Category: Arts & Humanities

The film, directed by UW graduate Chad Garcia, won the Documentary Grand Jury Prize at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. It follows an eccentric Ukrainian artist named Fedor Alexandrovich who is investigating a conspiracy surrounding the Chernobyl disaster. Alexandrovich’s exploration of Soviet-era secrets and brutality mirrors the present day strife in his own country, as Russian Premier Vladimir Putin threatens Ukraine’s sovereignty. Indie film distributor FilmBuff has bought the rights.

Q&A with Juan de Marcos Gonzalez, UW Arts Institute’s Interdisciplinary Artist in Residence for the fall. He’ll be very busy in Madison, putting on performances (including an Afro-Cuban All Stars performance at Overture Hall on Oct. 2), teaching two classes, and putting on free public lectures on Cuban music and culture.

Before she was the internationally known art-pop singer Zola Jesus, Nika Roza Danilova was a UW-Madison student with an avant-garde radio show and eclectic taste in music. Now Danilova, 26, is making that music in spectacular fashion and will be back on campus with a three-member backing band for a free show Thursday at Shannon Hall at the Wisconsin Union Theater.

In 2007, Karen Bishop took fellow opera fan Dan Shea aside and broke the news: She was ill, and had to step away from her role with UW Opera Props. In January, Bishop, 54, died after a 20-year fight with breast cancer, leaving behind a family and a gift expected to change the history of opera at UW-Madison. A gift of $500,000 from Bishop’s husband Charlie, along with a matching grant from the John and Tashia Morgridge Foundation and funds from University Opera supporters, has ushered in a new era for the art form on campus, supporters say.

Also reviewed: Various Artists, “Folksongs of Another America: Field Recordings from the Upper Midwest, 1937-1946” (Dust-to-Digital/University of Wisconsin Press, $60). This fascinating, important book, four-CD and DVD compiles field recordings made in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Chicago and Washington, D.C.

The years between the ages of 3 and 6 are particularly precious. That’s the period kids begin school, start to establish their independence … and form their racial and ethnic prejudices. Attempting to counteract that last, problematic development has been a longtime goal of the creators of educational television series. Sadly, however, a research team led by Marie-Louise Mares of the University of Wisconsin–Madison reports the impact of such shows appears to be extremely limited.

A hefty biography of controversial Spanish dictator Francisco Franco. A sharp collection of Milwaukee-based stories that question the notion of a “post-racial” society. A cookbook featuring pies and other Dairy State delights derived from Scandinavian tradition. A moody murder mystery set in Door County. And a verse translation of Sophocles’ greatest Greek tragedy, Oedipus Rex.

A door is such a rich symbol. It can’t help but imply opportunity—perhaps a risk taken, a secret revealed or a journey started. In the case of Olivia Baldwin, it involves all three. door in the mountain: Works by Olivia Baldwin is a creative exhibition at Gallery 1308 at the Union South of paintings by Baldwin, an artist who now lives and works in Sugar Loaf, New York.

A cross-discipline team of researchers at UW-Madison is working to develop a “teaching machine” that would develop ideal lesson plans, UW-Madison News reports.

Dennis Lloyd could be forgiven if he felt nervous about his new job. After almost 10 years at the University Press of Florida, Mr. Lloyd has just taken over as director of the University of Wisconsin Press. Running a nonprofit scholarly publishing operation, especially one in a state-university system handed major budget cuts, isn’t a walk in the park these days.

Noted: “Modern Family,” by University of Wisconsin-Madison alum Steve Levitan, received six nominations, including one for outstanding comedy series — an award the show has won each of the past five years.

The Tony Award-winning actress is doing her first stint as a director this summer with “Fugitive Songs,” produced by University Theatre and featuring the musical talents of UW-Madison students and recent graduates.

Noted: School of the Arts at Rhinelander, offered by the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Division of Continuing Studies, features nearly 40 three-day workshops in visual arts, culinary arts, mind/body/spirit, performing arts, and writing. This is the event’s 52nd year of fostering creativity and camaraderie in the Northwoods.

Noted: Leavell’s tree plantation occupies 2,900 acres in Georgia. He has written books on woodland management, testified on logging legislation before Congress and likes to quote legendary Wisconsin conservationist Aldo Leopold.

LYNDA BARRY: RESCUE ME!!! The pioneering female cartoonist Lynda Barry — whose early work included the syndicated alternative strip “Ernie Pook’s Comeek,” “One! Hundred! Demons!” and the illustrated novel “The Good Times Are Killing Me,” which became an Off Broadway play — in a phone interview put her relationship with Drawn & Quarterly like this:

Late last month, what began as a book review in an obscure publication blew up into a major controversy that tarnished sociology’s most-buzzed-about young star. At issue: whether the sociologist, Alice Goffman, had participated in a felony while researching her ethnographic study of young black men caught up in the criminal-justice system.

Last year, Alice Goffman published On the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City, an adaptation of her dissertation at Princeton. For six years, while a student at Penn and at Princeton, Goffman immersed herself in a Philadelphia neighborhood that she writes is “a lower-income Black neighborhood not far from [Penn’s] campus.” The book is an ethnography of the lives of the young men (and a few women) she hung out with in the neighborhood. She changed names and calls it “6th Street,” to avoid identifying her subjects.

Quoted: “We find artists through word of mouth and recommendations. There are no auditions,” said Jutt, a professor of flute at UW-Madison. “Friends will say, ‘This person is amazing. You’ve got to get this person.’ And if you can, you do it. So over the last 24 years, our circle of acquaintances and music friends has gotten really big.”

Sociologist Alice Goffman’s book “On the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City,” drew fulsome praise upon its publication in 2014 and gave its youthful author a crossover reputation — a TED talk, a speaking tour, possible TV and movie deals, trade paperback reprint.

Noted: Abrams, who founded Capital City Theatre along with managing director Stef Dickens, education director Gail Becker, and communications director Chris Giese, is already a well-known figure in city theater circles. A Madison native, he earned his bachelor’s of music degree at UW-Madison and a master’s in musical theater from University of London-Goldsmiths.

Since her book “On the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City” was published last year, Alice Goffman has achieved a measure of fame that is rarely visited on a young sociologist.

For Malone, a Portage native and a student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, this year could be one of those moments. She has a big summer ahead of her musically, with shows scheduled in Denver and Chicago, all booked around festivals she will perform at.

“Oh, my gawwwd,” Allee Willis howls.

Meanwhile, according to the website of the expansive Dictionary of American Regional English — DARE — language researchers are “challenging the popular notion that our language has been ’homogenized’ by the media and our mobile population.” They proffer that “there are many thousands of differences that characterize the dialect regions of the U.S.”

The UW-Madison based Dictionary of American Regional English is venturing into new, online friendly projects despite financial setbacks throughout the last several years. DARE is a multi-volume dictionary that defines words and phrases specific to various regions throughout the United States. It was created at UW-Madison nearly 50 years ago. Current Chief Editor of DARE Joan Houston Hall first started with the publication in 1975, when she and other employees were responsible for entering terms into the dictionary.

Rory Erler Wakemup was selected for the 2015 Chazen prize by this year’s curator of the competition, art critic and writer Lori Waxman, who teaches art history at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

The four girls are full of energy as they rehearse a dance they’ve choreographed to Beyoncé’s “Flawless.” But when they get the giggles, Tiffany Merritt-Brown, a senior in the University of Wisconsin’s dance department, urges them to focus: “Don’t let the laughter distract you from the dancing,” she says. “Come on…I believe in you.”

Language-lovers across the U.S. have the mulligrubs this month, and with good reason. The Dictionary of American Regional English DARE, which has cataloged vernacular terms and idioms from around the country since it was founded in the early 1960s, does not currently have the funding to continue operations after June 30, 2015.

A 50-year odyssey to chart the dialects of America – from the toad-stranglers very heavy rains of Indianapolis to rantum scooting going on an outing with no definite destination in Nantucket – is due to come to an end this summer when funding for the Dictionary of American Regional English runs out.

Pianist Christopher Taylor simply rocked the Madison Symphony Orchestra concert Friday evening; had he been willing, the audience would have kept him at the piano until the stagehands shut off the lights.

News 3 This Morning talks with Julie Arensdorf, reference and outreach librarian about the eatable book festival that’s coming to the UW-Madison Memorial Library on Monday.

In the summer of 2012, Dr. Johannes Wallmann moved to Madison to accept the position of Director of Jazz Studies at the University of Wisconsin – Madison School of Music. In accepting the position, he became the inaugural holder of the John and Carolyn Peterson Chair in Jazz Studies at the university.

A look at UW–Madison emeritus professor Wildman and her role with the Madison Music Collective MMC, a volunteer group of musicians and others in the Madison music scene, devoted to promoting jazz and other forms of improvised music, including increasing performance opportunities at reputable venues.