Category: Arts & Humanities

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.

Wisconsin?s newest art museum will be unveiled today. Actually, it is an old museum made new. The Chazen Museum of Art at the University of Wisconsin-Madison will unveil its $43 million addition, an 86,000-square-foot building that doubles the museum?s size.

Art lovers can soon see the latest addition to the Chazen Museum of Art on the UW-Madison campus. Donors funded the $43 million building, which officially opened Thursday. The building includes a 160 seat auditorium and more than doubles the current exhibition space. New galleries feature African, Asian and modern art.

“What a benefit to the community and the university to have a collection as rich as this and it?s the building that made it possible,” said Russell Panczenko, director of the Chazen Museum of Art.

For composer Walter Mays, writing a piece of music is a lot like writing a play.

?People have asked me, is it like painting, or is it like writing poetry?? Mays said. ?I think it?s more like writing for the stage. ?We write our pieces, and then we have to turn them over to the musicians, who are like the actors who present them to the public.? Mays? most recent composition was commissioned by the University of Wisconsin-Madison?s Pro Arte Quartet, which kicks off its centennial year on Saturday, Oct. 22, with a free concert in Mills Hall.

The performers at several spoken word events will also be working with poetry, but with the drama (and volume) turned up considerably. In what seems an unlikely genesis, the University of Wisconsin-Madison?s First Wave Hip Hop Theater Ensemble was born out of the Wisconsin Book Festival in 2003. That year, the book festival included a Latino/a Film Festival called “Cinefest.” As part of that, First Wave executive director Willie Ney brought in several spoken word artists, including educator and performer Marc Bamuthi Joseph. Bamuthi and several other poets “became influential allies to our program” at UW-Madison, Ney said. “There was not any institution of higher education that was tying their recruitment to this incredible network of spoken word artists.”

“Touchdown Hero” by famed regionalist painter John Steuart Curry will be included. While an artist in residence at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the 1930s and `40s, he was an avid Badgers fan and created this drawing of star player and co-captain David N. Schreiner, who died at Okinawa in 1945.

When Russell Panczenko, head of the Chazen Museum of Art on the UW-Madison campus, began fundraising efforts for a expansion more than a decade ago, he never expected any state support.

The Chazen Museum of Art at the University of Wisconsin, Madison is set to re-open on 22 October with an 86,000 sq. ft expanded building.

When supporters of the Chazen Museum of Art set out to nearly double the building?s size with a $43 million addition, a key goal was to seamlessly unite the museum?s existing structure with a new building via a bridge. Now, the aim is to build a stronger bridge from UW-Madison?s vastly expanded home for art to the larger Madison community. The Chazen opens its doors at noon Saturday to celebrate its enhanced presence on University Avenue with an open house, entertainment and tours of the 86,000-square-foot addition.

Assuming the mantle of modernity?s cheerleader, Steven Pinker?s new work on violence, and its apparent decline in the past 50 years, asserts that we are in is the most peaceable era of our species? existence, and that this is evident whether we are waging wars or spanking housewives and children.

In the three years since she joined the University of Wisconsin-Madison Dance Department (back when it was just a dance ?program?), assistant professor Kate Corby has proved herself willing to take risks.

Russell Panczenko, the director of the UW-Madison?s Chazen Museum of Art, is justifiably proud of the just-completed addition to the museum on University Avenue. Now he wants to show it off not only to the students and faculty, but to the people of Madison and the surrounding communities. That?s why next week, the Chazen has scheduled a series of open houses designed to accommodate everyone who wants to get a look at the state-of-the-art addition, which has been two years in the making and has more than doubled the gallery space right next door to the original Elvehjem building. We encourage anyone with an interest in art or even a passing curiosity about art to stop by.

A Tony and Obie award winner is artist in residence at the UW-Madison?s Arts Institute. But your kids might know him best for his work on SpongeBob SquarePants.

Andy Rubin, a master printer at UW-Madison?s Tandem Press since 1988, has worked with hundreds of graduate students over the years and exhibited his work in more than 50 national print competitions. A selection of Rubin?s work is on display through Dec. 15 in Bascom Hall?s new Academic Staff Art Gallery, founded last year to host semester-long exhibits of works by artists who serve on the university?s academic staff.

Decades before becoming an established molecular biologist, Bill McClain skipped school to feed his art habit. From fourth grade in suburban Chicago until he (just barely) graduated high school, the son of a high-fashion hat designer would cut class, jump on the El and head downtown to the Art Institute of Chicago and the Field Museum. McClain, today a professor emeritus at UW-Madison, is also an art donor whose finely honed collection of 130 pieces of Imagist art given to the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art is the basis of the museum?s current exhibition,

We?ve all had to deal with noisy, annoying neighbors at some point in our lives. Most of us deal with it by pounding on the walls or emailing the landlord.Two UW grads had the gumption to build an underground art project that people are still talking about 20 years later.

Joe Nosek has plenty of reasons to be pinching himself these days, but the first story you need to hear involves a tap, not a pinch. Nosek is an old-school blues guy. He?s only 36, but trust me, he is old-school blues.