Category: Arts & Humanities

There’s no doubt that alumni of the University of Wisconsin go on to achieve greatness, but how often do students get to witness their success first-hand?

Lynda Barry likes to say things that most people shouldn’t or couldn’t. A short conversation about her job as a teacher gets very interesting very quickly.

A new musical feat has been accomplished at UW Madison, and it is ready for you to see this weekend.

It will be a chance to meet amazing historical figures like Maya Angelou, Frida Kahlo, and Frederick Douglass while also supporting a great cause on Thursday at the University Club in downtown Madison as the Odyssey Project will host its 2nd annual “Night of the Living Humanities” fundraiser.

Noted: Presented by the Union Directorate and UW Arts Institute, the show is part of “Shakespeare in Wisconsin,” a year-long series of events to mark the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death. The statewide celebration will culminate with the arrival Nov. 3 of an original edition of the First Folio of Shakespeare’s plays. The precious volume, from the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., is on national tour and will be exhibited at the Chazen Museum of Art through Dec. 11.

With the release of her book in June 2016, “Art of Suppression: Confronting the Nazi Past in Histories of Visual and Performing Arts,” Pamela Potter said she hopes people will have a different view of the arts in a Nazi-dominated Germany.

Noted: One thread surrounds Shakespeare, which coincides with the Year of Shakespeare in Wisconsin to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the Bard’s death and the arrival of a First Folio at UW-Madison in November. Some Shakespeare-centric books highlighted include Andrea Mays’ book “The Millionaire and the Bard,” “Performing New Lives” by Jonathan Shailor, and “Much Ado” by Michael Lenehan, about a summer with American Players Theatre.

More than a century ago, Wisconsin’s education leaders decided the boundaries of the university should reach the boundaries of the state – and beyond. Today, the Wisconsin Idea is still making Badger State life better.

Noted: One of those is glass artist Helen Lee, for whom the timing of the 2016 Triennial has a lot of significance. It marks three years since Lee moved to the Midwest, after a lifetime on the East and West Coasts, and settled here to become head of the esteemed glass program at UW-Madison.

The six-volume Dictionary of American Regional English, completed in print in 2012, continues to augment its coverage with quarterly updates by the chief editor, George Goebel, at the University of Wisconsin. The fifth update, for summer 2016, has just been published, with a dozen new entries and 40 revised ones. Most of the entries update or enrich the letter B, originally published in Volume I more than 30 years ago.

As a child, Claire Stigliani became obsessed with making dolls. Now the artist films videos of puppets acting out grownup fairy tales on her miniature theater sets. MMoCA hosts an evocative exhibit from the UW MFA grad through Sept. 4.

Olivo has shared her expertise as a director at UW-Madison’s University Theatre, served on Forward Theater’s advisory committee, worked on Theatre LILA productions and been involved in the Overture Center’s Tommy Awards for high school students in musical theater.

Having graduated from the UW-Madison and being a veteran of American Players Theatre in Spring Green, Carrie Coon can probably do a pretty good Wisconsin accent. Now it’s time to work on her Minnesota accent.

“Hamilton” might provide new material, but it isn’t pioneering the idea of using hip hop in the classroom. Next week, UW-Madison’s Office of Multicultural Initiatives will be holding its 11th annual Hip Hop in the Heartland conference.

The festival, now in its 17th year, is presenting a full week of Elizabethan music at UW-Madison from July 9-16 to help mark the 400th anniversary of William Shakespeare’s death.

Noted: In “40: Collages by Kevin Henkes,” the Madisonian best known for authoring award-winning children’s books shows another creative side. He uses paper saved from the 1980s, when he was an undergraduate at UW–Madison, and arranges them in ways that highlight stark and jagged lines, curved forms, muted shades and texture. Presented in long, tidy rows, with uniform white matting and frames, the collages offer an opportunity for quiet and contemplation.

John Baldacchino will be the next director of the Arts Institute at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He comes from the University of Dundee in Scotland, where he was chair of arts education at the School of Education and Social Work. He will take over his new role in August.

No one expected Back to School to be a hit. But the Rodney Dangerfield comedy—which saw the legendary comedian starring as Thornton Melon, a self-made millionaire who attends Grand Lakes University with his son, Jason, and becomes the most popular man on campus—ended up becoming the second highest-grossing comedy of 1986 (only Crocodile Dundee made more). To celebrate its 30th anniversary, here are some facts about the only film that ever dared to pair Dangerfield with Robert Downey Jr., Sam Kinison, and Kurt Vonnegut.