’s of Black and Latino/a alumni at 黑料不打烊, organizers are planning a celebration of the 51^st Anniversary of the 黑料不打烊 8 with special guests.

Original murals from Jabberwocky were recently installed at Bird Library. The murals depict scenes from Lewis Carroll’s “Alice in Wonderland” and were created by Mitchel Resnick ’76.

Visitors to the lower level of Bird Library can get a sense of what it might have been like to step into the former campus music venue Jabberwocky, which operated in the Kimmel basement from 1969-85.

Original murals from were recently installed at Bird Library. The murals, which had been in private and University storage since Jabberwocky’s closing, depict scenes from “Alice in Wonderland” and were created by Mitchel Resnick ’76 (). They were painted in the 1970s on the original walls of Jabberwocky, which were made of tectum for noise control and durability.

The original murals, which took Resnick 2? years to paint, were 10-foot-tall panels depicting characters from “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass,” and “What Alice Found There,” which includes the nonsensical poem “Jabberwocky.”

Jabberwocky, fondly referred to as “The Jab,” was a beloved student-run musical campus and community venue, which showcased emerging and well-known local, regional and national musicians, such as Charles Mingus, The Talking Heads, James Taylor, Jackson Browne, New Riders of the Purple Sage and Cyndi Lauper.

“The Jabberwocky was clearly an iconic institution that defined a significant part of the student experience of the time,” says David Seaman, dean of 黑料不打烊 Libraries and University Librarian. “The Alice in Wonderland murals were an inspired and fun backdrop for the many musical events that happened in Kimmel basement, and we are pleased to have them on display. I’m sure they will bring back fond memories? for alumni of the ’70s and ’80s.”

Murals will be displayed on the lower level of Bird Library through fall 2021.

黑料不打烊 Libraries, in collaboration with the , and , are planning an event celebrating Jabberwocky as part of 黑料不打烊’s on Oct. 30.

Over the last three months, Light Work staff have taken incremental steps toward pre-pandemic “normal.” At Light Work, there has been a progression from essential staff only to a green light on welcoming Light Work’s community of photographers and photo enthusiasts into the Kathleen O. Ellis, Hallway Galleries and lab.

For Light Work and arts institutions across the nation, the last year brought unprecedented trials that Light Work has tried to meet with a determined and creative dexterity and an unwavering commitment to support, amplify and #keepartgoing.

Light Work’s reopening includes a communitywide invitation to students, educators, local organizations and University partners to schedule use of the main gallery, library and lab studio for exhibition-related art-making, workshops, class discussions or staff-guided tours.

Light Work’s community partnerships comprise organizations that cultivate safe spaces for inquiry and critical dialogue and their approaches to both exhibitions and the ideas presented in the works are creative and interdisciplinary.

The Fall 2021 exhibition schedule offers a diverse intersection of thematic insights and photographic methods. Please join Light Work for “” (Kathleen O. Ellis Gallery, Aug. 23-Oct. 14), “” (Hallway Gallery, Aug. 23-Oct. 14), “2021 Horizons: New Film Out of?Central New York” (UVP| Everson Plaza, Sept. 30), and “Hito Steyerl: Strike” (UVP| Everson Plaza, Sept. 16-Dece. 11).

members also have cause for celebration.? In preparation for welcoming the community back into the photography lab, the staff reconfigured the space. The staff have established new best practices for using state-of-the-art workspaces, darkroom, lighting studio and printers. The new guidelines ensure a safe, productive workflow that will support the needs of its members, workshop participants and artists-in-residence. Light Work adheres to the most up-to-date COVID-19 safety protocols to protect patrons, artists, students and staff.

Exhibition bookcover. Image courtesy of the National Museum of American History.

Culminating a seven-year partnership with the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History and organizations across the country, La Casita Cultural Center announces the July 9 virtual opening event for the new exhibition “.”

This exhibition spotlights the historic role that baseball has played as a social and cultural force within Latino communities across the nation. Partner organizations, like La Casita, were central to this initiative by contributing artifacts and oral histories from their communities.

Opening Celebration Information
Friday, July 9, 7 to 8:30 p.m.
Online
Free and open to the public. .
Spanish captioning will be available for this program.

Visitors will go on a journey into the heart and history of U.S. Latino baseball. Extraordinary stories demonstrate the impact of baseball within Latino communities across the nation as well as how Latinas/os have influenced and changed the game for over a century. In this digital tour, curators provide an immersive, behind-the-scenes look at the items on display.

Additional Resources
The conversation may be accessed live on the and .

Learn more about the “?Pleibol!” exhibition:

For more information, please email La Casita or call 315.443.2151.

The exhibitions run through Sept. 4, Thursday through Saturday from dusk to 11 p.m. on the northern facade of the .?The schedule can be found below.

In recognition and celebration of Juneteenth, UVP launched the 2021 Summer Review earlier this month with “” from award-winning filmmaker Ephraim Asili. “Fluid Frontiers” is the fifth and final film in the series entitled “The Diaspora Suite,” exploring Asili’s personal relationship to the African Diaspora. “Fluid Frontiers” explores the relationship between concepts of resistance and liberation, exemplified by the Underground Railroad, Broadside Press and artworks of local Detroit artists.

2020-21 Summer Review Schedule
UVP Everson | Everson Museum Plaza
Thursday through Saturday | dusk-11 p.m.

• Through July 3:
• July 8-17:
• July 21-31:
• Aug. 5-14:
• Aug. 19-Sept. 4:

Sponsors
Support for this exhibition comes from the? with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.

Photos courtesy of Cherilyn Beckles

“As Told By Black Women” explores the relationship Black women have with their hair and the Eurocentric lens of beauty that has shaped their perception of themselves. In most African American communities, having “good hair” means having loose curls that sway in the wind, not “nappy,” coarse or wooly hair.

Twenty-five women of different ages were photographed and asked, “What does having good hair mean to you?” The deep-rooted culture around hair within the African American community and what it means to people individually is presented throughout the images of this exhibition. The responses and stories from these women teach one to appreciate the uniqueness of others.

Beckles is a visual artist/storyteller originally from Brooklyn. She has used her passion for creativity to push limits within meaningful stories, specifically those that affect the Black community. Beckles is pursuing a master’s degree in visual communication at the S.I Newhouse School of Public Communications. She hopes to continue producing work and capturing moments worth sharing.

There is no cost to attend the exhibition. In-person appointments are available through email at cfac@syr.edu, or by calling 315.443.2230. For more information, visit the .

Photo by Meryl Meisler

presents ,” an exhibition of her photography of her life in and around New York City in the 1970s and 1980s.? Meisler’s?exhibition?will be on view in the Kathleen O. Ellis Gallery through July 23, 2021. Mary Lee Hodgens, associate director of Light Work, will moderate a virtual conversation and Q&A with Meisler on Thursday, April 29, at 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. ET.

In Light Work’s early days, during the 1970s and 80s, many artists arrived for their monthlong residency with no specific plans for using their time. With only a camera and a vague idea of exploring, they walked the streets of 黑料不打烊, open to the synchronicity of what might happen. Incredible photographs ensued and the artists often called them gifts. Grateful to land in the right place at the right time, they discovered images on their contact sheets that startled and delighted them. But they also saw photography as more than random luck. It was both a collaboration and a conversation. They saw themselves as witnesses.

Over the same decades, Meryl Meisler was photographing her life in and around New York City with the same sense of exploration and possibility as those pioneering Light Work AIRs. Retiring from decades as a public school art teacher, Meisler began to unearth and rethink her own archive. Part time capsule of the 1970s and 1980s and part memoir, “” is an invitation to join her for a wild ride—disco nights, punk bars, strip clubs, Fire Island, family, friends and neighbors, and suburban Long Island. Her exuberant celebration of human connection is particularly poignant now, when we can take none of these gatherings for granted. Meisler clearly celebrates with her subjects. These are her people: she is not an outsider but a participant. She depicts our own shared humanity, humor, and joy.

“I want to show you who I am,” she says now. “My identity as a woman, Jew, lesbian, middle-class teacher, Baby Boomer, New Yorker, liberal, American—and so much more—influences how I perceive and create art about the world around me. I’ve only just begun revealing my huge photography archive. Stay tuned, the best is yet to come!

In addition to installation views on Light Work’s website we invite you to bring Meisler’s exhibition to your doorstep. Copies of “Best of Times, Worst of Times“ exhibition catalog, ?are available in the Light Work shop.?

Please note:?Light Work’s galleries are currently closed to the general public as part of our ongoing effort to stop the spread of COVID-19. We encourage patrons to visit our ?and to check out our , including an interview with exhibiting artist Meryl Meisler. Light Work is located in the Robert B. Menschel Media Center at 316 Waverly Avenue, 黑料不打烊, New York, 13224.

was born 1951 in the Bronx and raised on Long Island, New York. Inspired by Diane Arbus, Jacques Henri Lartigue, her dad Jack and grandfather Murray Meisler, she studied photography with Cavalliere Ketchum at The University of Wisconsin–Madison, and with Lisette Model in New York City.

Meisler frequented and photographed the legendary New York discos. A 1978 CETA Artist Grant supported her portfolio on Jewish identity. Upon retiring from 31 years as a New York City public school art teacher, she began releasing previously unseen work, including her books, “A Tale of Two Cities: Disco Era Bushwick” (Bizarre, 2014), “Purgatory & Paradise: SASSY ‘70s Suburbia & The City” (Bizarre, 2015) and “New York PARADISE LOST: Bushwick Era Disco” (forthcoming 2021).

Meisler has received support from Artists Space, CETA, China Institute, Japan Society, LMCC, Leonian Foundation, Light Work, NYFA, Puffin Foundation, VCCA, and Yaddo. She has exhibited at the Brooklyn Historical Society, Brooklyn Museum, Dia Art Foundation, MASS MoCA, New Museum, New York Historical Society, Whitney Museum, and numerous public spaces. Her work is in the collections of AT&T, American Jewish Congress, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Brooklyn Historical Society, Columbia University, Emory University, Islip Art Museum,? Library of Congress, Pfizer, Reuters and many museums’ artist book collections. Meisler lives in New York City and Woodstock, New York. ClampArt represents her work.

This interest stems from a fascination with frameworks of interpretation and narration (as well as critical theory), and vernacular traditions, including street acrobatics, vaudeville and Black vernacular genealogies of knowledge. She explores these concepts through a practice that encompasses sculpture, video, installation, sound and fiction writing.

Installation view of “Figure 8” (2021) by Steffani Jemison on the facade of the Everson Museum

Light Work commissioned Jemison to create new work for as part of an annual moving image commission program. The new work, “,”comes out of Jemison’s collaboration with athlete Alexis Page.

In conjunction with the exhibition, UVP will host two Zoom-based special events with Jemison and Page, at 3 p.m. Sunday, April 11, and at 6 p.m. Thursday, April 15. Both events are free and open to the community. to participate in one or both of these special communitywide invitations to conversation and movement.

“The title of this programming year at UVP is ‘Inflection Points,’ which is a mathematical term that describes a point of a curve at which a change in the direction occurs. It’s a site of change,” says program director Anneka Herre. “Each year, Light Work commissions an artist to create new work for exhibition at the UVP site, and this year that artist is Steffani Jemison, whose practice is all about finding tools in the past, particularly Black vernacular knowledge and traditions, that make space for radical change.

“When you encounter her work, you can intuit layers of history and a deep rigor—it looks and feels structured and meaningful,” Herre says. “At the same time, the work focuses on the bodily and the gestural, so there is a visceral, somatic, and emotional response to it. Yet, there is also an opacity. The work resists immediate interpretation but compels us to think and move through the process that it enacts. She felt like the perfect artist to work with to create new work for this year, which has been, in so many ways, about the power and mystery of change.”

“Figure 8” is the third exhibition in the UVP 2020-21 exhibition calendar and the third show employing an entirely new, state-of-the-art projection system. Find more info on the , and here’s a summary of the events:

Outdoor Projection:

Steffani Jemison: “Figure 8”

Everson Museum Plaza | 401 Harrison St. | 黑料不打烊

April 15 – June 5, 2021 | Thursday – Saturday | dusk – 11 p.m.

My Body is Opaque:

Special Events with Steffani Jemison and Alexis Page

Zoom Movement Workshop?

Sunday | April 11 | 3 p.m.

Online ?(Register through button at the top of the page)

Public Artist Talk and Q&A: Steffani Jemison and Alexis Page in Conversation (on Zoom)

Thursday | April 15 | 6:30 p.m.

Online (Register through button at the top of the page)

About the Filmmaker?

Jemison is an interdisciplinary artist whose work considers issues that arise when conceptual practices are inflected by black history and vernacular culture. She has participated widely in exhibitions, screenings and readings. In 2011, she presented her collaborative project, “Alpha’s Bet Is Not Over Yet,” at the New Museum of Contemporary Art. She presented her solo project, “Plant You Now, Dig You Later,” at Mass MoCA in 2017-18. The 2019 Whitney Biennial featured her piece “Sensus Plenior.” She has participated in artist residencies at the Core Program at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Project Row Houses and the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. She is a past fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University and received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2020. She is currently an assistant professor in media for the Department of Art & Design at Mason Gross at Rutgers University. Her work is represented by ?gallery.

About the Work

“Figure 8” | 2021 | HD video, color, sound

Credits

Featuring: Alexis Page

Harp: Jess Garland

Additional recording: Steffani Jemison

Sound: Sean T. Davis / the HalfStyle

“Figure 8” describes the movement of the camera, which moves around the body of the performer, as Page muses aloud on continuity and fluency of gesture. Working together,? Jemison and Page have created a shared lexicon of movement, which they explore both as a Black feminist research method, an art-making strategy, and as way of approaching the everyday and the at-hand with virtuosity.

Be Safe: Mask Up and Social Distance

Exhibition patrons visiting the Everson Plaza must maintain a social distance of at least 6 feet between individuals at all times, except for groups visiting from the same household. We encourage everyone to wear face masks to safeguard the public health and as an extension of our commitment to help stop the spread of COVID-19. UVP limits attendance at all screenings to 20 people to adhere to Onondaga County’s latest social distancing guidelines.

Sponsors

Support for this exhibition comes from the?(NYSCA) with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.

The movement workshop is co-sponsored by the Everson Museum of Art, the 黑料不打烊 Department of Women’s and Gender Studies and Lender Center for Social Justice, and the Community Folk Art Center.

The artist talk is made possible with the generous support of the 黑料不打烊 College of Visual and Performing Arts Visiting Artist Lecture Series and the Humanities Center as part of the 黑料不打烊 Symposium 2020-21 program titled “FUTURES.”

“CFAC is a bridge between the 黑料不打烊 community and the local community, through the vehicle of art,” says CFAC Executive Director Tanisha Jackson. “We bring in the talent of our students, faculty and staff and the community brings in their knowledge and art and we can have a dialogue.”

CFAC features New Jersey-based artist Lavett Ballard’s work, “Stories My Grandmother Told Me,” running through March 20.

A unit of the Department of African American Studies in the College of Arts and Sciences, CFAC is an arts and cultural organization dedicated to the promotion and development of artists of the African diaspora.

“CFAC in a very organic and genuine way demonstrates the diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives of 黑料不打烊,” says Jackson, a professor of practice in the Department of African American Studies, who teaches a course each semester. “We do it in practice and we do it in who we are and how we engage with those themes through exhibitions, workshops and classes.”

CFAC, which employs University students in various roles, launched an over the summer in response to the pandemic. Visitors can also schedule appointments to visit CFAC. It also offers live stream art classes, wellness and fitness classes, performance classes, and concerts and performances.

In celebration of Black History Month in its latest exhibition, CFAC features New Jersey-based artist Lavett Ballard’s work, “Stories My Grandmother Told Me,” running through March 20. Ballard will give an artist talk on March 5 at 6 p.m., via Zoom. Online visitors can also check out Jackson’s video series, “Black Arts Speak,” with , which Jackson produced and alumna Brittany Wait G’17 served as director of photography.

In this Q&A, Jackson discusses the latest exhibition and all the different ways the community can engage with CFAC.

Q: What are some ongoing ways people can enjoy all that CFAC has to offer?

Tanisha Jackson

A: Upon returning for spring 2021, we now offer live stream arts classes, along with our online exhibitions. Our , which is one of our signature programs, allows for anyone to enroll and take art classes with an instructor who is live streaming from CFAC. We have programs connected to wellness and livestream Zumba, African dance and African drumming classes. We also have live concerts and performances. On Feb. 26, we will have a . We stream all of these things, and more information on how to access these events can be found on the .

Q: Tell me about the latest exhibition. What themes does the artist Lavett Ballard explore?

A: Lavett submitted her work for exhibition a couple of years before I arrived. It was in queue, and I was combing through the submissions and came across this beautiful work of mixed media collages on wooden fences. Lavett’s exhibition, “Stories My Grandmother Told Me,” is very timely. It speaks to the journey of the African diaspora, because there are many historical references and iconography.

Good examples would be her work highlighting the bus riders in Montgomery, Alabama, with Rosa Parks and images about the Tulsa, Oklahoma, massacre, which happened 100 years ago. She doesn’t just center on historical images, but she talks about the beauty and connectivity of community. There are images of unsung heroes so that you may see an image of Rosa Parks, but then she has within her collage the copy of court cases and other documents that includes the names of other women who were instrumental in galvanizing the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

I find her work to be beautiful because there are flowers and beautiful colors as well as being informative, and it really is an exhibition that fosters a lot of dialogue around Black artists, Black art and the African American experience, in particular.

Q: What do you find particularly fascinating about her work?

A: I love her personal stories interlaced within her work. Some of the images reflect people like her father, her sons, her mother and her grandmother. The title of the exhibition itself talks about the legacy and inheritance of those stories and how they build on our understanding of ourselves as well as our community.

Artwork from a current exhibition at the Community Folk Art Center, “Stories My Grandmother Told Me” by Lavett Ballard

Her pieces are on large-scale wooden fences, that have been repurposed to be her canvas, and she uses them as a metaphor of how it keeps people in as well as keeps people out. It’s a powerful metaphor that is connected to playwright August Wilson’s work “Fences.” Her work brings up social injustice, community, women’s empowerment, respectability, politics and justice to name a few. Looking at Lavett’s work may compel you to ask yourself what are the fences in my own life?

When Lavett was not able to access her studio because of COVID, in early spring, she had to work on a smaller scale, using circular wood slices. We also see images of victims of violence due to police brutality and images from the Black Lives Matter movement.

Q: What do you see as the mission of the Community Folk Art Center?

A: CFAC’s mission is to exalt cultural and artistic pluralism by collecting, teaching and interpreting visual and performing arts. We provide public programs that include exhibitions, film screenings, workshops, studio courses, gallery talks and performances.

CFAC, which came out of the Black Power movement, was organized in 1972 at the grassroots level by Professor Herbert T. Williams, in the Department of African American Studies, and other faculty and students and community members. The conversation at the time was that they didn’t want to just read about Black art and artists but they also wanted to engage with them. They also wanted to create a space for these artists since mainstream art museums and galleries were not providing space and opportunities to artists of color, and in particular Black artists.

Instructor and artist Joshua Williams prepares for a livestream dance class at the Community Folk Art Center.

When we think about CFAC now, it continues to embrace underrepresented emerging artists, and mainstream artists as well. We hold true to our mission in providing a platform for artists and the community to engage with each other.

Q: What do you want visitors to take away from their experience when they engage with your exhibitions and events?

A: I want people to take away a sense of community. We partner with people in 黑料不打烊, faculty, students and staff, and I want them to know that CFAC is a space that is welcoming, and where anyone can learn, particularly through the cultural narratives that come out of the arts that are there.

We infuse cultural and especially Black cultural capital within the communities we serve. This is what lends to people’s understanding of African diaspora experience. That is very important if you have a lack of exposure to people within our community, so that CFAC provides space to foster sometimes critical dialogue that you might not necessarily have.

Prior to COVID, we were in the city school district and working with seniors at the Nottingham. It is through these outreach initiatives that we demonstrate how CFAC has always been an organization that will come to you. We speak to the needs of everyone of diverse backgrounds, demographics and age. Even if you don’t identify as an artist, you can be entertained and most importantly you can learn and experience new things through art.

The Community Folk Art Center is located at 805 E. Genesee St.

CFAC executive director Tanisha Jackson (left) with artist and author Lavett Ballard. Ballard is featured in the first episode of CFAC’s new film series, Black Arts Speak.

Aaron Turner, Courtesy of Kat Wilson Photography

will exhibit more than 20 works by Arkansas-based photographer Aaron Turner in its first main gallery show of 2021. “Aaron Turner: Black Alchemy, Backwards/Forwards” will be on view in the Kathleen O. Ellis Gallery through March 4, 2021. Mary Lee Hodgens, associate director of Light Work, will moderate a virtual conversation and Q&A with Turner on Thursday, Feb. 18, from 6-7 p.m. ET.

In the solitude of the studio, the artist is never alone. Quite the contrary for Aaron Turner. Sidney Poitier, Martin Luther King Jr., Marvin Gay, Frederick Douglas and others all move up and through the layers of cut paper and projections. The artist handles, arranges, touches both objects and beloved figures, seeking, listening, directing and responding. Some of these juxtapositions seem random, fluid, almost falling through space, but this is precisely the process Turner invites us to witness.

“We are excited to have Aaron Turner back at Light Work with an exhibition of selections from his ongoing Black Alchemy series,” says Hodgens. “When he was here as an Artist in Residence in 2018, he intrigued us with his studio practice and his process of building a photograph, often combining methods of collage and abstraction. He is also a painter and sculptor and his ease with multiple media creates great energy and cross-pollination of ideas. Turner’s work is elegant and formally striking, deeply conversant in the work of both predecessors and contemporary colleagues, and he tells important stories about people of color from the Arkansas and Mississippi Deltas.”

Aaron Turner, “Black Alchemy Vol. 2”

In addition to installation views on Light Work’s website, we invite you to bring Turner’s exhibition to your doorstep. Copies of the “Black Alchemy, Backwards/Forwards” exhibition catalog, are available in the Light Work shop.?

Please note: Light Work’s galleries are currently closed to the general public as part of our ongoing effort to stop the spread of COVID-19. We encourage patrons to visit our and to check out our , including an interview with exhibiting artist Aaron Turner.

About the Exhibition

Aaron Turner’s Arkansas Delta community and family taught him to know and understand African American history, honor its heroes and respect his elders. The simple and profound gift of this upbringing has allowed him to pursue the role of Black artist and activist in our culture with unapologetic, single-minded intensity. Turner is in many ways acknowledging, standing on and building from this foundation in his work. With deep affinity for the formal qualities of black-and-white photography, Aaron Turner uses his large format camera and the alchemical darkroom process to move back and forth between abstraction, still life, collage and appropriated archival images to literally take apart and then reconstruct his photographic images. The color black itself has a presence in this work—infinite, elegant, unknowable. Turner is also a painter; his use of large swaths of black is both a metaphor for race and related to abstraction and its emphasis on process, materials and color itself as subject.

About Artist Aaron Turner

Besides his studio practice, Aaron Turner is a teacher, curator, writer, founder of the Center for Photographers of Color (CPoC) at the University of Arkansas and host of the CPoC podcast. Active in the photo and contemporary art community, he often uses these platforms to discuss his primary muses: other Black artists and activists. Bring a pen and notebook, because Turner is a name dropper in the best sense and you will want to look up these painters, sculptors, photographers, athletes and activists whom he reveres, some hallowed and some obscure (for now). His generosity reminds one of artists like Deborah Willis, Carrie Mae Weems and Zanele Muholi, who all—understanding art and power—have made it their business to bring a community of artists along with them through the doorway and into the spotlight. He too arrives en masse: perhaps his greatest tribute to his elders in the Arkansas Delta.

General Information?

Find Light Work’s galleries in the Robert B. Menschel Media Center, 316 Waverly Ave., 黑料不打烊. Follow Light Work on , ?and . For general information, please visit , call 315.443.1300 or email info@lightwork.org.

From the discovery of materials, to the unfolding of their analysis, this unique exhibition has been designed to function as a standalone resource for students, as well as a scaffold for instruction in any course that emphasizes primary source research. An artifact can be an object of inquiry even on its own, but in finding and articulating relationships among artifacts, a world emerges with its own history to tell. SCRC intends to provide live-streamed interactive class sessions, as well as asynchronous video tours, to immerse students in the environment of the exhibition.

“Our plastics-related collections are unique to 黑料不打烊 and I am excited for students to walk away empowered with skills for primary source research and the knowledge that these collections are available for them to engage with and interpret,” says Courtney Asztalos, curator of plastics and historical artifacts. “Immense potential exists within the plastics collections in discovering untold histories and imagining new plastics futures—my hope is for this exhibit to inspire students to follow their curiosities within this unique resource.”

The labor, skills and perspectives that built this interdisciplinary exhibition were a collaborative effort between Asztalos; Jana Rosinski, curatorial assistant of the plastics collection and Ph.D. student in composition and cultural rhetorics; Lynn Wilcox, design specialist, 黑料不打烊 Press; Ann Skiold, librarian for visual arts; and Emily Hart, science librarian, research impact lead. Exhibition curators also acknowledge the invisible labor and absent voices of those who made the manufactured objects from which the plastics collections were created.

For more information about the plastics collections in SCRC, visit the or the .

Alinka Echeverría (photo courtesy of the artist)

presents “,” a solo exhibition of work by Mexican-British multimedia artist and visual anthropologist Alinka Echeverría. Echeverría’s exhibition will be on view in the Kathleen O. Ellis Gallery at Light Work through Dec. 10. Copies of Echeverría’s exhibition catalog, “,” are available in the Light Work shop.

Please note: Light Work’s galleries are currently closed to the general public as part of our ongoing effort to stop the spread of COVID-19, however 黑料不打烊 students, faculty and staff who are cleared to be on campus may visit the exhibitions during gallery hours. We encourage patrons to visit our and to check out our , including an interview with exhibiting artist Alinka Echeverría. Light Work is located in the Robert B. Menschel Media Center at 316 Waverly Avenue.

“” is the culmination of artist Alinka Echeverría’s extensive research into the representation of women and femininity since the origins of the medium of photography. “With few exceptions, the place of women was before the lens, not behind it,” she says. As Echeverría immersed herself in the colonial archives of the Nicéphore Nièpce Museum in France, work she embarked on in 2015, the aesthetics of the fetishized and exoticized depiction of women both intrigued and appalled her. Directly referencing the “inventor of photography,” Nicéphore Niépce, Echeverría titles this work more broadly as “Fieldnotes for Nicéphora” (incorporating the “a” at the end to feminize the name that he had adopted for its meaning: victorious)—thereby explicitly reframing the legacy of this white, male pioneer of photography to a feminist and postcolonial perspective.

Light Work is mindful of installing the exhibition amidst an ongoing global pandemic, as we all work to reimagine how physical gallery spaces exist (or don’t) and perhaps expand how works on walls may take on new forms. With that in mind, Echeverría has opened up the ways in which she would normally exhibit photographic work in a gallery. She revisits past collage work innovatively, re-adapting stills from a video piece as large-scale photographic prints and pages from a photobook project, brought to life here as a continuous stream of images wrapping around three of the gallery walls.

?Alinka Echeverría, Extract from “Fieldnotes for Nicephora,” 2015-2020

Echeverría reframes the photographs to examine how she can alter their purpose both through their context and materiality. “As a link between the past and the present, the photographic archive makes time resurface by way of stored visual forms,” Echeverría explains. “In my view, an active reframing allows them to acquire a certain contemporaneity with the new interpretations brought by our contemporary gazes as practitioners and viewers.” Echeverría’s works in “Heroine” are both visually arresting and profoundly thoughtful—urging viewers to investigate the complexities of the photographic object itself as well as the ways in which its creation, reproduction, and distribution has been problematic since the early 1800s.

is a Mexican-British artist and visual anthropologist working in multiple media. She holds a master’s degree in social anthropology from the University of Edinburgh. After working on HIV prevention projects in rural East Africa, she completed a postgraduate degree in photography from the International Center for Photography in New York in 2008. She has exhibited widely, including solo exhibitions at Arles’ Les Rencontres de la Photographie, The California Museum of Photography, Johannesburg Art Gallery, The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and Preus Museum (Norway’s National Museum of Photography).

She is the recipient of the 2020 MAST Foundation for Photography Grant and in recent years she has received the BMW Art & Culture Residency at the Nicéphore Niépce Museum, as well as FOAM Museum’s Talent award and the HSBC Prize for Photography. The Lucie Awards voted her International Photographer of the Year and she was a finalist for the Musée de l’Elysée’s Prix Elysée for mid-career artists. Several public collections and institutions hold her work, including BMW Art & Culture France, FOAM Museum, Houston’s Museum of Fine Arts, LACMA, The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Musée de l’Elysée, Musée Nicéphore Niépce, and the Swiss Foundation of Photography. In 2017 she was the presenter for a three-part series for BBC Four called “The Art That Made Mexico.”

Image courtesy of Hedspeth Art Consulting

Point of Contact will host a virtual artist talk and discussion panel via Zoom for “Rewriting History,” on Nov. 12 at 6:30 p.m. Panelists include Fabiola Jean Louis; Yvonne Buchanan, associate professor of studio arts at 黑料不打烊; Tanisha Jackson, executive director of the University’s Community Folk Art Center and professor of African American studies; and Shana Gelin, doctoral candidate in counseling and counselor education at the University. Meeting ID and passcode can be found on Point of Contact’s website, puntopoint.org, under Current Exhibition.

Jean-Louis was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, in 1978 and moved to Brooklyn, New York, at a young age. While attending the High School of Fashion Industries, her passion and talent for the arts flourished. Jean-Louis discovered her talent for photography many years later in November 2013 while on a journey of personal healing. She began taking self-portraits as an emotional release, and as a result of a lack of resources and personal shyness. Later, her work grew to include other subjects and costumes, as well as sculptures made entirely out of paper.

“Rewriting History” takes the viewer back in time through life-size paper gowns and props that mimic fabric. This incredible use of resources represents the challenges Jean-Louis faced financially and the history and stories of Black women. Her work addresses the complicated layers of self-awareness and what makes up the historical truths we have been taught to accept about race and the roles of women, both past and present. The Chicago Sun-Times refers to the work as a juxtaposition of “beauty and brutality in her mixed-media exploration of racial struggles during various periods of American history as well as contemporary America.” This exceptional showcase blends the mediums of sculpture, fashion, photography and even painting, as the combination of works confront the visual and written history, we have all come to know.

“Rewriting History” began in 2016 and opened as a solo exhibition in 2018 at the Smithsonian affiliated DuSable Museum of African American History in Chicago and at Alan Avery Art Company in Atlanta, and in 2019 at the Andrew Freedman Home in New York City to critical acclaim.

This program is possible thanks to the support of the College of Arts and Sciences, the Office of Cultural Engagement for the Hispanic Community and the Coalition of Museum and Art Centers (CMAC) at 黑料不打烊, and is part of 黑料不打烊’s Humanities Center 2020-2021 Symposium “Futures.”

Amera, a young Yazidi bride gets ready for her wedding celebration inside of a makeshift beauty parlor within the Bajed Kandala displacement camp in Iraqi Kurdistan. Currently home to over 9,000 Yazidis, those living in the Bajed Kandala camp do their best to live “normally,” celebrating weddings, birthdays and religious holidays as they are able. This image was made on December 29, 2018. Photo by Maranie Staab

Artists are nothing if not adaptable, especially when facing challenges. In that spirit of resilience, creativity and community, presents the “,” featuring work by photography students in the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications.

In response to concerns around COVID-19, Light Work has closed to the public and canceled all scheduled on-site exhibitions, tours and artist talks until further notice. This exhibition can be viewed online at .

This exhibition comprises more than 30 thematically diverse photographs by Newhouse’s multimedia photography students. The exhibition represents various approaches to photographic practice and technique and showcases the range of images that today’s students are producing.

The exhibiting artists are Michelle Abercrombie, Cher Beckles, Zoe Davis, Renee Deemer, Haoyu Deng, Crystal Fang, Sofia Faram, Madeline Foreman, Hannah Frankel, Chelsea Hurd, Joshua Ives, Adam Kassman, Zach Krahmer, Jordan Larson, Sam Lee, Dan Lyon, Lauren Miller, Paul Nelson, Kai Nguyen, Laura Oliverio, Jessica Ruiz, Liam Sheehan, Maranie Staab, Doug Steinman and Jessica Stewart.

Journalist Michael Kamber, who founded the Bronx Documentary Center, served as juror and selected images for Best of Show and Honorable Mention awards. Maranie Staab took Best of Show and Honorable Mentions went to Hannah Frankel, Joshua Ives and Sam Lee.

“This was a really tough group to jury: the work was beautifully created, smart and full of emotion. There were a half dozen photos that I went back and forth over trying to decide the winner. However, my background is in journalism and this dictated my final choices. For the first prize, I chose the photo of the Yazidi bride. The photo is an extremely powerful representation of all the Yazidis have been through—you can see the trauma and sadness in the bride’s face. Still, there is resilience, power, and a hint of anger to the moment as well. The composition—the bride surrounded by empty dresses—adds to the photo’s emotion. I also liked that the photo was captioned and gave me the crucial context I needed,” Kamber stated.

Photo by Sam Lee

“Hannah Frankel’s aging biker is beautifully seen—the photographer moving in close for a telling detail in wonderful light and shadow. As is often the case, this gives as much information—and makes a more striking photo—than a full-length portrait might. As for the chair in the storefront from Joshua Ives, I’m particularly drawn to social landscapes and I feel this photo is just such an image, with a strong, layered composition and excellent use of color that speaks of the America in which we live. Sam Lee’s photo of the young woman laying next to the man intrigues and strikes me on several levels. It is the type of deeply psychological portrait—with a wonderful composition—that leaves me wanting to know much more of their story: a very strong photo with great use of light, shadow and shape. As I said, the selection of 30 photos that I saw, was very strong and marked, in particular, by an understanding of light, and of the moment. These are the elements that make a great photo—they are missing in much of the work I see these days and it is great to see them in evidence at Light Work.”

Kamber has worked as a journalist for more than 25 years. Between 2002 and 2012, Kamber worked for The New York Times, covering international conflicts, including those in Afghanistan, Congo, Iraq, Liberia, Somalia and Sudan. He has also worked as a writer and videographer for the Times, which twice nominated his work for the Pulitzer Prize. Nearly every major news magazine in the United States and Europe has published his photos, as well as many newspapers. In 2011, Kamber founded the , a space dedicated to education and social change through photography and film.

Pa’la calle, opened to the public in September of 2019 after months of planning and interacting with community members who collaborated in the production. Inspired by urban culture, Pa’ la calle explored life in the barrios, street art, graffiti and artistic expressions through music genres that spring from the hip-hop culture, such as reggaeton, now a global phenomenon.

Pa’ la calle features a collection of paintings, a series of portraits that recognize prominent Latinos and Latinas of 黑料不打烊 who are committed to the continued development and well-being of this community and who are enthusiastic partners in support of La Casita’s programs. Pa’ La calle presented the work of 黑料不打烊-based, up and coming artist Bennie Guzmán. Guzmán also worked with a group of teens from the Westside’s Spanish Action League and other local communities to create a mural inspired by the dreams and aspirations of these young talents.

“We greatly appreciate the students, volunteers and community members who joined this project. Their passion, their talent and and warm-hearted participation made Pa’la calle a successful project for people to share their stories, express their opinions and show their creativity,” says Tere Paniagua, dxecutive director of cultural engagement for the Hispanic Community at the College of Arts and Sciences.

Besides the exhibition, Pa’la calle engaged a group of 黑料不打烊 scholars, faculty, students and local DJs in an open dialogue about the controversial nature of hip-hop and reggaeton lyrics, the global impact on these genres in the music industry and its undisputed success in conquering young markets in almost every culture worldwide. Pa’la calle provided a new path to view the hip-pop culture within the social context and historical background behind it. It offered an opportunity to understand artists’ struggles for freedom, equality and the future.

La Casita serves as a bridge to connect the Hispanic community to other communities and artists to students through exhibitions, music and dancing. We collect items as well as stories behind them; we create artworks as well as stories; we learn culture as well spread it.

“It is the love and encouragement of our communities that make La Casita an artistic home. We look forward to hosting this upcoming event for all to share their love of the arts and free expression,” says Bennie Guzman, visual artist and communications manager at La Casita.

Longtime Photo Walk volunteer Bob Gates works with Ashley Kang, The Stand’s director, to share images taken by Photo Walk participants during the 2018 event.

, 黑料不打烊’s only community newspaper to cover the city’s South Side, will celebrate 10 years in print on March 8, 2020. To mark this milestone, a selection of images from the 10th annual South Side Photo Walk, held in July 2019, along with a collection of 10 images from the past decade—one for each year the paper has been in print—will be on display at The Link Gallery in the Nancy Cantor Warehouse, at 350 W. Fayette St. in downtown 黑料不打烊.

The Stand’s 10th annual Photo Walk attracted the biggest and most diverse group of participants in the event’s history, including many neighborhood residents as well as visitors. A Photo Walk is a social photography event where photographers explore a neighborhood, shoot photos and practice their skills. Each summer, The Stand’s Photo Walk has become its most popular community event, bringing together photographers of all skill levels and ages and attracting participants from all sides of the city and beyond. The 2019 event welcomed Mayor Ben Walsh who read an official proclamation declaring July 27, 2019 as “Annual South Side Stand Photo Walk Day.”

The gallery show, “The Stand: 10 Years in Print,” will be on display for the month of March and coincide with The Stand’s March anniversary print issue. The exhibit will be up through March 31 at the Link Gallery. Gallery hours are 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekdays. A free, public reception for the show will be held from 6 to 8 p.m. Sunday, March 8.

The exhibit has graciously been sponsored by 黑料不打烊’s Office of Community Engagement with support from Bea González, vice president for community engagement and special assistant to the Chancellor. The Stand is a collaboration between the Newhouse School and members of the South Side community. The Stand’s vision is to one day be the media anchor for the community it serves.

Accessibility:
The Link Gallery is accessible to wheelchair users from its West Fayette Street and West Washington Street entrances.

Parking:
Street parking is available on both sides of the building with limited parking available in both the East and West Warehouse lots. For more information on groups with special needs or to arrange for parking, contact Kathy Pitt at kepitt@syr.edu or 315.443.6144.

For more information, visit or follow The Stand on , or .

“With the opportunity to bring awareness to important topics surrounding body image, body acceptance, eating disorders and disordered eating, NEDA Week provides the opportunity to open discussions surrounding health and wellness,” Maria Wood ’21 says.

NEDA Week kicks off with the “Come As You Are” Art Exhibition, available throughout the week within the Barnes Center at The Arch Recreation Lobby. The campus is invited to explore artwork that centers around themes of the week, wellness and acceptance. . Art submissions are due by 4:30 p.m. today to Barnes Center at The Arch Health Promotion.

Additionally, compliments will be shared throughout the week and on campus bathroom mirrors! Share your compliment connection on social media by using #SUNEDAWeek and tagging @bewellsu.

In collaboration with Sexual Health Awareness Month or Frisky February, NEDA Week will feature keynote speaker, Sonya Renee Taylor’s The Body is Not an Apology: From Body Empowerment to Global Justice on Monday, March 2, from 7 to 9 p.m. in the Newhouse Joyce Hergenhan Auditorium. Taylor is the founder and radical executive officer of The Body is Not an Apology, a digital media and education company with content reaching half a million people each month. Taylor’s lecture will be focused on education and empowerment that helps to reduce stigmas and enlighten communities regarding body politics.

Highlights of the week include the following. For a complete list of activities, please visit the .

• Health Hubs: Monday, Feb. 24, 1-3:30 p.m. and Monday, March 2, 10 a.m.-12:30 p.m., check @BeWellSU for locations.
• Fearing the Black Body: A Discussion on the Origins of Fatphobia: Monday, Feb. 24, 7-8:30 p.m., 421 Hall of Languages, hosted by Students United for Body Acceptance (SUBA).
• SoulTalk: Body Acceptance: Thursday, Feb. 27, 7-8 p.m., Barnes Center at The Arch Meditation Room.

For more information or to request accommodations, please contact Gwyn Esty-Kendall, mental health promotion specialist in the Barnes Center at The Arch, at grestyke@syr.edu or by calling 315.443.7273.

Story by Division of Enrollment and the Student Experience communications intern Abigail J. Covington ’19, G ’20

Sabrina Toto, Untitled, 2019

announced the exhibition of photographs by seniors from the art photography program in the Department of Transmedia in the The exhibition runs through Saturday, March 7, at Light Work, with a reception with the exhibiting artists to be held on Thursday, Jan. 30, from 5-7 p.m.

The reception is free and open to the public, and includes refreshments. Gallery hours are Monday through Thursday from 10 a.m.-9 p.m., Friday from 10 a.m.-6 p.m. and Saturday and Sunday from 1-9 p.m. We invite educators and community groups to schedule of exhibitions with our curatorial staff. The gallery closes on 黑料不打烊 and Federal holidays. Light Work is located in the Robert B. Menschel Media Center at 316 Waverly Avenue in 黑料不打烊. Visit for information about parking and directions to the galleries.

The exhibiting artists are Nathan Baldry, Andrea Bodah, Kali Bowden, Molly Coletta, Laura D’Amelio, Ohemaa Dixon, Jordyn Gelb, Charlotte Howard, George Lambert, Samantha Lane, Meilin Luzadis, Timmy Ok, Jamie Pershing, Duke Plofker, Eliot Raynes, Scott Robinson and Sabrina Toto.

Laura D’Amelio, Spaulding, 2019

Jon Feinstein, independent curator and co-founder of Humble Arts Foundation, served as juror and selected images for Best of Show and Honorable Mention awards. Laura D’Amelio took Best of Show and Honorable Mention went to Timmy Ok.

Feinstein notes, “It was an honor to review thesis work by seniors from the art photography program at 黑料不打烊. While I didn’t have the opportunity to see it develop over the course of the year, diving in makes me want to know more, to spend more time with each series, to see it continue to grow and evolve. The photographs in this exhibition demonstrate a thoughtful range of approaches, from Honorable Mention Timmy Ok’s mysterious yet empathetic portrait of his brother to Sabrina Toto’s sad yet optimistic photos of her newly divorced parents. I selected Laura D’Amelio as Best in Show. D’Amelio photographs objects that she finds in repo’d cars, whether it’s discarded family photos or a weathered Spalding Basketball, transforms them into living portraits. Congratulations to all of the photographers on their thoughtful and sophisticated work.”

Laura Heyman, associate professor of art photography in the Department of Transmedia, spoke to the importance of the annual collaboration, saying, “Art photography’s close partnership with Light Work benefits students in so many ways. All of our students become members, with access to Light Work Labs and their exceptionally skilled staff. On any given day, students may be working alongside major international artists, forging important relationships and learning how to print, edit and exhibit work by watching working artists do the same thing. Students get to test these skills in the annual TRM Light Work exhibition, which is not only the first exhibition for many art photography majors, but also an important learning opportunity for them. In addition to giving students the space to imagine how their thesis work might develop over the following months, the TRM Annual show introduces their work to their peers, the local community and the renowned curators and critics who jury the exhibition. Light Work is an invaluable intellectual, professional and technical resource for art photography students, providing them with an extraordinary and unique range of real-world skills and experiences.”

Timmy Ok, Flower, 2019

Many students work with Light Work throughout their undergraduate careers and become an integral source of the energy, passion and excitement that defines the organization. The Light Work staff and community congratulate all of these young artists on their accomplishments and wish them the best in their bright futures in the field of photography.

The emphasizes creativity, intellectual development and the acquisition of skills to build professional, technical and visual abilities within the broad and varied field of photography. Art photography students exhibit their work nationally and establish careers working with art galleries, advertising, educational institutions, fashion, magazines, museums, photo studios and other visual industries.

The annual Association of University Presses’ Book, Jacket and Journal Show recognizes achievement in the design, production and manufacture of books and journals by the university press community. It also serves as a focus of discussion and a source of ideas for intelligent, creative and resourceful bookmaking.

The show is a juried design competition, open only to Association of University Presses member publishers, of which SU Press is a member. Award-winning books are displayed in a traveling exhibit at member presses around the country.

SU Press has received several design awards in the past, most recently for the books “Women in Korean Zen: Lives and Practices” by Martine Batchelor and Son’gyong Sunim in 2007 and “The Adirondack Atlas: A Geographic Portrait of the Adirondack Park” by Jerry Jenkins in 2005.

Lali Khalid

The Light Work Grants in Photography are part of Light Work’s ongoing effort to provide support and encouragement to Central New York artists working in photography. The Grants in Photography exhibition will take place Aug. 26 – Oct. 17 in the Light Work Hallway Gallery.

The reception is on Friday, Oct. 11, from 5-7:30 p.m. Nicola Lo Calzo’s “Bundles of Wood” is concurrently on view in the Kathleen O. Ellis Gallery. Light Work is located in the Robert B. Menschel Media Center. Both events offer refreshments and are free and open to the public.

Established in 1975, Light Work Grants is one of the longest-running photography fellowship programs in the country. Each recipient receives a $3,000 award, exhibits their work at Light Work and appears in “Contact Sheet: The Light Work Annual.” This year’s judges were Kimberly Drew (writer, curator, founder Black Contemporary Art), Eve Lyons (photo editor, The New York Times), and David Oresick (executive director, Silver Eye Center for Photography).

Trevor Clement is a visual artist, musician and performance artist based in 黑料不打烊, who uses photography with book art, installation, and sound. His photographic style opposes the cleanliness and simplicity of Western fine art photography by using heavy film grain, dust and a modernized take on William Klein’s “technique of no taboos.” The do-it-yourself ethic, and the antisocial, violent and sub-capitalist character of noise and hardcore-punk music all play a major role in Clement’s thinking about visual art. He has contributed to music projects such as “Faith Void,” “Hunted Down” and “White Guilt” and was a major force in BADLANDS, an underground music and art space for all ages in 黑料不打烊. He was a Light Work Grant recipient in 2014, has shown his work across New York State, and exhibited at the Fotofanziner Fotobokfestival in Oslo (Norway), the NoFound Photo Festival in Paris, and the San Francisco Center for the Book. Recently, Clement has focused on producing ‘zines of his photos of professional wrestling and an audio interpretation of Gregory Halpern’s book, ZZYZX.

Lali Khalid addresses landscape and abstraction through documentary photography. Khalid uses her work as a tool to explore themes of diaspora, identity, family, and home in her own life and the lives of people she photographs. Her images depict and document cultural and private conflicts, as well as emotive effects of natural light, through quiet, narrative allusions. She holds a B.F.A. in printmaking from the National College of Arts in Lahore (2003) and an M.F.A. in photography from Pratt Institute (2009) where she was a Fulbright Scholar. She has shown her work in many galleries throughout Europe, Pakistan and the US. ?She is currently an assistant professor of media arts, sciences and studies at Ithaca College.

Reka Reisinger is a visual and historical archivist living in Burdett, New York. Reisinger graduated from Bard College (2004) and holds an M.F.A. in photography from the Yale University School of Art. Reisinger was born in Budapest, Hungary, and returns frequently to photograph her homeland, the central focus of her work. Driven by a sense of urgency to collect visual cultural artifacts, she used her photographic practice to evoke the atmosphere she experienced during her frequent childhood visits to Hungary during the early post-communist era. Reisinger creates a sense of humor in her work while posing more profound questions about cultural identity during upheaval. She has participated in many group exhibitions nationally and internationally, including The Camera Club of New York, The Center for Photography at Woodstock, Lisa Ruyter Gallery in Vienna (Austria), the Midlands Art Center in Birmingham (UK), The Sculpture Center in Long Island City and the Swiss Institute in New York City.

“Bundles of Wood,” a solo exhibition by Italian photographer Nicola Lo Calzo, documents the rich local history of the Underground Railroad in Central New York.

presents ,” a solo exhibition by Italian photographer Nicola Lo Calzo, which documents the rich local history of the Underground Railroad in Central New York. Since 2010, Lo Calzo has traversed Atlantic coastal areas to research buried memories of the African Diaspora. “Bundles of Wood” is on view at Light Work, Aug. 26 to Oct. 17. A gallery reception will be held Friday, Oct. 11, 5-7 p.m.

Lo Calzo will visit campus for an artist talk and conversation with playwright Kyle Bass at 6 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 11. Lo Calzo and Bass will explore the intersection of .” Lo Calzo’s lecture is part of the series, whose theme is Silence.

Light Work is located in the . The exhibition and reception are free and open to the public. Refreshments will be served.

Lo Calzo was born in Torino, Italy, in 1979 and now lives and works in Paris, West Africa and the Caribbean. For seven years he has engaged in a photographic project about the memories of the slave trade. This ambitious, still ongoing project includes documentation of the descendants of the African diaspora in America, Cuba, Haiti, Suriname, the Caribbean, and West Africa.

In his artist’s statement, Lo Calzo asks, “How is it possible that the world organized the social, political, and moral consensus around the slave trade for four centuries, and how is it possible to erase this tragedy from the collective memory of Western countries and even from textbooks? Have the memories of slavery, discarded by history, survived to this day and, if so, in what forms and in what places? How do these memories, repressed by some and preserved by others, define our everyday relationships, our perception, and the place of everyone in society?”

In September 2017, Lo Calzo participated in a monthlong residency at Light Work, during which he researched and documented Central New York’s own rich history of the Underground Railroad. “Bundles of Wood” is the resulting photo essay, tracing a clandestine network active up to the American Civil War. In Lo Calzo’s photographs, echoes of slavery linger and reverberate across the centuries. Slaves and “conductors” on the Underground Railroad used the phrase “bundles of wood” as a secret code to communicate “incoming fugitives were expected.”

Lo Calzo has exhibited his photographs widely in museums, art centers and festivals, most notably the Afriques Capitales in Lille, the Macaal in Marakesh, the Musee des Confluences in Lyon, the National Alinari Museum of Photography in Florence, and Tropen Museum in Amsterdam. Many public and private collections hold his work, such as the Alinari Archives in Florence, the National Library of France in Paris and Pinacoteca Civica in Monza Tropen Museum in Amsterdam.

Kehrer has published three of Lo Calzo’s books: “Regla” (2017), “Obia” (2015), and “Inside Niger” (2012). He is also a contributor to the international press, including Internazionale, Le Monde, The New York Times, The New Yorker, and The Wall Street Journal. In 2018 Lo Calzo received the Cnap Grant and a nomination for the Prix Elysee 2019-2020.

The artist lecture and conversation was funded in part by the .

In conjunction with the exhibition “Bundles of Wood,” the will host a lunch time lecture with Lo Calzo on Thursday, Oct. 10, noon to 12:30 p.m. Lo Calzo will discuss his research, artistic practice and photographing the rich local history of the Underground Railroad during his residency at Light Work in 2017.

Stephen Zaima, “Nuremberg,” 2019

The Louise and Bernard Palitz Gallery at 黑料不打烊 Lubin House presents “Stephen Zaima: Mysterious Bridge,” on view now. This exhibition highlights work from the past 30 years by the distinguished artist, who recently retired after nearly 40 years as a professor of art and associate dean at the College of Visual and Performing Arts.

Curated by Eric Gleason ’05, director of the Paul Kasmin Gallery, this show presents a selection of Zaima’s large-scale paintings as well as his more recent photographic works. Gleason, who earned a bachelor’s degree in art history, serves on the Dean’s Advisory Board for the College of Arts and Sciences.

The Palitz Gallery, located in 黑料不打烊’s Lubin House, is the 黑料不打烊 Art Galleries’ visual arts venue in midtown Manhattan. Exhibition hours are Monday-Friday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. The exhibition runs through Aug. 15 and is closed University holidays and July 4.

A gallery reception, with the artist and curator in attendance, will be held on Tuesday, June 25, from 6 to 8 pm. The exhibition and related programs are free and open to the public. Contact 212.826.0320 or lubin@syr.edu for more information.

Stephen Zaima does not spoon-feed narratives, despite the emphatic nature of his iconography. Although the spare components that comprise many of the works may suggest an easy interpretation, baked into the works are numerous subtle, unexpected decisions made along the way—the profound use of negative space; the textural treatment of the underbrush; the object-ness of the work—and it is these decisions laid bare that allow for infinite pleasurable attempts at deconstructing the painting for any active viewer.

As seen in the works in this exhibition, Zaima’s symbols and iconography recur throughout his oeuvre at varying intervals and across several media.? Immediate examples seen in “A Real Allegory” (1990), “Corona del Spina” (1997) and “Anvil” (1998), include the harpsichord, the airplane, the anvil, the dividing line, varying spiral forms and the crown of thorns.? The relationships between these icons and the manner in which they are created involve no accidents. Personal and art historical anecdotes intertwine, previously visible imagery is obscured, and compositions oscillate between the Rorschachian and the linear.

In Zaima’s work he captivates, he challenges, he provokes contemplation, allowing the fortunately-engaged viewer to enjoy every attempt at deconstructing the works.

RB_2014_LW_67 002

The opening reception will be held on Friday, March 22, from 5-7 p.m., featuring a gallery talk with Robert Benjamin at 6 p.m. Signed copies of “River Walking” exhibition catalog, Contact Sheet 201 will be available to collectors after the talk. Light Work is located in the Robert B. Menschel Media Center at 316 Waverly Avenue, 黑料不打烊. The exhibition and reception are free and open to the public. Refreshments will be served.

A self-taught photographer and poet, Robert Benjamin’s work, often centered around his family, offers a simple and honest consideration of what it means to live and to love with intention. “I think you have to love your life, and you have to have the courage to find the world beautiful,” says Benjamin. Enchanted by color and the beauty of photography itself, Benjamin uncovers poetry in the everyday.

Benjamin never wanted a career in photography. He simply felt that he needed to make pictures. According to Benjamin, one of the great joys of being a photographer is working with cameras. He appreciates the elegance of mechanical objects deeply—their feel, their smell, their sound. Cameras are “exquisite little machines”—like typewriters, he says. Benjamin has been writing poems on his Smith-Corona Clipper longer than he’s made photographs. His poems echo the sensitivity and humble directness of his photographs. More recently, Benjamin has begun pairing what he aptly calls “small photographs” with “small poems,” a selection of which are included in this exhibition.

It’s often a mystery why a picture captivates us. A long-time friend, the widely admired photographer Robert Adams, has written about Benjamin’s portrait of his son, Walker, in his recent book, “Art Can Help.” The photograph possesses everything that embodies Benjamin’s work—a convergence of time, poetry, color, love and mystery. Adams writes, “In the distance, the rain is coming our way and the light is about to change. There is, just now, no place on earth exactly like this one.”

Benjamin grew up in Northern Illinois around suburbs, cornfields, lakes and the remaining prairies. After a brief encounter with college, he traveled—criss-crossing America, eventually to Paris, finally settling in New York City. There, he decided that photography was what he wanted to do. With the absence of any academic training or community he followed his own direction—creating a style and interest that continues to this day. His photos and poems grew intuitively, and draw on the experience of everyday life, far removed from the art world. In 2010, he agreed to a show of his work at the Denver Art Museum. In 2011, the museum and Radius Books published the book of this work, “Notes from a Quiet Life.” Benjamin continues to write and photograph. He and his family live in Colorado.

The “Wondering the Alphabet” book (The Bitter Oleander Press, 2017) features a continuous chronology of the English alphabet, tracing graphically its changes over time. Included are written reflections from 26 accomplished poets about a single letter assigned to them by chance for the book’s purpose. Beautiful visual translations, or character reenactments of poems set face to face, create a most unique and heretofore unseen correspondence between two art forms.

Organized by Genet Gallery manager and museum studies graduate student Lynn Smith G’19, the “Wondering the Alphabet” exhibition, on view through Dec. 7, features both visual and literary elements from the book. A closing reception and gallery talk will be held on Thursday, Dec. 6, from 5-7 p.m. All events are free and open to the public. The gallery is located on the first floor of the Nancy Cantor Warehouse, 350 W. Fayette St., 黑料不打烊.

Martinez will teach a class based on the book in the Spring 2019 semester. DES 300 Selected Topics: Wondering the Alphabet is open to all 黑料不打烊 students and will be held on Wednesdays from 2:15-4:45 p.m. in the Warehouse Auditorium.

Martinez has a master of fine arts (M.F.A.) degree in graphic design from the Rochester Institute of Technology, where he studied under R. Roger Remington. He worked as a corporate graphic designer and creative director/designer for agencies in New York before starting his own visual communications firm in 1998. His designs have won regional, national and international awards. He serves as the current program coordinator for the communications design program and has served as faculty advisor of the 黑料不打烊 AIGA (American Institute of Graphic Arts) student chapter. Martinez and his classes have been awarded several Chancellor’s Awards for Public Engagement and Scholarship.

Based in the School of Design the Sue & Leon Genet Gallery is a student-managed space that hosts exhibitions from the school’s students, faculty and alumni. Programing seeks to engage the University and downtown 黑料不打烊 community with exhibitions inspired by and related to the field of design.

Public gallery hours are Mondays, Fridays and Saturdays, noon-5 p.m. or by appointment.

For more information about the exhibition, contact the gallery at?genetgallery@syr.edu?or visit?. For an accommodations request, contact Professor Andrew Saluti at 315.443.2455 or ajsaluti@syr.edu one week in advance.

Marta Chilindron with Hollow Spiral (2016). Courtesy of Cecilia de Torres, Ltd., New York

Point of Contact Gallery is hosting an opening reception for “GEO,” an exhibition by sculptural artist Martha Chilindron on Thursday, Nov. 8.

The reception will take place from 6-8 p.m. These events are free and open to the public. Cash bar and light hors d’oeuvres will be served. Free parking will be available on the night of the reception in the 黑料不打烊 lot on the corner of West Street and West Fayette Street.

“GEO” will be on view through Jan. 25 at the Point of Contact Gallery. Admission is free and open to the public Monday through Friday from noon-5 p.m. or by appointment.

“GEO” includes works by Chilindron that explores perspectival, temporal and spatial relationships in a physical space. The artist’s work consists of collapsible sculptures that can open and close, alternating between flat, abstract compositions and three-dimensional forms. Her art features a variety of interactional objects with that can be manipulated to change in both color and shape.