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Category: Arts & Humanities

National Nordic Museum Reveals A Nordic Utopia For 20th-Century African American Artists

Posted on
Forbes

Anderson had been thinking about William H. Johnson (1901-1970) when Ethelene Whitmire, Chair and a professor in the Department of African American Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, spoke at the National Nordic Museum in 2019. The pair of museum professionals had much in common. Both were past American-Scandinavian Foundation Fellows, both Fulbright Fellows, both spent time at the University of Copenhagen.

A Madison birding program connects students with nature and neighbors

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Wisconsin Public Radio

Trish O’Kane calls herself an “accidental birder.” After surviving Hurricane Katrina in 2005, O’Kane moved to Wisconsin with her husband to start a new chapter. She had spent years as a human rights journalist in Central America and was now setting her sights on a Ph.D. in environmental natural resources from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Wisconsin cultures and their folk music get major honor from Library of Congress

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Wisconsin State Journal

“It is the most diverse, equitable, and inclusive folksong field collection ever made for the Library of Congress,” said James P. Leary, professor emeritus of Folklore and Scandinavian Studies at UW-Madison. It reminds “us that we cannot fully grasp the richness of American roots music without recognizing the many peoples, tongues, and sounds that – whether past or present, from mainstream or margins, deservedly acknowledged or unjustly ignored – have always made America great.”

Rarely seen Rod Serling story, “First Squad, First Platoon,” draws upon his World War II service

Posted on
ABC News

Amy Boyle Johnston, author of the 2015 book “Unknown Serling,” found the story while looking through Serling’s papers at the University of Wisconsin. Serling, who died in 1975, had yet to start a family when he wrote “First Squad, First Platoon.” But he was already thinking about the next generation, including a dedication to his yet-unborn children urging them to remember “a semblance of the feeling of a torn limb, a burnt patch of flesh” and “the hopeless emptiness of fatigue” were as much part of war as “uniforms and flags, honor and patriotism.

Story by Rod Serling, Twilight Zone creator, published after 70 years

Posted on
The Guardian

“I was writing a memoir, called As I Knew Him, My Dad, Rod Serling,” Anne Serling, one of two daughters, told the Guardian. “And another writer, Amy Boyle Johnston, who had been doing a lot of researching of my dad’s early work and wrote a book called Unknown Serling, sent me the story. She’d found it in the archives in Wisconsin,” at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

“The Collected Poems of Delmore Schwartz,” Reviewed

Posted on
The New Yorker

Living in shabby apartments with his younger brother and his perpetually unhappy mother, the preteen Schwartz turned to literature as an escape. He borrowed armfuls of books from the public library: O. Henry, Sinclair Lewis, Alexandre Dumas. A three-dollar copy of Hart Crane’s “The Bridge” sparked an interest in poetry, but he didn’t become serious about the craft until college. (Schwartz started at the University of Wisconsin but, lacking sufficient funds for out-of-state tuition, transferred to New York University, where he earned a degree in philosophy.)

WHAD-FM 90.7 will switch to classical music as part of Wisconsin Public Radio reshuffle

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

“We have heard from Milwaukee listeners for years that they want us to bring classical music radio back to the city and this will do just that,” Marta Bechtol, executive director of the Educational Communications Board, said in a statement from WPR. The board operates WPR and PBS Wisconsin in partnership with the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Choose your own journalism adventure: Teaching media literacy with ‘Headlines and High Water’

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Wisconsin Life

We live in a time when fake news permeates social media feeds and partisan coverage blasts through some cable news channels. Teaching media literacy can help people wade through the disinformation and become critical news consumers. As Christina Lieffring tells us, a video game created by UW-Madison’s Field Day Labs aims to teach students to become more media literate and what it takes to be a journalist.

Voter enthusiasm, Popularity of online videos, Social connections

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Wisconsin Public Radio

Nielsen data shows that the top streaming service on home televisions is not Netflix or Hulu but YouTube. UW–Madison media studies professors Jonathan Gray and Derek Johnson weigh in on how the video social media platforms like YouTube and TikTok are becoming the top competition for the television and movie industries.

Dance is dwindling in Wisconsin’s public schools. Chell Parkins is trying to fix that.

Posted on
Wisconsin State Journal

As the inaugural director of dance education at UW-Madison, Parkins, 51, is aiming to get more dance education into the state’s school systems and training the next generation of dance teachers.

Although UW-Madison has been a hub for this work for decades, dance in Wisconsin’s public schools is dwindling. In the 2020-21 school year, just 1,066 students were enrolled in dance classes in Wisconsin schools, according to data from the Department of Public Instruction

Richard Davis film looks at the teacher behind the jazz master

Posted on
The Capital Times

Davis, who moved to Madison in 1977, never rested on his laurels, and didn’t talk much in interviews about a career that included collaborations with Sarah Vaughan, Van Morrison and Bruce Springsteen. Never one to look backwards, Davis preferred to look ahead. He loved to talk about his career in Madison as an educator, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor who founded the Richard Davis Foundation for Young Bassists to inspire future generations of musicians.

Student podcast recognized by NPR, America’s hardest jobs, Research on daddy longlegs, Carbon neutral parks

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Wisconsin Public Radio

A UW-Madison student tells us about his podcast on changing technology. Then, a Washington Post columnist and a member of the Milwaukee Fire Department talk about America’s hardest jobs. Then, we explore new research on daddy longlegs. Then, we discuss efforts to make national parks along Lake Superior carbon neutral.

Ceramic Artist Toshiko Takaezu Gets a Posthumous Reappraisal

Posted on
The New York Times

The Noguchi retrospective — which will travel to the Cranbrook Art Museum in Bloomfield Hills, Mich; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the Chazen Museum of Art, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison; and the Honolulu Museum of Art — includes about 200 works in ceramics as well as the artist’s paintings, weavings and bronze-cast sculptures.

4 must-read books on birding (and 2 bonus picks)

Posted on
LA Times

But, shaken by the devastation she (Trish O’Kane) saw in New Orleans, O’Kane, in her mid-40s, decided to return to school for a PhD in environmental studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Enchanted by catbirds singing near her new home, she signed up for an ornithology class and became a regular at Warner Park, a recreation center and urban wildlife refuge.

Explore Wisconsin history through artifacts with PBS Wisconsin Education’s new ‘The Look Back’ collection

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PBS Wisconsin

PBS Wisconsin Education announces the launch of a new education series called The Look Back, which explores eras from Wisconsin’s history through artifacts. The Look Back was made in collaboration with the Wisconsin Historical Society, University of Wisconsin–Madison Libraries, UW–Madison’s Rebecca M. Blank Center for Campus History, Wisconsin educators and learners, and museums around the state.

UW Glass Lab’s Helen Lee wins major art award, has exhibit at Arts + Literature Lab

Posted on
Wisconsin State Journal

In her 2½-minute video “Amulet,” award-winning artist Helen Lee shows her own image morphing into that of her young daughter Cicada. Both are dressed in black and framed by a black background, reciting Zhuyin Fuhao, a Chinese phonetic alphabet used today, Lee says, only in Taiwan and by the Chinese diaspora.

Lee, an associate professor of art and head of the Glass Lab at UW-Madison, wears a delicate necklace in the video with a small charm made from jade. It’s from her grandmother, and something she wears every day.

Smith: On its 75th anniversary, lessons of “A Sand County Almanac” more relevant than ever

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Leopold, born in Iowa in 1887, received a forestry degree from Yale and began his professional career in 1909 with the U.S. Forest Service. In 1924 he became associate director of the Forest Products Laboratory in Madison and in 1933 the University of Wisconsin created a chair of game management for him. Leopold died in 1948 fighting a grass fire on a neighbor’s farm. The property is now part of the Aldo Leopold Foundation near Baraboo.

The joy of dictionaries

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Wisconsin Public Radio

Who decides which words make it into dictionaries and how to define them in non-biased ways? Professor Emeritus Marshall Cook looks behind the scenes at lexicographers such as Kory Stamper (author of Word by Word), and Derrick Allen (graduate of the UW Odyssey Project www.odyssey.wisc.edu) adds readings of “I Love Webster’s” by Tosumba Welch and Malcolm X’s “A Homemade Education” on the life-changing power of dictionaries.

How Wisconsin museums are responding to new rules on using objects sacred to Native Americans

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Wisconsin Public Radio

University of Wisconsin-Madison, Anthropology Museum Director and Campus NAGPRA Coordinator Liz Leith: “The university is already in compliance with the recently announced NAGPRA revisions. UW–Madison does not have human remains or cultural items on exhibit, and access to and research on human remains and cultural items is already restricted, pending approval through consultation. My colleagues and I in the Department of Anthropology have been consulting with the Wisconsin Intertribal Repatriation Committee since the mid-2000s. UW-Madison deeply values and prioritizes consultation as a standard practice in relation to human remains and cultural items present on campus. Through these consultations, we have successfully repatriated most of the remains and cultural items that had once been on campus, and we will continue our work to maintain a strong shared future with Wisconsin tribes.”

To mark Vel Phillips’ 100th birthday, Milwaukee Art Museum plans free admission Feb. 18

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

On Sunday, Feb. 18, admission to the Milwaukee Art Museum will be free in honor of Vel Phillips’ 100th birthday.

Phillips, a civil rights activist who was born and raised in Milwaukee, has a series of “firsts” to her name — including the first Black woman to graduate from the University of Wisconsin law school, the first Black person and woman to be elected to the Milwaukee Common Council, the first woman judge in Milwaukee and the first Black judge in Wisconsin, and the first elected secretary of state who was a person of color.

Naomi Osaka biography by Ben Rothenberg review

Posted on
Washington Post

“A journey which I didn’t enjoy ultimately” is how Mari Osaka, who retired from tennis at age 24, describes her unsuccessful pursuit of what Rothenberg calls the “high-risk, high-reward dream of tennis glory.” Time will tell whether it’s a sentiment that Naomi will apply to her own career.

-Ashley Brown is the Allan H. Selig chair in the history of sport and society and an assistant professor of history at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. She is the author of “Serving Herself: The Life and Times of Althea Gibson.”