Category: Arts & Humanities

Jesse Lee Kercheval, a professor in UW-Madison?s MFA program, said that Madison, as a literary town, needs something like the Madison Writers? Studio.

The 50th anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington is bringing forth innumerable commemorations and reminiscences in all forms. But memories of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.?s ?I Have a Dream? speech that Aug. 28 afternoon always threaten to overwhelm, if not obliterate, other aspects of what still remains the most famous mass gathering in American history.

This weekend, he?ll bring ?Dirty Wars? to Sundance Cinemas in Madison, where he attended school at both Madison Area Technical College and the UW-Madison in the 1990s.

Cartoonist Lynda Barry, who guest taught a course at the University of Wisconsin-Madison this spring and now has a professorship, will host a “Drawing Jam” this Saturday at the Image Lab located in the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery.

This year?s Jazz at Five lineup features some familiar faces, like violinist Randy Sabien, who last appeared at the event in 2011, and UW-Madison jazz professor Johannes Wallmann?s quintet.

This September, the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art spotlights 35 of Wisconsin?s most innovative artists, from established names like Charles Munch to graduate students at UW-Madison.

UW-Madison graduate students are known for many things, from ambitious dissertations to headline-making activism, but rocking out isn?t one of the first descriptors that come to mind. Local band TL;DR have been working to change this since 2011. Their new debut album, TL;DR Is Everything You Are, brings them one step closer to this goal.

“I am pleased to be chosen to receive the 2014 NEA Jazz Masters Fellowship Award. It is exciting to join past and current recipients alike. It is also comforting to be recognized by NEA officials and those who nominated me,” said Richard Davis.

MADISON ? An 83-year-old music professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who has played bass with Bruce Springsteen and classical conductor Igor Stravinsky has been awarded the nation?s highest honor in jazz.

An 83-year-old music professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who has played bass with Bruce Springsteen and classical conductor Igor Stravinsky has been awarded the nations highest honor in jazz.

Richard Davis, a bassist and a professor of music at the University of Wisconsin ? Madison, has been named one of the 2014 National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Masters, one of the highest honors for an American jazz musician.

The good news is that Aaron Bohrod?s mural in the Madison Public Library is saved, restored as a centerpiece of the remodeled central facility, slated to reopen Sept. 21.

It?s early on a Thursday afternoon, and I?m preparing to teach two interdisciplinary humanities courses. I?ll spend the next three hours working closely with about 50 undergraduates, and I need to get my ducks in a row. When I started my teaching career, more than two decades ago, this last-minute prep might have entailed reviewing handwritten lecture notes or scrawling something profound on the chalkboard. Today, however, I?m hunkered down at a state-of-the-art podium that will allow me to engage my students in ways I couldn?t have imagined in the early 1990s.

Leslie Smith IIIs new painting exhibition at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art through Sept. 1 is called “I Dream Too Much,” but its clear that the UW-Madison art instructor isnt asleep in the traditional sense. Like many of his paintings, these recently created works use abstract imagery to explore anguish, anxiety and other byproducts of trauma.

(CBS News) With the anniversary of the 1944 D-Day invasion due this coming Thursday, there?s an untold story that?s coming to light about some of the soldiers who took part — and we warn you, it?s not an easy story to hear. Here?s national security correspondent David Martin:

For those who knew her as a hardworking grad student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Carrie Coon?s red carpet debut at the Tony Awards on Sunday may feel like watching a local girl make good.

This Sunday, the girl who wore shin guards to her first theater audition swaps her cleats and uniform for gold heels and a vintage gown on the Radio City red carpet.

Over the past 20 years, Steven Nadler, professor of philosophy at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, has established himself as this country?s leading authority on the philosophical thought of 17th-century Europe. He has written a major biography of Spinoza, edited scholarly works about Malebranche, been a Pulitzer finalist for ?Rembrandt?s Jews,? and taken up, in ?The Best of all Possible Worlds,? the arguments of Leibniz and his contemporaries about that most troubling of all theological questions: the problem of evil. Why does God allow the innocent to suffer?

A huge research project at UW-Madison that has taken over 50 years of work so far got a big financial boost last week so the work can continue.

Reading is typically a solitary activity, but it doesnt have to be. Just ask the organizers of the UWs Go Big Read program. They know books are social media in its purest form, tools for bringing people together and helping them connect, converse and learn from each other.

One of the University of Wisconsin?s oldest humanities projects faces an uncertain future due to a recent lack in funding.  

UW theater professor Patrick Sims can?t resist playing around with his students. While helping them organize a field trip, he sees an opportunity for a laugh. It?s a gamble, though. The subject at hand is a veritable powder keg: how “driving while black” can get a person into some serious trouble.

Whether Marc Fink is a man of few words or not, anyone would be hard pressed to find the right way to say goodbye to a university after forty years of distinguished service. Sunday afternoon the retiring oboe professor said farewell to the University of Wisconsin?s School of Music in the most eloquent way of all?with his instrument, and with the considerable aid of other musicians.

Every seven years, Nick Hitchon becomes a movie star.Every seven years, director Michael Apted and his camera crew show up to film another installment of the long running ?Up? documentary series. The series, which began with ?7 Up,? follows a group of British children through their lives, checking in with a new film every seven years.

Marc Fink has played his oboe in remote Alaskan villages where the touring musicians spent the night in sleeping bags on the floor of the gymnasium in which, hours earlier, they had performed.

The University of Wisconsin-Madison Music Department will hold another vote to determine whether it will join a proposed College of the Arts.

Flutes probably aren?t the first thing that come to mind when discussing hip-hop, but Sam Hartley knew he could change the conversation. The UW-Madison sophomore brought extra rhythm and bass to his performance at the Wisconsin Flute Festival on Saturday. During “Three Beats for Beatbox Flute,” he incorporated vocal melodies and percussion, drawing an enthusiastic response from the audience.

FX has put in development They Marched Into Sunlight, a six-part limited series executive produced by Oscar winner Stephen Gaghan.

Most students see spring break as a chance to get away from doing work, maybe apply some sunscreen or at least try to find somewhere to have fun that requires sunscreen. UW-Madison students Alex Kowalsky and Josh Lieberthal, founders of AJ&Beyond, however, are not most students.Instead of hightailing it out of Madison this week, the School of Journalism and Mass Communication seniors are offering up their digital and social media expertise for the week, and they are doing it to help their school.

Jennifer Angus, a professor in the design studies department at UW-Madison, authored ?In Search of Goliathus Hercules.?

Jennifer Angus, a UW-Madison professor of textile design, pins insects into elaborate patterns for her art exhibits.

Five players make up a quintet. And 40 years marks a milestone. Both are significant numbers for the Wisconsin Brass Quintet, whose 40th season will be celebrated with a free concert Friday, March 15, in Mills Hall.

The University of Wisconsin-Madison Office of Multicultural Arts Initiatives will host the seventh annual Line Breaks Festival March 13-20, which features nightly performances from UW-Madison students.

For 85 years, the UW-Madison students who?ve made up the Wisconsin Union Directorate Art Committee have taken it upon themselves to select, install and promote the art shows that rotate through the galleries of Memorial Union.This year, however, committee director Carly Herzog and her group want to do something different.

Though the great tenor saxophonist Dexter Gordon died of liver failure in 1990, the UW will celebrate his life and legacy this winter, when he would have celebrated his 90th birthday. Several Gordon-themed activities complement the university?s efforts to build a new jazz program.

When most Madisonians think of where to view art on campus, the newly expanded Chazen Museum of Art comes first to mind.

First Pamela Whitehorse had her dream catcher featured on the silver screen. This spring, a larger version will grace a wall in the new Dejope Residence Hall on the UW-Madison campus.

Reviewed: Jim Crace grew up along London?s northern perimeter in a housing estate that felt, he has said, like the last building before the countryside began. In one direction stretched an interminably rural England, in the other an interminable metropolis. Through this accident of childhood, Crace developed an edgeland imagination that has powered his writing ever since, attracting him to dramatic showdowns between clashing values. His characters typically face some encroaching, inhospitable new order, as in ?Harvest,? his glorious new novel, where they must scramble to adapt or be mowed down.