Category: Arts & Humanities

If you have lived even a few decades, you know the excitement that comes with technological advances that change your assumptions about reality. Photographer Lisa Frank?s master?s thesis exhibition “<1>: “der” //Pattern for a Virtual Environment” takes viewers right through such a gateway to the future.

Reading the Hollywood Reporter story made me wonder if the new film script might be based on a 2007 title from the University of Wisconsin Press, Bill Drennan?s “Death in a Prairie House.” I did a column on that book when it was published, and Drennan ? a longtime UW-Baraboo English professor now at Appalachian State University ? told me he was astonished that a book on the 1914 Taliesin murders hadn?t been written earlier. But Drennan?s book was not the source material for the proposed Beresford movie, according to Anne McKenna, who handles subsidiary rights for UW Press. Instead, McKenna said “Death in a Prairie House” had been optioned by another filmmaker, Brent Harris.

A city commission laid out their plans for incorporating more public art in Madison during their meeting Tuesday.

The Madison Arts Commission and city officials looked at a proposal that would integrate art into city development projects, promote local cultural venues and encourage collaboration between artists and developers and engineers.

People know me as: Stew, fall 2011 artist-in-residence at UW-Madison, performing Monday at Vilas Hall with The Negro Problem featuring Heidi Rodewald. We are singers, songwriters, theater makers and adults.

Most inspiring moment at UW-Madison: The most inspiring moment I’ve had during my residency comes once a week when I get that songwriting assignment back from that student who is stretching her/himself as an artist in brave and challenging ways and not just coasting on their talents. Teaching is as rewarding to me as creating art, and far more heartbreaking.

If you haven?t been down to see the new and elaborate Chazen Museum of Art on the UW-Madison campus, it?s well worth the visit. You?ll appreciate not only its diverse and impressive collections of paintings, sculptures and carvings ? including some contemporary Wisconsin art ? but also its contribution to the urban fabric of our great city. Step inside and you?ll think you?re in Chicago or even New York. The big city vibe is unmistakable and provides another engaging attraction for residents and visitors Downtown.

A trio of rhapsodies, a melancholy Russian quartet and some passionate late Beethoven marked the Pro Arte Quartet?s second concert of its centennial season.

When you catch up with an artist as talented and as creative and accomplished as Colman Domingo, you don?t want to waste too many questions on the frivolous. Still, his bio reads ?born and raised in West Philadelphia? and I just happened to have a certain The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air T.V show theme going on in my head as I talk to him.

?Yes, Will Smith and I went to high school together,? smiles Domingo. ?That?s a little-known fact. Will was one class ahead of me, but we shared the same gym class. It?s a small world, isn?t it??

Domingo, an accomplished actor, playwright, and director, talked to The Madison Times on the phone from Virginia where he was shooting a movie with Steven Spielberg about Abraham Lincoln that will be released in 2012. Domingo will be in town on Nov. 21 as part of ?Stew & Friends,? a University of Wisconsin-Madison Art Institutes free public series where every week students get up close and personal with award-winning national artists on the cutting edge of Broadway, theater, cabaret, rock, jazz, and film.

The Wisconsin Singers will pack four decades of hits into just 90 minutes at this Friday?s concert in Overture Hall, entitled “Starstruck” for its tributes to Hollywood celebrities, teen idols and child stars. “It?s a fast-moving show filled with humor and lots of great singers,” said Robin Whitty-Novotny, who has directed the choir for 21 years and is a Wisconsin Singers alumna herself.

With the abundance of Internet gossip, the golden age of tabloids is over. The National Enquirer hangs on with celebrity stories, while another ? the Weekly World News ? has gone online. Still, World News? most famous subject lives on in a musical opening Friday, Nov. 18, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison?s Mitchell Theatre. ?Bat Boy: The Musical? stars the half-man, half-bat ?discovered? in a West Virginia cave in 1992, and follows a town?s attempts to civilize him.

In America, in theory, life is good, just and equal for all. The reality, of course, is riddled with contrasts and complexities. That?s what Kanopy Dance Company and its guest artists brought to the stage Saturday night ? lots of sharp contrasts and deep complexities. ?This is Not America,? which featured Kanopy, Winifred Haun & Dancers from Chicago and former UW-Madison dance program chair Lonny Joseph Gordon, wasn?t, as the title implies, all social and political musing.

Murals by celebrated regionalist John Steuart Curry are getting exceptional attention on campus, though the public can?t tell so far.

The memory of a University of Wisconsin alumna and World War II heroine was honored during a documentary previewed on campus Thursday night.

?It?s quite a bit colder here in Wisconsin than it is in San Antonio,? smiles Mathew Mireles, an outstanding graduate student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music who is in his third year of a Doctor of Musical Arts degree program. ?But over the last couple of years I?ve started to get used to it a bit.?

Mireles is an award-winning euphonium player and instructor who has been slowly getting accustomed to Madison and Wisconsin.

A decade ago, when journalist Sonia Nazario found out her housekeeper, Carmen, left four children behind in Guatemala and hadn?t seen them in 12 years, she was pretty judgmental, she told a Madison audience Thursday night.

?What kind of a lousy mother leaves her children?? Nazario wondered. It was a question that would eventually lead her on a harrowing journey. The Pulitzer Prize winner talked about her 2006 book, ?Enrique?s Journey,? before a rapt hall of 1,000 people at Union South. The nonfiction story of a Honduran boy who made eight attempts to reach the U.S. in search of his mother was this year?s pick for Go Big Read, the UW-Madison?s common-reading program, now in its third year.

In five years, Joel Waldinger has gone from not knowing the name Mildred Fish-Harnack to trying to make sure everyone else does. It has meant three trips to Germany for Waldinger, a Wisconsin Public Television (WPT) producer. He has conducted interviews, scoured archives and raised funds in an effort to learn and then relate the story of Fish-Harnack, a tale well worth telling. Mildred Fish-Harnack was a Milwaukee native, a UW-Madison student, a Wisconsin State Journal reporter ? and the only American woman executed by the Nazis on the direct order of Adolf Hitler.

If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, the new $43 million expansion of the Chazen Museum of Art on the UW-Madison campus is a true sight to behold. The new facility, paid for largely through a $25 million gift from alums Simona and Jerome Chazen, had a grand opening last weekend, with rave reviews coming from the museum goers showing up for the festivities.

Great cities have great art museums. Madison has two. And one just got greater. This weekend the Chazen Art Museum at the University of Wisconsin-Madison is celebrating its grand opening and we should only know how lucky we are. The addition is spectacular. The expanded collection it will now hold even more so.

With a large new space for temporary exhibitions, exceptional regional art and several major acquisitions, the Chazen Museum of Art at the University of Wisconsin-Madison is poised to join some of the best university museums in the country.

There?s a buzz on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus about a Pulitzer Prize-winning book that raises questions about poverty and the legal, social, psychological and cultural impacts of immigration.

The book?s author, Sonia Nazario, will be on campus Thursday to add to the discussion. Her presentation at 7 p.m. in Union South?s Varsity Hall is free and open to the public. Her book, “Enrique?s Journey,” tells the harrowing story of a Honduran boy who, at age 16, repeatedly attempted to reach the U.S. to find his mother.

A Work of Art: Russell Panczenko

As director of the renamed Chazen Museum of Art, Russell Panczenko has skillfully balanced ongoing operations of the existing facility with a mission to create one of the leading university art museums in the country.

Locksley bassist Jordan Laz remembers what Halloween in Madison was like before the city clamped down and established Freakfest as a more family-friendly alternative to the costumed chaos that reigned prior.

?There were riots, and it was the best party on earth,? said the one-time city resident, who currently makes his home in New York. ?Or the worst, depending on what time you showed up.? The now-tamer celebration, which attracted an estimated 55,000 revelers last year, returns to State St. on Saturday, Oct. 29 with a diverse slate of music acts in tow.

Mayor Paul Soglin and Chancellor David Ward invited the public into the newly expanded Chazen Art Museum Saturday with a ceremonial grand opening, music and guided tours.

The city of Madison said goodbye to a new friend over the weekend.

James Carroll was ordained a Catholic priest in 1969, then gave up the priesthood a short five years later. Those were turbulent years ? for Carroll and for the country. As a chaplain at Boston University, he was a self-described “radical priest” and anti-war activist, opposing U.S. involvement in Vietnam. His 1996 memoir, “An American Requiem: God, My Father, and the War that Came Between Us,” covers that difficult journey and won the National Book Award. Carroll, 68, a columnist for The Boston Globe, was in Madison last week for a series of events as a visiting fellow of the Lubar Institute for the Study of Abrahamic Religions at UW-Madison.

Live anywhere long enough and you?re likely to take good things for granted. That?s the way it is for me in Madison, where always-there treasures since 1970 have included a free-admission art museum on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus.

The Pro Arte Quartet has built its reputation as a group that champions new work. At the first concert of the ensemble?s centennial season, Walter Mays? new string quartet proved why that?s still a good idea.

Over the years, journalist Sonia Nazario has resisted taking a public position on illegal immigration, the defining topic of her career. Lately, though, having exited daily journalism for book writing, she is “gingerly walking toward” sharing more of her own thoughts on the issue, she said. Madison audiences will get to delve into the topic with Nazario this week when she visits the city for several days as part of Go Big Read, UW-Madison?s common-reading program. Nazario?s 2006 book, “Enrique?s Journey,” is this year?s pick.

Five-year-old Sarah Best admitted she was a little scared when she first crossed the new yellow glass walkway over the lobby at the Chazen Museum of Art.

“When you look down, it looks like you?re falling,” she said. But by the time Sarah had crossed six, eight or 10 times, she seemed quite comfortable with the tempered glass bridge in the newly expanded museum. Sarah and her family were among the crowd that attended Saturday?s open house celebrating the $43 million expansion of the museum on the UW-Madison campus.

The University of Wisconsin-Madison is proud to be the home of the Pro Arte Quartet, which is celebrating its centennial this year.