The Daniel Gregg Myers Green Room recognizes a young man who died in a car crash months after graduating in 2008.
‘It’s really special to us’: Father remembers late son as UW music room named in his honor
WISC-TV 3
Category: Arts & Humanities
Add these local books to your 2020 reading list
Channel3000
Listen to “Outspoken” as an audio book narrated by Rueckert, who worked as a radio host for Wisconsin Public Radio and earned a degree in vocal performance. The author is currently a speaking coach and conducts media training and national media outreach at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
How A Chemist And A Group Of Volunteer Test Subjects Changed America’s Food Safety Regulations
Wisconsin Public Radio
University of Wisconsin-Madison alum Deborah Blum wrote “The Poison Squad: One Chemist’s Single-Minded Crusade for Food Safety at the Turn of the Twentieth Century” in 2018 focusing on Wiley. It was chosen by the UW–Madison as its Go Big Read common book program selection for the 2019-20 academic year.
The Chazen Museum of Art at 50: Growing, changing and celebrating faculty
Wisconsin State Journal
The Chazen Museum of Art has long showcased art by UW-Madison faculty. And this year, in celebration of the museum’s 50th anniversary, the faculty show is bringing artists from across the university together to showcase everything from painting to modern dance and even cooking.
Wrongfully-Convicted Man Returns To Wisconsin As An Attorney
Wisconsin Public Radio
On Wednesday, Jarrett Adams was admitted to the Wisconsin State Bar in a ceremony at the Wisconsin State Capitol. Joining Adams was Keith Findley, co-founder of and now senior advisor to the Wisconsin Innocence Project, in which legal experts lead University of Wisconsin-Madison law students in efforts to overturn wrongful convictions.
‘Irresistible’: Everything we know so far about Jon Stewart’s political comedy set in purple-state Wisconsin
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Noted: Stewart basically pulled back from entertainment work after leaving his gig hosting “The Daily Show” in 2015. But in 2017, he reached out to Kathy Cramer, a University of Wisconsin-Madison political science professor and author of “The Politics of Resentment,” to get insights on the political climate in Wisconsin for a possible feature film.
Cramer’s book, published in mid-2016, looks at the role disaffected rural voters had in Wisconsin’s shift to the right after the Great Recession — a shift that some believe contributed to Donald Trump’s winning the state in 2016.
Meet Danez Smith: St. Paul’s internationally celebrated black, queer poet (and selfie icon)
City Pages
Smith has maintained a strong connection to performative poetry, but during their time at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, they began devoting more attention to written work.
An artistic response to climate change
Wisconsin State Journal
So audiences for “Floe,” a world premiere coming to Union Theater Jan. 22-24, should be prepared: It will not be a simple experience.
Women Make Up Less Than 8% Of Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame Inductees
Quoted: A nominating committee of about 30 artists, scholars and record industry insiders draws up the ballot each year. Craig Werner was on that committee for 18 years. An Emeritus professor of Afro-American Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Werner is also a music writer and he has no problem with the nomination process.
“The issues are much more what happens to that ballot once it goes to the larger electorate,” Werner says. Then he sighs. “Well, I’m just going to say it: I think that the electorate makes dumb decisions on a regular basis.”
Lynda Barry’s Making Comics is a “cookbook” for people afraid to draw
Vox
But it’s Beuys’s quote that comes to mind when reading Making Comics, the latest handwritten college textbook-of-sorts by the highly successful cartoonist Lynda Barry. In the book, Barry makes a similar assertion to Beuys by using the experience and anecdotes she’s accumulated during her tenure as a professor of comic book studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
22 movies with Wisconsin ties in 2019, from ‘Avengers: Endgame’ and ‘Captain Marvel’ to ‘Bombshell’
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Noted: “Avengers: Endgame”: Kenosha native Mark Ruffalo returned as a less-monosyllabic Hulk in the final chapter of the Marvel saga. Also, stage stalwart Carrie Coon, who got her start at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and in Madison-area theater, returned (voice only) as Proxima Midnight, one of Thanos’ allies.
Cartoonist and ‘Genius Grant’ recipient Lynda Barry on the scariness of creativity
The Globe and Mail
“When kids draw,” Lynda Barry says, “there’s almost always a story that comes with their drawing.” That childlike Eden, where words and pictures arrive in tandem, is a place that the cartoonist and associate professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison is constantly trying to rediscover.
UW Marching Band plays in Rose Parade
WKOW-TV 27
In addition to the band, the university also had a float in the parade featuring Bucky Badger and some of the school’s cheerleaders.
VIDEO: Wisconsin represented at Rose Parade
NBC-15
The UW Marching Band and Greendale Marching Band performed during the Rose Parade in Pasadena.
The Best Comics of 2019
The New York Times
Does the comics legend Lynda Barry’s MAKING COMICS (Drawn & Quarterly, 200 pp., $22.95) belong on a list full of more traditional narratives? The newly minted MacArthur genius teaches “interdisciplinary creativity” at the University of Wisconsin, and this slim volume — mimicking the feel of the composition notebooks that she requires her students to keep — initially appears to be a glorified lesson plan.
Interactive glass laboratory helps people create ornaments for upcoming holidays
WISC-TV 3
People made their own ornaments Sunday with the help of University of Wisconsin-Madison art students at the sold-out UW Glass Lab.
Jazz residency program helps keep students miles ahead
Wisconsin State Journal
When Michele LaVigne’s mother died about two years ago, she gave a certain amount of money to each of her five children to be put toward some educational cause.
It was a fitting gesture by Marion LaVigne, who had taught math to middle school-age children for 49 years in New York. Michele LaVigne knew what she was going to do with her money the day she attended an event honoring jazz musician Richard Davis, where she heard how much he enjoyed being an educator and how a teacher in the Chicago Public Schools had inspired him.
LaVigne, a clinical law professor at the University of Wisconsin Law School who takes jazz piano lessons, said she decided to pursue a jazz residency at Sherman Middle School, hoping it would inspire students.
Three Wisconsin books and a calendar to consider as gifts this season
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Noted: The Aldo Leopold Foundation subsequently began a tradition of producing an annual Wisconsin Phenology Calendar. The 2020 edition is packed with photographs and information, including monthly sidebars written by Stanley Temple, UW-Madison professor emeritus and senior fellow at the foundation.
Beloved Education Advocate Jacqueline DeWalt to be Honored at Prenicia Clifton’s Songs for Hope 2019
Madison365
DeWalt, who mentored Clifton throughout her undergraduate career at UW-Madison and beyond, was not only a mentor to Clifton, but also an inspiration and a true friend.
Going back to the island with a ‘Lost’ podcast and why rewatch shows are taking over
Los Angeles Times
Quoted: Jonathan Gray, a media studies professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, described rewatch podcasts as a sort of virtual book club, where fans can move through a show as quickly or as slowly as they want. Podcasts also offer a “deep dive” that fans may not have gotten the first time a show aired.
“Water-cooler discussions are short,” Gray said. “You’re not meant to spend 45 minutes at the water cooler talking about last night’s episode of ‘Lost.’”
Interview: Cartoonist Lynda Barry, Author Of ‘Making Comics’
NPR
It’s always a surprise to see who the MacArthur Foundation selects to receive its annual fellowships — the six-figure awards known as Genius Grants — but one of this year’s picks was particularly exhilarating: comic artist Lynda Barry. For anyone who read alternative weeklies from the ’80s through the ’00s, she was the eternally wise and strange mind behind Ernie Pook’s Comeek.
Interview: Cartoonist Lynda Barry, Author Of ‘Making Comics’
NPR
It’s always a surprise to see who the MacArthur Foundation selects to receive its annual fellowships — the six-figure awards known as Genius Grants — but one of this year’s picks was particularly exhilarating: comic artist Lynda Barry.
How MacArthur ‘genius’ Lynda Barry is exploring brain creativity with true artists: Preschoolers
The Washington Post
As an associate professor of interdisciplinary creativity at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, Barry is pushing the envelope on understanding how the brain creates and responds to words and pictures — a scholarly envelope that, in her mind, should be positively covered with illuminating doodles.
Carrie Coon On Her New Podcast, The Joys Of Voice Acting, And Her Surprising Career
Uproxx
Coon’s first TV role was in 2011, on The Playboy Club, which only ran for three episodes. Before that, she was kicking around the regional theater scene in the Midwest — she received an MFA in acting at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and later moved to Chicago. Mainstream success and becoming a familiar face seems to be something Coon never counted on, but has greeted as a pleasant surprise.
The stereotypes we keep
Isthmus
It’s bold, real and wildly uncomfortable — the basic ingredients of a play created to spark debate. The Pulitzer- and Tony Award-winning Clybourne Park, playing at UW-Madison’s Mitchell Theatre through Nov. 24, starts on a chipper note, with characters blithely debating origins of ice cream while dropping subtle hints of cultural ignorance. But it erupts into poisonous verbal sparring and screaming matches about racism, prejudice and fear. It’s a heavy performance to watch, let alone perform.
Exhibit at the Tory Folliard Gallery will celebrate life and work of John Wilde
Milwaukee Magazine
Noted: Wilde (pronounced WILL-dee) was born in Milwaukee in 1919 and spent most of his life in Wisconsin, both producing art and teaching it for 34 years at UW-Madison. His medium of choice was painting, supplemented by printmaking, drawing and silverpoint – the ancient practice of drawing with silver wire fashioned into a mechanical pencil of sorts.
What happens when college students discuss lab work in Spanish, philosophy in Chinese or opera in Italian? – The Washington Post
Washington Post
Quoted: “I don’t understand the conceptual model for global competence that leaves language out,” said Dianna L. Murphy, director of the Language Institute at the University of Wisconsin.
Street science: Mural project seeks to engage the public
Isthmus
Gliding thick brushes covered in browns, pinks, blues and silver across white walls, Melanie Stimmell Van Latum gives off a Bob Ross-like aura as she tackles her newest mural project. It’s study time at the Discovery Building, and all is quiet, except for the sounds of dripping man-made waterfalls and the splashing of the artist cleaning her acrylic-caked brushes.
Indigenous Wisconsin: Overture exhibit by Ho-Chunk artists tells many stories
Isthmus
Noted: Look more closely at “Untitled,” a 1985 oil-on-canvas work by the late Harry Whitehorse, and you will see how the artist’s use of pointillism, the impressionist technique of painting with distinct color dots, brings the sun-soaked image to life. Viewers might become transfixed by the buck’s stare, which reads as if unwanted visitors have interrupted his respite.
In addition to Whitehorse, purportedly born in a wigwam near the Indian Mission in Black River Falls in 1927 and proprietor of Chief Auto Body in Monona for 40 years, the exhibit’s other superstar is the late Truman Lowe, a former fine arts professor at UW-Madison who also served as curator of the Smithsonian’s Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C. The other artists are relatively unknown, with several exhibiting publicly for the first time.
Composer/Pianist Brianna Ware Shares Personal Favorites At Grace
WORT FM
Listeners who follow classical music in Madison will have noticed Lawren Brianna Ware. In 2017, she was the Grand Prize winner in the Overture Center’s “Rising Stars” competition. Since then she has finished a Master’s in piano performance at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, where she is now studying composition with Prof. Laura Schwendinger. On Saturday, November 16th, Ms. Ware will play a concert with a number of collaborators as part of Grace Episcopal Church’s “Grace Presents” series.
‘Clybourne Park’ grapples with race and gentrification 50 years apart
Following some performances there will be talkbacks with the audience, including one led by Patrick Sims on Friday, Nov. 15. Sims, a longtime actor and former theater faculty member, is UW-Madison’s Deputy Vice Chancellor for Diversity and Inclusion.
Even after a big change, UW’s drum major never misses a beat
NBC-15
For three years, senior Justine Spore spent her time in the trumpet section of the University of Wisconsin marching band, but this year she is trying her hand at something new.
Artful Women exhibit empowers women, gives them a voice
WISC-TV 3
In an effort to empower women, artists raised funds through the Artful Women exhibit. Their artwork is displayed at University of Wisconsin Health.
Making art with insects
Wisconsin State Journal
Jennifer Angus, a professor in the Design Studies department at UW-Madison, has had a busy autumn.
Sharing, studying and reflecting on indigenous culture
Wisconsin State Journal
An exhibition that Mace co-curated, titled “Intersections: Indigenous Textiles of the Americas,” is on view through Dec. 6 at the Lynn Mecklenburg Textile Gallery in the UW-Madison School of Human Ecology building.
Lynda Barry’s “Making Comics” is one of the best, most practical books ever written about creativity
Boing Boing
For many years, Barry has served as an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison art department and at the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery, using her method to teach both adults and children to get in touch with a creative impulse that is simultaneously deep, mysterious and irrational and trainable, biddable and reliable (with practice).
Graduate art students showcase work at Open Studio Day
WISC-TV 3
Graduate students in the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Master of Fine Arts program showcased their work Saturday at the fifth annual Open Studio Day. More than 50 students opened their studio doors for the public.
Ranch-o-Rama: Madison’s mid-century homes are undergoing a renaissance
Isthmus
Quoted: “The Taliesin influence is strong here,” notes Anna Andrzejewski, a professor of art history at UW-Madison. Andrzejewski sees Madison’s mid-century building boom as a unique laboratory for a regionally specific form of modernism under Frank Lloyd Wright’s long shadow. She calls this process “Wrightification.”
Want to Be More Creative? A MacArthur Genius Shows You How
Inc.
The phone’s ringing, your email is pinging and there are only 10 precious minutes until your next meeting. Is it any wonder that you can’t come up with even a small coherent thought–much less a big creative idea?
Maybe it’s time for an intervention. That’s why I’d like you spend the next few moments listening to Lynda Barry. Last month Barry was one of 26 people chosen as a 2019 fellow of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. As The New York Times reported, “Known colloquially as the ‘genius’ grant (to the annoyance of the foundation), the fellowship honors ‘extraordinary originality’ and comes with a no-strings-attached grant of $625,000, to be distributed over five years.”
Wisconsin Sea Grant collaborates with Chazen Art Museum to raise awareness of plastic pollution
Badger Herald
Exhibit features artworks of both domestic, international artists.
Mobile research, photography studio to study national parks
WISC-TV 3
Years ago as an undergraduate student, Tomiko Jones learned from a Navajo potter that there was no word for “art” in his native language, suggesting instead that “art is how you walk into the room. It is how you move through the world.”
Now an assistant professor of art at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, Jones plans to actualize that idea. She learned in June of the approval of a $75,000 grant from the UW–Madison School of Education to have a high-tech and environmentally sustainable mobile research and photography studio built by students in the College of Engineering’s Makerspace fabrication facility. While the grant won’t cover the cost of a vehicle to transport the studio, Jones says she will procure one and expects to be touring national parks with the studio in three to four years.
Hamel Center celebrates opening, bringing “Wisconsin touch after Wisconsin touch” to music school
The Capital Times
After nearly three years of anticipation and extensive construction, students, donors and faculty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison gathered Friday evening to celebrate the Hamel Music Center, a state-of-the-art facility that promises improved performance and recital venues for the Mead Witter School of Music.
Sufi poem becomes challenging, diverse dance on UW stage
Wisconsin State Journal
Lacouir Yancey has worked with UW-Madison dance professor Peggy Choy six times, but never on a project as challenging as “FLIGHT: torn like a rose,” a dance work Choy built around a Sufi poem.
New Hamel Music Center to open
Madison Magazine
When the Overture Center for the Arts opened in 2005, Madison obtained a crown jewel of a performance venue that remains the envy of many a larger city. Meanwhile, the students, faculty and guest artists who are part of the Mead Witter School of Music at the University of Wisconsin–Madison remained trapped in Mills Music Hall, and the other inadequate facilities in the outdated Humanities building.
UW-Madison’s music school celebrates its new building, which encompasses two concert halls and a rehearsal space
Tone Madison
UW-Madison’s new Hamel Music Center has been in the works for well over a decade and the project kicked into gear in 2009, when the university announced plans to knock down a college bar called Brothers and build much-needed practice and performance spaces for music students and faculty. The result, at the corner of University Avenue and Lake Street, comprises a 660-seat concert hall, a smaller 300-seat recital hall, and a rehearsal space specifically designed for large ensembles. It’s a big, glitzy undertaking completed entirely with private funds, but something had to give—performance spaces in the Humanities Building, like Morphy Hall and Mills Concert Hall, are well past their prime in terms of acoustics and creature comforts. That said, music students have criticized UW for not including more rehearsal space in the new building, The Badger Herald reported in September.
Corey Pompey, the new University of Wisconsin-Madison marching band director, takes the baton and replaces a legend
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Corey Pompey stood at the top of a red ladder as hundreds of University of Wisconsin band members, their hats turned backward to signify a victory, twirled, cavorted, danced, hopped and acted crazy.
An interview with UW-Madison’s new band director Corey Pompey
WISC-TV 3
If you’ve been to a Badger football game this fall, you’ve seen the new man behind the podium directing the Badger band.
Wisconsin artists shine at MMOCA Triennial exhibit
Wisconsin State Journal
When Pranav Sood arrived in Madison from his native Punjab, India, he looked for a place to live with one priority in mind: It had to be near an art museum.
So Sood, a painter and new MFA student in the UW-Madison Art Department, settled into a Downtown apartment just half a block away from the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art. Admission is free, so he could drop in anytime. And he hoped to network with other artists and learn more about the American art scene there.
UW-Madison assistant professor twerks with Lizzo after her tweet goes viral
TMJ4
A UW-Madison assistant professor got to twerk with Lizzo after her #TwerkWithLizzo tweet went viral, according to WISC-TV.
Dr. Sami Schalk, an assistant Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, was invited on stage during the Lizzo concert at Sylvee Thursday night.
Jessie Opoien: Lizzo’s magic let us all shine for a night — especially one twerking UW-Madison assistant professor
Capital Times
“If I’m shinin’, everybody gonna shine.”
When Lizzo sang it, she meant it.
For one magical night last week, she shared that moment with Madison. And in that moment, we all got to shine — but perhaps no one more than Sami Schalk, an assistant professor in the Department of Gender and Women’s Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
UW-Madison assistant professor twerks with Lizzo on stage after #twerkwithlizzo video goes viral
WISC-TV 3
Dr. Sami Schalk, who teaches gender and women’s studies, first started tweeting #twerkwithlizzo Oct. 1 when she asked her followers what outfit would give her the best chance at an invitation onstage to dance with the No. 1 artist.
Hamel Center to open this month, but students cite concerns
Badger Herald
Lack of classrooms, practice rooms in Hamel Center is frustrating students.
Dissing Hendrix, a stoned pony and other highlights from rocker Steve Miller’s wild Washington Post interview
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Milwaukee-born Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Steve Miller is renowned for his immortal hits: “The Joker,” “Fly Like an Eagle,” “Rock’n Me,” “Abracadabra” and others.
He’s also well-known for being outspoken. The day the Rock Hall announced Miller as one of the inductees in its Class of 2016, Miller in a Journal Sentinel interview called the hall “an exclusive private men’s club” and called on them “work more on music education programs and to make its museum something more than a place where they sell postcards, posters and T-shirts” — and he was critical of the Rock Hall, and the music industry at large, at the induction itself.
Steve Miller cracked the code of 1970s radio. But he’s still raging against the music industry.
Washington Post
Steve Miller should have nothing to complain about. But on a recent afternoon, sitting in the elegant patron’s room at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the singer and guitarist fires away when asked about his new set, “Welcome to the Vault.” The box, out Oct. 11, is a fascinating dip into his archives, 52 tracks that stretch over 65 years, from a 1951 performance by blues legend T-Bone Walker in his childhood living room to a 2016 jazz band reinvention of Miller’s “Take the Money and Run.”
This Chicago author helped research a book about R. Kelly. Now she’s won a prize for her gritty fiction about 4 strong women.
Chicago Tribune
A native of Boston, Wisel earned her master of fine arts from Columbia College-Chicago and was a creative writing fellow at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Madison man inspires Tom Hanks to play Mr. Rogers
WISC-TV 3
Noted: “It’s incredible,” Jeff’s dad, Howard Erlanger, an emeritus University of Wisconsin–Madison professor, said last week. We spoke by phone and he sent me a link to the Vanity Fair piece.
Sound and color: A collective vision from two of UW’s own students
Badger Herald
Chase Devens and David Smith are two University of Wisconsin seniors who befriended one another while studying abroad in Paris this past spring. Devens is a young filmmaker, and Smith is an aspiring electronic music artist.
From UW student to world-class songwriter
WISC-TV 3
Allee Willis, the songwriter behind hits like Earth, Wind & Fire’s “September” and the “Friends” theme song, joins Mark and Charlotte to talk about her career.
New book “The Carmen Porco Story, Journey Toward Justice” tells remarkable story
WISC-TV 3
Rev. Carmen Porco, the subject of this new book, and the author UW-Madison Professor Dr. Chuck Taylor both sit down with Neil Heinen to share a preview of the remarkable life and journey of the man recognized as one of the leading experts on fair housing in the world.
Madison cartoonist Lynda Barry wins MacArthur Foundation ‘genius’ award
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Graphic novelist, cartoonist and creativity educator Lynda Barry of Madison is one of this year’s winners of the prestigious MacArthur Foundation fellowship, commonly known as a “genius” grant.