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.
Today marked the opening of the Chazen Museum of Art?s other half. For the past two years, students have walked by another construction site. But today we welcome a new member to the university and Madison. The Chazen has doubled its size through an 86,000 square-foot extension. The project cost $43 million, an enormous community investment.
Since the groundbreaking ceremony of the Chazen Museum of Art?s expansion more than two and a half years ago, a diverse assortment of art lovers have anxiously awaited the opportunity to experience the new addition. This weekend marks the end of a long construction period, as the Chazen opens its doors to students, faculty and the community.
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.
As part of the Greater Madison Writing Project, University of Wisconsin students enrolled in English 100 will switch roles Wednesday morning to lead discussions covering this year?s Go Big Read book for Middleton high school students.
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.
The student and theater lounge addition on the north side of the Union Theater will be for open use by Memorial Union- and theater-goers after a vote by Union Council Tuesday.
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.
When this weekend?s Wisconsin Science Festival was in the planning stages, among the first to jump onboard were Madison artists and arts organizations. In its inaugural year, the festival is exploring the overlap between science and art. Says Laura Heisler, director of programming at the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, “The arts people got it more quickly than the science people.”
A recently published book by a University of Wisconsin economics professor highlights the reasons behind the country?s recent economic downturn and what U.S. citizens can do to improve the current economic climate.
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.
“We?re such a visual culture,” said Patricia Boyette, head of the acting and directing program at UW-Madison, and director of a performance of H.G. Wells? “The Time Machine” to be broadcast live at 8:30 p.m. Saturday on Wisconsin Public Radio (WPR). With radio drama, “it?s all about the voice,” she said. “It does appeal to the imagination; it?s not all spelled out for you.”
Les Thimmig was born the same year as Mick Jagger and only nine months ahead of Paul McCartney – but his true musical peers are the jazzmen of his Chicago-area youth. At age 6, Thimmig took up the clarinet, and by 13 was seated next to some of the top musicians of the 1950s, subbing in jazz bands and the pit for Broadway shows, and learning from the masters who set the stage for the rest of his career.
You could travel to the Museum of Modern Art in New York to see the work of Warrington Colescott and Frances Myers, or simply go to Grace Chosy Gallery, where an exhibit of their works titled “Thinking About War” runs until Oct. 1.
Rock, paper or scissors, everybody wins in ?Replay,? a playful piece choreographed by Jin-Wen Yu at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Originally made in 1995, ?Replay? casts young dancers as schoolchildren on a playground. The dancers jump as though playing hopscotch, spin beneath a tetherball, sway like trees and blow around the stage like autumn leaves.
Nearly 300 musicians will gather on the Overture Hall stage on the afternoon of Sunday, Sept. 11, to commemorate the terrorist attacks that shook the country 10 years ago on that day. But though the program acknowledges the fear and sorrow surrounding those devastating events, organist and director Gary Lewis hopes the concert?s ultimate message will be one of hope for a peaceful future.
….Part of the reason MMoCA chose 2011 to hail the Imagists was a gift of 100 works, received earlier this year, from longtime patron and collector William McClain. An emeritus professor from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in bacteriology, McClain grew up in the Chicago area but didn?t begin collecting until after he moved to Wisconsin in the early 1970s.
People know me as: Ryan Moldenhauer, a UW-Madison senior in music education and tenor/assistant music director with the Wisconsin Singers, a Broadway-caliber professional entertainment company featuring the best talents of UW-Madison.
Coming up next: We?ve just completed an intensive 18-day rehearsal period before going on the road to premiere our newest show, ?Starstruck!?
….this September?s Screening Room schedule at Sundance Cinemas, announced over the weekend, is a reunion of sorts for the two filmmakers. Fans of the series, indie, documentary and foreign flicks for which the usual Sundance amenities fees are waived, will be happy to see the upcoming schedule contains good films, and a lot of them. Most weeks have two new Screening Room movies opening, including favorites from this year’s Wisconsin Film Festival like the A Tribe Called Quest documentary “Beats, Rhymes and Life” and “Shut Up, Little Man,” a documentary made by two UW-Madison grads.
Quoted: Julia Murray, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who focuses on Chinese art.
We have reached that moment in the discussion ? begun last month in this space ? on whether it might be possible to move ?Nail?s Tales,? the Donald Lipski sculpture adjacent to Camp Randall Stadium that many people have regarded as an eyesore, to put it kindly, ever since it was unveiled in 2005.
The dozens of readers who responded to my whimsical ?Good Doug/Bad Doug? column Monday about the Camp Randall Stadium sculpture known as ?Nail?s Tales? should take heart. In the words of one, Carl Strayer of Fort Atkinson, ?Dreams can come true.?
The overwhelming majority of respondents agreed with my contention that after a fair trial ? more than five years ? the Donald Lipski sculpture that resembles nothing so much as a diseased appendage unique to the male anatomy remains so reviled in Madison that it needs to be moved to someplace less prominent.
A professor at UW-Oshkosh has been awarded the 2011 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Prize, in a contest that asks writers to submit the worst possible opening sentence to an imaginary novel.
Mindset Lists began as a simple way to help professors at Beloit College better relate to their students. Now, on a larger scale, the lists have proven to be a mesmerizing way to retell American history. College officials Tom McBride and Ron Nief developed the first Mindset List in 1998. It offered scores of one-liners describing events that happened before the incoming freshmen were born, reminding professors that references to those events could draw blank stares.
For more than five years now, Good Doug, who always looks on the bright side, had been trying to embrace the sculpture outside Camp Randall Stadium known as “Nail?s Tales.”
“I kept thinking it would grow on me,” Good Doug said. Bad Doug, who believes it is always darkest just before it turns pitch black, hated the sculpture when it was unveiled in November 2005, and he hates it even more now.
“It grows on you,” Bad Doug said. “Like a goiter.”
Noted: Mills Music Library at UW-Madison recently ran an 18-month ukulele exhibit.
Jamie-Rose Guarrine as has been working consistently since graduating with a doctorate in musical arts in performance from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. She said earning the doctorate may not have been the most traditional method of going into opera (many singers attend conservatories, like Julliard in New York City) but that hard work is what is important.
The 12th annual Madison Early Music Festival runs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison through Sunday, July 16. This year, the theme is ?El Nuevo Mundo: The Age of Exploration in the New World,? and upcoming performers include Ensemble Viscera, a group of guitars and voices, and the quartet Chatham Baroque.
People know me as: David Furumoto, associate professor in the UW-Madison theater department and currently its director of theater production. I?m also an actor, director, playwright and in Japanese traditional dance circles have the professional name of Onoe Kikunobuhide. I play the Highland bagpipes and have accompanied Celtic fusion dancers at programs here in Madison. I also love collecting ghost stories and folk tales.
In University Theatre?s summer musical, four friends will play four friends who played … themselves.
“[title of show]” is a 2005 musical about making a musical with nothing more than four chairs, a piano and a goofy idea. In an early song, Hunter Bell asks Jeff Bowen: “What if the first scene was just us talking about what to write? We could put this exact conversation in the show.” And they do.
The Madison Early Music Festival heads south this year, with works created in Mexico and South America between the 16th and 18th centuries. Entitled “El Nuevo Mundo: The Age of Exploration in the New World,” this year?s fest opens Saturday, July 9, at 7:30 p.m. with a performance by Piffaro, the Renaissance Band. Pre-show lectures introduce each show at 6:30 p.m. in Morphy Recital Hall, and each performance is in Mills Hall, both located at 455 N. Park St. on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus.
A music group run by UW-Madison students will be featured on a nationally-televised reality singing show called “America Sings.” The Wisconsin Singers will be showcased on the GMC-TV show on Wednesday, July 6, hosted by Drew Lachey, former member of the pop group 98 Degrees.
After the excitable crowds on the Memorial Union Terrace marvel at Madison?s annual Rhythm & Booms fireworks display taking place across the lake at Warner Park on Saturday, July 2, they?ll be greeted by an unlikely sight in Bill Callahan. The introspective singer-songwriter is not the first performer who comes to mind when one thinks of who should headline a day-long party capped by thunderous fireworks.
Noted: In October a new wing at the Chazen Museum of Art at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, will display about 30 Lalique objects. The Chazen goblets, vases and perfume bottles are molded with pine needles, grapes, butterflies, scarabs, parakeets and grasshoppers.
Geoff Herbach sensed a lack of smart literature aimed at teen boys. So he wrote a book called ?Stupid Fast.? Herbach, a Platteville native and UW-Madison grad who now teaches creative writing at Minnesota State University in Mankato, created a protagonist, Felton Reinstein, whose infectious energy nearly leaps off the page.
People know me as: Samantha Crownover, executive director of Bach Dancing & Dynamite Society. It?s my mainstay and I?ve been at it for 13 seasons. BDDS is celebrating its 20th season and that is very exciting for a chamber music festival in Madison.
I also do some art consulting, ranging from projects such as the Art Enterprise Initiative at UW-Madison to helping clients select and hang visual art in their home or business. I also manage a historic building downtown, the Baskerville Condominiums, because the level of detail and craftsmanship in many of our older buildings is so beautiful and worth caring for.
After a successful 10-year run, “In Wisconsin” has been cancelled by Wisconsin Public Television. Patty Loew, a professor at UW-Madison and the show?s host, said she was disappointed by the cancellation of the news and documentary program, but has fond memories of her time with the show.
“It was a program that reached into communities all over the state and I worked with some really talented people,” she said. The show?s cancellation comes after a large number of staff retirements and turnover, according to Kathy Bissen, director of production at WPT.
Maybe to encourage a little horse-trading of ideas among people of good will from both ends of the political spectrum, the next exorbitantly paid UW-Madison chancellor could choose something on the Socratic Method for an upcoming Go Big Read program.
Simon Chen, a leading diesel engine expert who donated a $1.5 million collection of modern Chinese art to the UW-Madison?s Chazen Museum of Art in 2007, died last week at age 85. He earned a master?s in mechanical engineering at the University of Michigan and his Ph.D. at UW-Madison.
Images with a message are the subject of the Chazen Museum of Art?s current exhibition of prints, drawn from the 16th century to the present.
Madison?s Forward Theater Company came on the scene in 2009 with ?All About Eve,? broadcast as a radio play on Wisconsin Public Radio. In the leading role of Broadway star Margo Channing was none other than one of the area?s grande dames of performance: Colleen Burns.
A graduate of UW-Madison, Burns had appeared on well-known stages across the country, including in New York, Chicago and Milwaukee. Her works as a playwright and composer with collaborator Jack Forbes Wilson premiered at Milwaukee Repertory Theatre and Madison Repertory Theatre and won the writing team the Dale Wasserman Award for Musical Theatre Composition. Burns also was a founding member of Beloit?s New Court Theatre and its artistic director in 2007 and 2008.
Quoted: Andrew Taylor, director of UW-Madison?s Bolz Center for Arts Administration.
People sometimes ask Henry Sapoznik why he is starting an institute for Yiddish culture in, of all places, Wisconsin. He responds with a surprising fact ? UW-Madison was very likely the first university in the country to teach a class on Yiddish, a language once spoken by millions of Eastern European Jews.
?The first university in America that was teaching Yiddish was Madison in 1916,? Sapoznik said. ?There isn?t one book on Jewish American history that acknowledges that fact. Every other narrative goes to the low-hanging fruit. It goes to New York or Philadelphia.? The new UW-Madison Mayrent Institute for Yiddish Culture ? for which Sapoznik is director ? received its first shipment of Yiddish audio records last week. It is named for Sherry Mayrent, who donated her collection of some 7,500 78 rpm records to the university. Mayrent and her wife, Carol Master, jointly donated $1 million to endow the institute. The center is unique because it focuses on Yiddish culture, not just the language. The hope is that it will become a draw for people who want to study the collection.
Much of the UW-Madison campus will be reading “Enrique?s Journey” next fall. The book, by Pulitzer-prize winning journalist Sonia Nazario, is Chancellor Biddy Martin?s selection for the third annual common book read program, Go Big Read.
Quoted: Andrew Taylor, director of UW-Madison?s Bolz Center for Arts Administration.
Quoted: James Smith, who conducts the University Symphony Orchestra at UW-Madison.
The Pro Arte Quartet, one of the country?s oldest quartets-in-residence, will celebrate 100 years of performance and education this coming year with substantial help from a $40,000 National Endowment for the Arts grant. Sarah Schaffer, the ensemble?s manager, announced on Monday that with the $40,000 from the NEA?s Access to Artistic Excellence category, fundraising has risen to more than $300,000 toward the overall $460,000 goal.
People know me as: John Stevens, UW-Madison professor of tuba and euphonium; tubist with the Wisconsin Brass Quintet, a university faculty ensemble-in-residence; and a composer, arranger and conductor.
Jeremi Suri has fielded outside job offers before. But in the past, the history professor always turned down more lucrative overtures to remain at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. That changed this week when the highly regarded expert of international history and American foreign policy decided to take his talents to the University of Texas at Austin.
….”Quite frankly, I feel guilty about leaving,” says Suri. “I’ve been treated very well here. But I also think this shows the need for granting (UW-Madison) more flexibilities. And if our institution isn’t given the resources or allowed more flexibility from state oversight, we’re going to be stuck in place. I’m very worried about future retention here and having the resources to do the kinds of innovative work that’s necessary to remain a great university.”
