Category: Arts & Humanities

It was 10 years ago this past November that the artist Donald Lipski perpetrated the sculpture known as Nails’ Tales on an unsuspecting Madison public.

The UW-Madison Band is coming back to Sheboygan. The performance on April 4 at Urban Middle School will be a fundraiser for the city’s Mayor’s International Committee.

Noted: The University of Wisconsin–Madison School of Music presents its “Symphony Showcase” Feb. 14 at 7:30 p.m. in Mills Hall.

The month closes with two essential annual events, the first a recital by an artist whom Madison is incredibly blessed to have based here. In case you haven’t heard, pianist Christopher Taylor’s critical reputation in places far and wide makes it clear he could have a full-time international career if he chose to. Go hear for yourself on Feb. 26 at 8 p.m. in Mills Hall; you’re guaranteed to learn a few secrets from the works of Bach, Scriabin and Brahms.

In a recent Skype call with a Dutch friend, we discussed her kids and their college experience. Apparently, there had been protests on campus about costs and payments.

What’s going on in local art? A gloriously diverse answer to that question can be found in the Art Department Faculty Quadrennial Exhibition, a new show at the Chazen Museum of Art that highlights recent work by nearly thirty current and former members of the University of Wisconsin–Madison Art Department.

Interviewed: Jennifer Angus, a Wisconsin professor and artist whose work using exotic insects from around the world is being featured in the newly opened Renwick Gallery at the Smithsonian Art Museum.

Celebrity is new to Madison, Wisc. attorney Dean Strang, who’s suddenly found himself in the limelight after appearing in the Netflix documentary series, Making a Murderer. While Strang may now be best known for defending Steven Avery, he has passions outside of the law. His first book, Worse Than the Devil, about a 1917 trial in Milwaukee, came out in 2013, and he’s currently working on a second book, tentatively titled IWW Trial 1918: A Legal History of America’s First and Largest Mass Trial, which University of Wisconsin Press plans to publish in 2017. Strang talked to us about how human frailty is what makes the law interesting…and infuriating.

Noted: She moved to Madison in 2004 to go to UW-Madison and for six years afterward worked at Epic Systems. She has focused entirely on music for the past year and a half, but recently started a consulting job.

Noted: Henkes, who grew up in Racine, first moved to Madison to attend UW-Madison. At age 19, he headed to New York and was signed by Greenwillow Books.

A meeting last week in Rhinelander has put energy into a movement to revive the cancelled School of the Arts at Rhinelander.

Katherine Vosters has an up-close, rare view of University of Wisconsin men’s basketball history.

Noted: “A Hard and Heavy Thing” (Tyrus Books), by Matthew J. Hefti. Hefti, a University of Wisconsin-Madison law student, spent 12 years as an explosive ordnance disposal technician. His debut novel takes the form of a desperate letter from a guilt-stricken former sergeant to the friend whose life he saved. Jan. 1.

One of the world’s most precious volumes starts a tour on Monday, in Norman, Okla. The Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., is sending out William Shakespeare’s First Folio to all 50 states, to mark the 400th anniversary of the bard’s death. Published seven years after he died, the First Folio is the first printed collection of all of Shakespeare’s plays.

Noted: A UW-Madison graduate, Shirek also teaches watercolor painting at UW-Madison Wheelhouse Studios and is a commissioned artist. With watercolor as her core medium; she also works with oil, acrylic, gouache, serigraphy (silk-screen), and ceramics. Her art reflects her life experiences that she expresses in pieces as realistic as a photo to pieces as abstract as shapes. Shirek does not limit herself to painting on paper or canvas, but paints on furniture and walls as well.

The buttons and baubles neatly arranged on Jennifer Angus’ work table don’t seem unusual for an artist who specializes in textile design.

A book by two UW-Madison instructors on the importance of pop music to U.S. military personnel in Vietnam has been named 2015’s best volume on music by Rolling Stone magazine.

Marianne Fairbanks is an artist and a self-described “textiles nerd.” She’s also a professor of design studies at the University of Wisconsin’s School of Human Ecology, who’s spent much of her career trying to figure out how to make energy sources portable — that is, wearable — by integrating solar power systems into fabric.

Noted: WPR interviews two guests about UW-Madison’s pioneering First Wave Program that promotes muticultural studies in hip hop and urban arts.

After a decade of producing her own spin on Tchaikovsky’s wildly popular holiday ballet, JoJean Retrum has dropped the “Fantasy” and gone back to her beloved traditional “Nutcracker.”

Noted: The group this year included members of the University of Wisconsin-Madison marching band, two busloads of musicians from local schools and a cadre of individuals who drove in from out of town — or out of state.

The tradition of UW-Madison’s Tudor Holiday Dinner Concerts goes back more than eight decades. But this year there’s something new.

Feature on UW-Madison dance professor Li Chiao-Ping, who in April was named a Vilas Research Professor, one of the top honors bestowed by the university.

Q&A with Werner, professor and now the head of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Afro-American Studies department. He and co-author Doug Bradley, a UW professor who served in Vietnam, have published a book. “We Gotta Get Out of This Place: The Soundtrack of the Vietnam War” looks at the songs that soldiers listened to while serving in Vietnam, and what they meant to them.

Construction on an expanded music performance building at University Avenue and Lake Street is expected to start next fall thanks to a $25 million gift from the Mead Witter Foundation announced Thursday by UW-Madison. The UW School of Music will be renamed the Mead Witter School of Music in acknowledgment of the gift from the Wisconsin Rapids-based foundation.

Central Time: We’re joined by a celebrated Cuban musician and bandleader who’s been working in-residence with students at the UW-Madison.

CLEVELAND, Ohio – Vietnam is a visceral emotion as much as a memory for those who were part of the war that began in 1955 and didn’t end until 1975.

Dancers with a UW-Madison connection will be performing as part of Thursday’s Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York City.

We Gotta Get Out of This Place: The Soundtrack of the Vietnam War is a new book by veteran Doug Bradley and Craig Werner, professor of Afro-American studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, about soldiers’ musical memories and the impact of James Brown, Eric Burdon, Country Joe McDonald, and other popular artists on the Vietnam experience and our understanding of it.