Kaitlynn and Christi will combine a vast palette of colors and sounds within their respective instruments of flute and trumpet. Their music, which we will be performing works that they have personally composed, brings to life the diversity of human emotions that many people feel and go through, that they believe are not represented enough within their community. 

Abstraction, Color, and Politics in the Early 1970s explores large-scale works of art by Helen Frankenthaler, Louise Nevelson, Sam Gilliam, and Al Loving, within the context of highly-charged debates of the early 1970s about aesthetics, politics, race, and feminism. This exhibition explores the gendered and racialized terms upon which great art was defined and assessed, and the strategy of artists to question the identity and aesthetics of the artist making the art. UMMA docents will help visitors look through the lens of the four artists’ works to explore the aesthetic choices inherent in abstraction as well as the acts of staining, pouring, draping, —or even taking apart the wall itself—within this charged political context.

In conjunction with the exhibition Art in the Age of the Internet, 1989 to Today, UMMA and Vault of Midnight-Ann Arbor partner to present a book club that will read and discuss three comic books that explore some of the extreme possibilities of life in the age of the internet. Books include: The Private Eye (January 20), Snot Girl vol. 1 (February 17), and Bitch Planet vol 1 (March 10). Pick and choose your favorites or come to the whole series. Books will be available for sale at Vault of Midnight. All are invited to read and participate. Please note that these comic books deal with mature material.

Join the Michigan Community Scholars Program on the Diag for the 13th annual MLK Circle of Unity, celebrating the life of Dr. King and his legacy of racial justice, nonviolence, and unity.

Featuring performances and local musician favorites, Joe Reilly and Julie Beutel. Families and children welcome!

Storytelling is one of the oldest forms of educational entertainment known to mankind. From the West African tradition of the Griot to modern day Moth events, storytelling environments have served as a means to pass along history, shape culture, share helpful lessons, and establish a sense of belonging and community.

The U-M Comprehensive Studies Program and Department of Afroamerican and African Studies invite you to explore themes related to campus life, coming of age, and learning and growing, at this series of Moth Style Storyteller Lounge events. Storytellers include students, faculty and staff, and Voices of Wisdom (alums or community members).​ 

Light food and refreshments will be served in the Commons at 6:30 prior to the start of the program. 

Value the Voice will take place on Tuesdays, September 18, November 13, January 22, March 19, 7 p.m. UMMA Auditorium.

For more information, please contact Keith Jason at mrjason@umich.edu or 734-764-9128

Born in Seoul, South Korea, JuYeon Kim works and lives in New York. She has shown in both solo and group exhibitions nationally and internationally, including NY, Washington DC, Shanghai, and Seoul. Additionally, Kim has been awarded several residencies such as MacDowell Colony, Kohler AIR, Triangle, and the Roswell Art in Residence Fellowship. Kim has also held several positions as a visiting artist and professor. A 2018-2019 Roman Witt Resident, Kim is creating a multi-media installation work in collaboration with the Stamps School community and composer George Tsontakis that seeks to explore themes around Korean “comfort women”— the female prisoners of the Japanese army during WWII.

Elif Batuman has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 2010. She is the author of the novel, The Idiot, and The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her stories have been anthologized in the 2014 Best American Travel Writing and the 2010 Best American Essays collections. She is the recipient of a Whiting Writers’ Award, a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award, and a Paris Review Terry Southern Prize for Humor. Batuman holds a doctoral degree in comparative literature from Stanford University. From 2010 to 2013, she was writer-in-residence at Koç University, in Istanbul. She lives in New York.

Organized by U-M students for U-M students, and inspired by the exhibition Art in the Age of the Internet, the 10th annual Student Late Night event at UMMA will be a fun-filled creative explosion!

Come to the party and enjoy some of the best fun that the digital age has to offer! Participate in live collaborative art making, motion graphics, and sound mixing. Have fun at the Silent Disco, snag some free food, and have a blast! Don’t miss it or you will be one grumpy cat.

Hosted by the Student Collective at UMMA in partnership with Maize Collective.

Student Docents explore love and death, politics and humor, history, mythology, materiality, fashion, food, and other ideas in these short & sweet 15-minute peeks at the UMMA collection. Meet at the UMMA Store.

Student Docents explore love and death, politics and humor, history, mythology, materiality, fashion, food, and other ideas in these short & sweet 15-minute peeks at the UMMA collection. Meet at the UMMA Store.

Anne Basting, founder and CEO of the award-winning TimeSlips Creative Storytelling program will give a talk on her work to create meaning and connection with those living with memory loss. Basting is recognized as an international expert in community-engaged arts practices and the author of several books, including Forget Memory: Creating Better Lives for People with Dementia.  She is an advocate for the arts as an integral element in our care systems.  Basting is a Professor of Theater at University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee and a MacArthur Fellow.

TimeSlips is evidence-based, award-winning and person centered, bringing meaning and purpose into the lives of elders through creative engagement. TimeSlips strives to inspire others to see beyond memory loss and recognize the strength of people with dementia. Says Basting: “We transform aging care by building Creative Communities of Care that engage elders, volunteers, staff and families.”

Research suggests that TIMESLIPS can:

• Increase the quality and quantity of interactions between staff and residents in care settings
• Improve caregiver attitudes toward aging and people with dementia
• Reduce psychotropic medications by decreasing contributing factors of anxiety and depression
• Improve affect and communication among people with dementia
• Decrease distressed behaviors among people with dementia
• Increase social engagement among people with dementia

This talk is free of charge and all are welcome: care partners and care givers, professionals including physicians, nurses, social workers and others, artists and performers, as well as people with memory loss and their family and friends, are encouraged to attend. 

TimeSlips: The Freedom to Imagine is offered in conjunction with UMMA’s Meet Me at UMMA programs for people with memory loss, with support from the National Endowment for the Arts and other generous donors who support Meet Me.

Storytime at the Museum promotes art enjoyment for our youngest patrons. We read a story in the galleries and include a fun, age-appropriate, hands-on activity related it. Children ages three to six are invited to join Storytime. Parents must accompany children. Siblings are welcome to join the group. Meet in front of the UMMA Store.

Using humor, contemporary pop culture references, and possibly games, U-M student improv groups lead unconventional tours of the UMMA collection.

Emily Slomovits is an Ann Arbor-based musician, actress and teacher. She will be playing a mixture of classical violin pieces and fiddle tunes accompanied by Billy King from around the world at UMMA. Emily regularly plays music with her father and uncle, the duo, Gemini, as well as Annie and Rod Capps, and many other local musicians. She is a member of Spinning Dot Theatre, and has also been seen with The Encore Musical Theatre Company, The Croswell Opera House, Performance Network, and Wild Swan Theatre. Emily helps to lead Spinning Dot's Youth Company, and teaches violin, voice, and guitar for Manchester's Cultural Arts Strings program and the Grass Lake School of Music. She writes regular theatre and music previews and reviews for Current Magazine, PULP, and The Washtenaw Jewish News. 

Billy King is a seasoned performer, songwriter and recording artist. His presence in the independent music scene brings an original blend of rootsy folk/pop with an occasional touch of country swing. Billy's versatility as a multi-genre singer-songwriter is matched by his ability on a wide range of instruments from guitar and banjo to keyboards and accordion. Some of Billy's performance highlights include performing at the The Ark, Ann Arbor Summer Festival, Detroit Art's Beat & Eats, Blind Pig and many more. 

The internet has changed every aspect of contemporary life—from how we interact with each other to how we work and play. Art in the Age of the Internet, 1989 to Today, examines the radical impact of internet culture on visual art since the invention of the web in 1989. Join UMMA docents as they explore the more than forty works across a variety of media—painting, performance, photography, sculpture, video, and web-based projects—in this exciting exhibition.

In response to the Virtual Worlds considered in the exhibition Art in the Age of the Internet, SMTD professor and video game music specialist Matthew Thompson explores the dichotomy of real/unreal in a live performance of new analog transcriptions of favorite video game soundtracks, joined by undergraduate and graduate piano students from his studio. 

Art in the Age of the Internet, 1989 to Today, on view at UMMA from December 15, 2018 to April 7, 2019, examines the radical impact of internet culture on visual art since the invention of the web in 1989. The exhibition presents more than forty works across a variety of media—painting, performance, photography, sculpture, video, and web-based projects. It features work by some of the most important artists working today, including Judith Barry, Juliana Huxtable, Pierre Huyghe, Josh Kline, Laura Owens, Trevor Paglen, Seth Price, Cindy Sherman, Frances Stark, and Martine Syms.

Open galleries from 4-5 p.m. will be hosted by UMMA staff. At 5 p.m. participants will convene for an open discussion about the exhibit. The conversation will begin with a dialogue between the artist Osman Khan (U-M School of Art and Design) and the cultural critic Anna Watkins Fisher (U-M American Culture) facilitated by Jennifer Robertson (Art History and Anthropology). Meet in the exhibition in the A. Alfred Taubman I gallery on floor 2 of the Alumni Memorial Hall wing the the Museum.

Student Docents explore love and death, politics and humor, history, mythology, materiality, fashion, food, and other ideas in these short & sweet 15-minute peeks at the UMMA collection. ​Meet at the UMMA Store.

Student Docents explore love and death, politics and humor, history, mythology, materiality, fashion, food, and other ideas in these short & sweet 15-minute peeks at the UMMA collection. ​Meet at the UMMA Store.

One MFA student of fiction and one of poetry, each introduced by a peer, will read their work. The Mark Webster Reading Series presents emerging writers in a warm and relaxed setting. We encourage you to bring your friends - a Webster reading makes for an enjoyable and enlightening Friday evening.

This week's reading features Rachel Ann Girty and Justin Balog. 
 
Rachel Ann Girty is a writer and classical mezzo-soprano from Southfield, Michigan. The farthest west she's ever been is the Kansas-Missouri state line. 

Justin Balog is a writer and arts administrator from Beach Park, IL. He is a first authored, scientist with work appearing in the Journal of Cerebral Blood Flow & Metabolism.

Construct an impossible but believable story in the manner of Patrick Nagatani's imaginative photographs featured in the UMMA exhibition of his work Proof: The Rioichi Excavations. In this workshop, we will create fantastical stories through collaging found images. We will explore the meaning that is implied when images of living forms, objects, and other things that could not have met in the same place and time, meet in your work. UMMA docents will lead a tour of the exhibition, followed by a hands-on workshop with local artist Adrian Deva. Designed for families with children of ages six and above. Parents must be present during the workshop. 

Student Docents or other facilitators will be on hand to provide free sketching materials and facilitate your experience of looking and drawing. Beginners welcome! Meet at the UMMA Store.

Construct an impossible but believable story in the manner of Patrick Nagatani's imaginative photographs featured in the UMMA exhibition of his work Proof: The Rioichi Excavations. In this workshop, we will create fantastical stories through collaging found images. We will explore the meaning that is implied when images of living forms, objects, and other things that could not have met in the same place and time, meet in your work. UMMA docents will lead a tour of the exhibition, followed by a hands-on workshop with local artist Adrian Deva. Designed for families with children of ages six and above. Parents must be present during the workshop. 

On the occasion of the exhibition Art in the Age of the Internet, UMMA and Vault of Midnight-Ann Arbor have partnered up to form the UMMA Book Club: The Age of the Internet in Comic Books. Join David Choberka, Andrew W. Mellon Manager of Academic Outreach & Teaching, for a discussion in the gallery that connects the art on view to themes in the selected comics. Open to anyone, regardless of participation in the book club. Meet at the UMMA Store.

Chinese artist Wang Qingsong’s 2018 work The Bloodstained Shirt restages in Highland Park, Michigan, an iconic 1959 drawing by Wang Shikuo of peasants rising up against a cruel landlord and triumphantly reclaiming their right to the land. Wang’s projects are usually located in China, but while visiting southeast Michigan he was struck by the similarities between the effects of inequitable real estate development on local communities in Detroit, Highland Park, and his native Beijing. His large-scale photograph in the UMMA exhibition Wang Qingsong/Detroit/Beijing features more than seventy volunteers from the greater Detroit community and University of Michigan. Eight months later, Michigan residents created a work of protest banners in collaboration with Wang, also included in the exhibition. Join the artist to hear more about the evolution of this project, from the initial idea to a larger project connecting the two urban centers.

Light refreshments and open gallery after the program. 

The story of Japanese archaeologist Ryoichi and evidence of his worldwide excavations are
explored by Patrick Nagatani in this series of photographs. Nagatani presents a narrative of
Ryoichi’s archeological work, supported by images of excavation sites, unearthed artifacts, and
Ryoichi’s own journal pages. According to the photographs, Ryoichi discovered evidence of an
automobile culture buried at sites across several continents: Stonehenge, the Grand Canyon,
and a necropolis in China. Docents will introduce this provocative and playful series that compels viewers to reflect on how photographs and institutions, such as museums, shape our
knowledge of the past and present.

The University of Michigan School of Social Work is pleased to present NYC-based artist, DJ and poet Juliana Huxtable on the occasion of the 2018 Martin Luther King, Jr. Symposium. Huxtable's work probes the perception and presentation of identity, history and online communities.  Huxtable will present a new iteration of her performance work highlighting her compelling use of language, and collaborations in music, projection, and lighting design.  Featuring instrumental performances by her frequent collaborators, the pianist, percussionist, and composer Joe Heffernan, Detroit-based harpist Ahya Simone with lighting design by Michael Potvin. Huxtable’s explorations invite us to contemplate the power and powerlessness of the body as well as its dispossession in relation to technology, violence, and blackness. Her performance marks Michigan Social Work’s first commissioned artist in over 20 years, as a part of the Social Justice Art Collection. 

Huxtable’s work is included in Art in the Age of the Internet, 1989 to Today on view at the University of Michigan Museum of Art from December 15, 2018 to April 7, 2019. Organized by the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, the exhibition examines the radical impact of internet culture on visual art since the invention of the web in 1989. This exhibition presents more than forty works across a variety of media—painting, performance, photography, sculpture, video, and web-based projects. It features work by some of the most important artists working today, including Judith Barry, Juliana Huxtable, Pierre Huyghe, Josh Kline, Laura Owens, Trevor Paglen, Seth Price, Cindy Sherman, Frances Stark, and Martine Syms.

Huxtable will also give a Penny W. Stamps Distinguished Speaker Series Lecture at 5:10 p.m. on February 7, 2018 at the Michigan Theater.

The iconic Juliana Huxtable is an American artist, writer, performer, and musician. Exploring the intersections of race, gender, queerness, technology and identity, Huxtable uses a diverse set of means to engage these issues, including self-portraiture, text-based prints, performance, nightlife, music, writing, and social media. Huxtable does not privilege any method over another, and the lines between different forms of her work are often fluid. This approach aids Huxtable in her ongoing critiques of existing social norms and categorical distinctions while indicating alternate, more hopeful possibilities. Huxtable references her own body and history as a transgender African American woman as she challenges the socio-political and cultural forces that inform normative conceptions of gender and sexuality. Huxtable’s Art and Performance work has been featured at Roskilde Festival, Denmark (2018), ReWire Festival, Netherlands (2018), Park Avenue Armory, New York (2018), Reena Spauldings, Solo show, New York (2017), Project Native Informant, London UK, (2017) MoMA PS1, New York (2014); “Take Ecstasy with Me,” Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2014); Frieze Projects, London (2014); and 2015 Triennial: Surround Audience, New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York (2015); among other venues. She lives and works in New York, where she is the founder and DJ for Shock Value. And part of House of Ladosha a nightlife collective run by artists, DJs, writers, and fashion icons.​

Huxtable’s work is included in Art in the Age of the Internet, 1989 to Today on view at the University of Michigan Museum of Art from December 15, 2018 to April 7, 2019. Organized by the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, the exhibition examines the radical impact of internet culture on visual art since the invention of the web in 1989. This exhibition presents more than forty works across a variety of media—painting, performance, photography, sculpture, video, and web-based projects. It features work by some of the most important artists working today, including Judith Barry, Juliana Huxtable, Pierre Huyghe, Josh Kline, Laura Owens, Trevor Paglen, Seth Price, Cindy Sherman, Frances Stark, and Martine Syms.

Ada Limón is the author of five books of poetry, including Bright Dead Things, which was named a finalist for the 2015 National Book Award in Poetry, a finalist for the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, a finalist for the 2016 National Book Critics Circle Award, and one of the Top Ten Poetry Books of the Year by The New York Times. Her other books include Lucky Wreck, This Big Fake World, and Sharks in the Rivers. Her new collection, The Carrying, was released by Milkweed Editions in August of 2018 and has been called “her best yet” by NPR, “remarkable” by The New York Times, “exquisite” by The Washington Post, and one of the Ten Titles to Pick Up Now by O Magazine. She
serves on the faculty of Queens University of Charlotte Low Residency M.F.A program, and the 24Pearl Street online program for the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center. She also works as a freelance writer in Lexington, Kentucky.

Student Docents explore love and death, politics and humor, history, mythology, materiality, fashion, food, and other ideas in these short & sweet 15-minute peeks at the UMMA collection. ​Meet at the UMMA Store.

Student Docents explore love and death, politics and humor, history, mythology, materiality, fashion, food, and other ideas in these short & sweet 15-minute peeks at the UMMA collection. ​Meet at the UMMA Store.

On the occasion of the UMMA exhibition Paul Rand: A Designer’s Task, please join noted design writer, author, and educator Steven Heller for his talk “Paul Rand: A Designer’s Scribbles” where he will share never-before-seen sketches by Rand and discuss how they influenced his advertising work.

Steven Heller, is the co-chair with Lita Talarico of the MFA Design / Designer as Author + Entrepreneur program and the SVA Masters Workshop in Rome. He writes the Visuals column for The New York Times Book Review, a weekly column for The Atlantic online and The Daily Heller / Imprint online. He has written more than 180 books on graphic design, illustration and political art, including The Design Entrepreneur  (with Lita Talarico), Paul Rand, Merz to Emigre and Beyond: Avant Garde Magazine Design of the Twentieth Century, Design Literacy: Understanding Graphic Design, Citizen Designer, Stylepedia: A Guide to Graphic Design Mannerisms, Quirks, and Conceits (with Louise Fili), The Anatomy of Design: Uncovering the Influences and Inspirations in Modern Graphic Design (with Mirko Ilic), Iron Fists: Branding the 20th Century Totalitarian State and 100 Ideas that Changed Graphic Design. He is/was a contributing editor for Print, Baseline, Design Observer, Eye. Heller is the recipient of the Eric Carle Award, Art Directors Club Special Educators Award, the AIGA Medal for Lifetime Achievement, the School of Visual Arts’ Masters Series Award and the 2011 National Design Award for "Design Mind." He has received two honorary doctorates from The College for Creative Studies in Detroit and The Ladislav Sutnar Faculty at the University of West Bohemia in the Czech Republic.

Student Docents or other facilitators will be on hand to provide free sketching materials and facilitate your experience of looking and drawing. Beginners welcome! Meet at the UMMA Store.

Participate in the ancient practice of yoga in the beautiful surroundings of the Museum of Art. This will be gentle yoga, especially appropriate for students in the throes of midterms, led by a U-M RecSports teacher. All levels and community members welcome. This event is free but registration is required. Please bring your own yoga mat.​

Paul Rand was a giant of American design whose influential career spanned the second half of the twentieth century. His visionary and pithy conceptions of corporate and non-profit brand identities—though often graphically minimal—embody the artist’s complex philosophy, interest in modernist aesthetics, and singular wit. This exhibition features posters, book covers, and packaging designs from the entirety of Rand’s career. Visit Paul Rand: The Designer’s Task with an UMMA docent to explore the genre of graphic design within the context of the art museum and examine how Rand’s intellectual process and impact on visual culture developed over time.

The Internet structures most aspects of our lives today. Beyond just allowing us to access infinite amounts of information at lightening speed, it has also altered the way we interact with each other and our environment. While Google, Amazon, Facebook, & Apple (GAFA) remain the predominant gatekeepers of the how we access the Internet, a large portion of the web remains hidden to most of us. In this interactive tour Abhishek Narula, MFA student at the Stamps School of Art & Design, will lead us through exploration of the hidden parts of the Internet. In this discussion, in dialogue with a selection of artworks in the UMMA exhibition of Art in the Age of the Internet, 1989 to Today, Narula will help uncover the conceptual inner workings of the Internet at large. Culminating in a curated tour of the Deep Web, we will explore parts of the web that one cannot access through GAFA. Visitors are encouraged to bring their smart phones.

Beijing opera performer, Li Yang, who specializes in the jing role, will bring to the stage a unique presentation of the visual power of face painting along with his skills in vocal performance.  One of the most intriguing figures in Chinese opera is the jing or painted face role—the character type for warriors, generals, bandits and gods whose brilliant face makeup reveals each individual’s emotions, flaws, and strengths. Join the U-M Lieberthal-Rogel Center for Chinese Studies, and The Confucius Institute to experience the full power of the jing role, by witnessing the effect of this visual spectacle combined with vocal virtuosity.
 
The artist’s residency is part of a series of events during the Lunar New Year in February 2019 highlighting contemporary Chinese artists and coincides with the UMMA exhibition Wang Qingsong/Detroit/Beijing (February 2 - May 26, 2019).

For over thirty years Carrie Mae Weems, through the use of image, text, film, and video, has created a complex body of work that centers on her overarching commitment to helping us better understand our present moment by examining our collective past.  As a result of this work, Weems has received numerous awards, grants, and fellowships including the MacArthur “Genius” grant; US Department of State’s Medals of Arts; Joseph H. Hazen Rome Prize Fellowship from the American Academy in Rome; the National Endowment of the Arts; and the Louis Comfort Tiffany Award, among many others.
 
Her artwork is included in public and private collections nationally and internationally including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY; Tate Modern, London, England; the Museum of Modern Art, NY and Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, SF, CA. Weems is represented by Jack Shainman Gallery, New York.

Major Jackson is the author of four books of poetry, including Roll Deep (2015), Holding Company (2010), Hoops (2006) and Leaving Saturn (2002), which won the Cave Canem Poetry Prize for a first book of poems. He is the editor of Library of America’s Countee Cullen: Collected Poems. A recipient of fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Guggenheim Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, Major Jackson has been awarded a Pushcart Prize, a Whiting Writers’ Award, and has been honored by the Pew Fellowship in the Arts and the Witter Bynner Foundation in conjunction with the Library of Congress. He has published poems and essays in American Poetry Review, Callaloo, The New Yorker, The New York Times Book Review, Paris Review, Ploughshares, Poetry, Tin House, and included in multiple volumes of Best American Poetry. Major Jackson lives in South Burlington, Vermont, where he is the Richard Dennis Green and Gold University Distinguished Professor at the University of Vermont. He serves as the Poetry Editor of The Harvard Review.

Student Docents explore love and death, politics and humor, history, mythology, materiality, fashion, food, and other ideas in these short & sweet 15-minute peeks at the UMMA collection. ​Meet at the UMMA Store.

Student Docents explore love and death, politics and humor, history, mythology, materiality, fashion, food, and other ideas in these short & sweet 15-minute peeks at the UMMA collection. ​Meet at the UMMA Store.

Using humor, contemporary pop culture references, and possibly games, U-M student improv groups lead unconventional tours of the UMMA collection.

Abstraction, Color, and Politics in the Early 1970s explores large-scale works of art by Helen Frankenthaler, Louise Nevelson, Sam Gilliam, and Al Loving, within the context of highly-charged debates of the early 1970s about aesthetics, politics, race, and feminism. This exhibition explores the gendered and racialized terms upon which great art was defined and assessed, and the strategy of artists to question the identity and aesthetics of the artist making the art. UMMA docents will help visitors look through the lens of the four artists’ works to explore the aesthetic choices inherent in abstraction as well as the acts of staining, pouring, draping, —or even taking apart the wall itself—within this charged political context.

In conjunction with the exhibition Art in the Age of the Internet, 1989 to Today, UMMA and Vault of Midnight-Ann Arbor partner to present a book club that will read and discuss three comic books that explore some of the extreme possibilities of life in the age of the internet. Books include: The Private Eye (January 20), Snot Girl vol. 1 (February 17), and Bitch Planet vol 1 (March 10). Pick and choose your favorites or come to the whole series. Books will be available for sale at Vault of Midnight. All are invited to read and participate. Please note that these comic books deal with mature material.

Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha (she/they) is a queer disabled nonbinary femme writer and cultural worker of Burger/Tamil Sri Lankan and Irish/Roma ascent. Leah's work has been widely published and anthologized, most recently in The Deaf Poets Society, Glitter and Grit, and Octavia's Brood, including work in the anthologies Dear Sister, Persistence: Still Butch and Femme, and Visible: A Femmethology, among others. A VONA fellow, she holds an MFA from Mills College. In 2010, she was named one of the Feminist Press' 40 Feminists Under 40 Shaping the Future, and she is a 2013 Autostraddle Hot 105 member.

Join Leah and the Spectrum Center for a conversation on the intersection of queerness, race, and disability in today's society. Leah will treat us with her latest work on the aforementioned topics and bring us to her own world. 

Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha is part of a series of keynote speakers Spectrum Center is hosting on campus covering radical queer advocacy and activism work in collaboration with several departments and student organizations at University of Michigan. 

Student Docents explore love and death, politics and humor, history, mythology, materiality, fashion, food, and other ideas in these short & sweet 15-minute peeks at the UMMA collection. ​Meet at the UMMA Store.

Student Docents explore love and death, politics and humor, history, mythology, materiality, fashion, food, and other ideas in these short & sweet 15-minute peeks at the UMMA collection. ​Meet at the UMMA Store.

One MFA student of fiction and one of poetry, each introduced by a peer, will read their work. The Mark Webster Reading Series presents emerging writers in a warm and relaxed setting. We encourage you to bring your friends—a Webster reading makes for an enjoyable and enlightening Friday evening.

This week's reading features Rachel Cross and Eirill Falck.

Rachel Cross is a writer from the Midwest. Her fiction has appeared in SmokeLong Quarterly, Fugue, Day One, and elsewhere. You can find her online at rcross.net.

Eirill Falck, is a writer from Oslo, Norway.

Storytime at the Museum promotes art enjoyment for our youngest patrons. We read a story in the galleries and include a fun, age-appropriate, hands-on activity related to it. Children ages three to six are invited to join Storytime. Parents must accompany children. Siblings are welcome to join the group. Meet in front of the UMMA Store.

Student Docents or other facilitators will be on hand to provide free sketching materials and facilitate your experience of looking and drawing. Beginners welcome! Meet at the UMMA Store.

The internet has changed every aspect of contemporary life—from how we interact with each other to how we work and play. Art in the Age of the Internet, 1989 to Today, examines the radical impact of internet culture on visual art since the invention of the web in 1989. Join UMMA docents as they explore the more than forty works across a variety of media—painting, performance, photography, sculpture, video, and web-based projects—in this exciting exhibition.

One MFA student of fiction and one of poetry, each introduced by a peer, will read their work. The Mark Webster Reading Series presents emerging writers in a warm and relaxed setting. We encourage you to bring your friends - a Webster reading makes for an enjoyable and enlightening Friday evening.

This week's reading features Colin Shephard and Augusta Funk. 

Colin Shepherd is a writer and editor from New York City. 

Augusta Laurel Funk was raised in Southwest Montana and Northeast Ohio. Her poems and reviews have appeared or are forthcoming in Tinderbox, Passages North, Meridian, and other journals. She's a Scorpio.

Abstraction, Color, and Politics in the Early 1970s explores large-scale works of art by Helen Frankenthaler, Louise Nevelson, Sam Gilliam, and Al Loving, within the context of highly-charged debates of the early 1970s about aesthetics, politics, race, and feminism. This exhibition explores the gendered and racialized terms upon which great art was defined and assessed, and the strategy of artists to question the identity and aesthetics of the artist making the art. UMMA docents will help visitors look through the lens of the four artists’ works to explore the aesthetic choices inherent in abstraction as well as the acts of staining, pouring, draping, —or even taking apart the wall itself—within this charged political context.

In conjunction with the exhibition Art in the Age of the Internet, 1989 to Today, UMMA and Vault of Midnight-Ann Arbor partner to present a book club that will read and discuss three comic books that explore some of the extreme possibilities of life in the age of the internet. Books include: The Private Eye (January 20), Snot Girl vol. 1 (February 17), and Bitch Planet vol 1 (March 10). Pick and choose your favorites or come to the whole series. Books will be available for sale at Vault of Midnight. All are invited to read and participate. Please note that these comic books deal with mature material.

The internet has changed every aspect of contemporary life—from how we interact with each other to how we work and play. Art in the Age of the Internet, 1989 to Today, examines the radical impact of internet culture on visual art since the invention of the web in 1989. Join UMMA docents as they explore the more than forty works across a variety of media—painting, performance, photography, sculpture, video, and web-based projects—in this exciting exhibition.

The Art, Ideas, & Politics Book Club is a partnership between UMMA and Literati Bookstore in connection with UMMA's exhibition Abstraction, Color, and Politics in the Early 1970s. Surrounded by the large-scale artworks by Sam Gilliam, Helen Frankenthaler, Al Loving, and Louise Nevelson, we will read and discuss bold and critical voices—both fiction and nonfiction—guided by Literati Bookstore's Creative Programs Manager, Gina Balibrera Amyx. Books will explore visions and critiques relevant to abstract art as well as the immense social changes of the period, and include Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power (Jan 10), Art on My Mind, Visual Politics by bell hooks (March 14), Ninth Street Women by Mary Gabriel (May 9), Flamethrowers by Rachel Kushner (July 11), and How We Get Free, edited by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor (Sept 12).
Gina Balibrera Amyx is the Creative Program Manager at Literati Bookstore, and a graduate of Zell MFA Program. Her writing has been featured in the Boston Review, Ploughshares, Michigan Quarterly Review, and The Wandering Song, an anthology of the Central American diaspora.

The Art, Ideas, & Politics Book Club will meet on the second Thursday of the month, 12-1 p.m. in the exhibition gallery. Pick and choose or come to all of them. Books will be available for sale at Literati Bookstore as well as after book club meetings at UMMA, at a 15% book club discount.

Professor Emerita at San Diego State University and presently serving as a Chancellor at the Academy of American Poets, Marilyn Chin is an award-winning poet and author. Born in Hong Kong and raised in Portland, Oregon, her works have become Asian American classics and are taught in classrooms internationally. Marilyn Chin’s books of poems include A Portrait of the Self as Nation, Hard Love Province, and Rhapsody in Plain Yellow, and she has also published a book of magical fiction.
 
Chin has won numerous awards, including the United Artist Foundation Fellowship, the Radcliffe Institute Fellowship at Harvard, the Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship at Bellagio, the Anisfield Wolf Book Award, two NEAs, the Stegner Fellowship, the PEN/Josephine Miles Award, five Pushcart Prizes, and a Fulbright Fellowship to Taiwan. She is featured in a variety of anthologies, including The Norton Anthology of Literature by Women and The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry, The Penguin Anthology of 20th Century Poetry, and The Best American Poetry.

Student Docents will enliven your afternoon and kick off the weekend with a brisk but intense encounter with a few key pieces of art and an engaging theme connecting their selections. Love and death, politics and humor, history, mythology, materiality, fashion, food, or other entry points will draw you in for a sweet peek at the UMMA collection. Each tour will last 10-15 minutes. Meet at the UMMA Store. 

Student Docents will enliven your afternoon and kick off the weekend with a brisk but intense encounter with a few key pieces of art and an engaging theme connecting their selections. Love and death, politics and humor, history, mythology, materiality, fashion, food, or other entry points will draw you in for a sweet peek at the UMMA collection. Each tour will last 10-15 minutes. Meet at the UMMA Store. 

Families with children ages six and up are invited to look, learn, and create together during UMMA's Family Art Studio sessions. Create your own project inspired by the UMMA exhibition The Power Family Program for Inuit Art: Tillirnanngittuq​ (which means "sensing the invisible just beyond it" or unexpected), followed by a hands-on workshop with local artist and UMMA docent Sophie Grillet. 

Storytime at the Museum promotes art enjoyment for children ages three to six and their families. We read a story in the galleries and include a fun, age-appropriate, hands-on activity related to it.  In March, we will be visiting the UMMA exhibition The Power Family Program for Inuit Art: Tillirnanngittuq​ (which means "sensing the invisible just beyond it" or unexpected) and reading Nessa’s Fish, a story about a young girl and the animals she encounters in the Arctic environment. Parents must accompany children. Siblings are welcome to join the group. Meet in front of the UMMA Store.

In celebration of UMMA’s new Power Family Program for Inuit Art, the Museum presents a special exhibition of two incredible, intertwining stories. One traces the development of contemporary Inuit art in the Canadian Arctic from the 1950s to the present. The other relates the fascinating story of the Power family’s important role in supporting and promoting Inuit art from the outset, bringing public attention to its artistic strength and cultural importance. The Power family’s collection is unusual in its strong representation of early contemporary carvings, incised drawings on ivory and antler, soapstone sculptures, and prints that evolved as Inuit artists developed their own artistic voices and responded creatively to their changing world. 

Families with children ages six and up are invited to look, learn, and create together during UMMA's Family Art Studio sessions. Create your own project inspired by the UMMA exhibition The Power Family Program for Inuit Art: Tillirnanngittuq​ (which means "sensing the invisible just beyond it" or unexpected), followed by a hands-on workshop with local artist and UMMA docent Sophie Grillet. 

The film The Living Stone is a 1958 Academy Award winning documentary film showcasing stone carving: visitors can watch the creation of a work depicting Sedna, the sea goddess on view in the UMMA exhibition The Power Family Program for Inuit Art: Tillirnanngittuq​.

In celebration of UMMA’s new Power Family Program for Inuit Art, the Museum presents a special exhibition of two incredible, intertwining stories. One traces the development of contemporary Inuit art in the Canadian Arctic from the 1950s to the present. The other relates the fascinating story of the Power family’s important role in supporting and promoting Inuit art from the outset, bringing public attention to its artistic strength and cultural importance. The Power family’s collection is unusual in its strong representation of early contemporary carvings, incised drawings on ivory and antler, soapstone sculptures, and prints that evolved as Inuit artists developed their own artistic voices and responded creatively to their changing world. 

Collector Philip Power will join Inuit art experts Marion (Mame) Jackson and Patricia Feheley in a conversation about the story of the Inuit collections gifted by Philip and Kathy Power. All three speakers were introduced to Inuit art as young people and have had a lifetime connection with Inuit art. This conversation will share how two generations of the Power family connected Ann Arbor with the Arctic, and the relationship of both traditional and innovative ways of making art with the lifeways and environment of the Inuit peoples. Marion (Mame) Jackson is an art historian and professor emerita, Wayne State University and the University of Michigan. Patricia Feheley is the owner and director of Feheley Fine Arts gallery, an internationally-renowned gallery specializing in early and contemporary Inuit art. Jackson and Feheley have worked closely with UMMA to develop the first exhibition of this stellar collection of nearly 250 objects from a formative period in Inuit art-making.
 

In celebration of UMMA’s new Power Family Program for Inuit Art, the Museum presents a special exhibition of two incredible, intertwining stories. One traces the development of contemporary Inuit art in the Canadian Arctic from the 1950s to the present. The other relates the fascinating story of the Power family’s important role in supporting and promoting Inuit art from the outset, bringing public attention to its artistic strength and cultural importance. The Power family’s collection is unusual in its strong representation of early contemporary carvings, incised drawings on ivory and antler, soapstone sculptures, and prints that evolved as Inuit artists developed their own artistic voices and responded creatively to their changing world. 

Storytelling is one of the oldest forms of educational entertainment known to mankind. From the West African tradition of the Griot to modern day Moth events, storytelling environments have served as a means to pass along history, shape culture, share helpful lessons, and establish a sense of belonging and community.

The U-M Comprehensive Studies Program and Department of Afroamerican and African Studies invite you to explore themes related to campus life, coming of age, and learning and growing, at this series of Moth Style Storyteller Lounge events. Storytellers include students, faculty and staff, and Voices of Wisdom (alums or community members).​ 
Light food and refreshments will be served in the Commons at 6:30 prior to the start of the program.​

Value the Voice will take place on Tuesdays, September 18, November 13, January 22, March 19, 7 p.m. UMMA Auditorium.

For more information, please contact Keith Jason at mrjason@umich.edu or 734-764-9128

Buddhist experiences can engage six senses: taste, touch, sight, sound, smell, and thought. In this evening presentation that ranges from incense to hand-stitched vestments to meditation, get a peek into the concepts and concerns that inspired the University of Michigan Museum of Art exhibition The Six Senses of Buddhism. In the spirit of experience, be ready for some hands-on interaction. The incorporation of incense may trigger the scent sensitive.
 

Anthony Marra is the author of The Tsar of Love and Techno and New York Times bestseller A Constellation of Vital Phenomena, longlisted for the National Book Award and winner of the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Prize, the Anisfield-Wolf​ Book Award in fiction, and the Barnes and Noble Discover Award, the Grand prix des lectrices de Elle in France and was the first English-language novel to win the Athens Prize for Literature in Greece. Marra received his MFA from the Iowa Writers Workshop before fellowship and teaching at Stanford University.
 

His work has been honored with the National Magazine Award, the Whiting Award, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, and in 2017, Marra was included in Granta’s decennial list of best young American novelists, and won the $50,000 Simpson Prize in 2018, which he will put toward finishing a new novel about exiles in 1940s Hollywood, slated for release in 2019.

Today, we live inside the digital. Increasingly, our public and private lives are conducted online and in digital space where our relationships are forged, nurtured, or deleted, where our bills are paid and finances tracked, and where our ideologies are fed and our politics balkanized by our respective media bubbles. And while the digital now constitutes more and more of our daily routines, it can also offer a distorting abstraction of “external life.” Swiping left is easier than breaking up, and even the most civil among us can become an entitled consumer on Yelp. At once, our digital environments offer new grounds for engagement and interaction, and immersive venues for escape from the exigencies of the outside world. This session will discuss this dialectic. Drawing contributors from across art, architecture, design, and media studies, we will examine the digital as both a totalizing environment unto itself – a bubble apart from the external lifeworld – and a new venue for social organization and engagement.

One MFA student of fiction and one of poetry, each introduced by a peer, will read their work. The Mark Webster Reading Series presents emerging writers in a warm and relaxed setting. We encourage you to bring your friends - a Webster reading makes for an enjoyable and enlightening Friday evening.

This week's reading features Katarina Bishop and Thea Chacamaty. 

Katarina Bishop is a writer from Alabama. Her favorite things about the South are buttermilk biscuits and chocolate gravy. 

Thea Chacamaty is a writer from California. Her writing is devoted to the coast, the desert, San Francisco, and rock & roll. 

Relax and think about art by drawing in the galleries. Taking the time to look carefully and record what you see in a drawing enhances your enjoyment and understanding of art in the museum. Student Docents or other facilitators will be on hand to provide free sketching materials and facilitate your experience of looking and drawing. Beginners welcome! Meet by the Museum Store. 

Student Docents will enliven your afternoon and kick off the weekend with a brisk but intense encounter with a few key pieces of art and an engaging theme connecting their selections. Love and death, politics and humor, history, mythology, materiality, fashion, food, or other entry points will draw you in for a sweet peek at the UMMA collection. Each tour will last 10-15 minutes. Meet at the UMMA Store. 

In celebration of the University of Michigan’s Bicentennial in 2017, artist and distinguished Stamps School of Art and Design professor Jim Cogswell has been invited to create a series of public window installations at the University of Michigan Museum of Art and the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology. For this visionary project, the artist will adhere a procession of vivid images to the glass walls of the museums in a rhythmically evocative narrative of reassembled fragments from a diverse range of artworks in both museums’ permanent collections. By leveraging the buildings’ unique architecture, the artist expands our understanding of a museum as a cultural repository and highlights the significant role of these institutions in the life of the campus community. UMMA docents will introduce the juxtaposed images and help connect the viewer to the origins and meaning of objects and their power to shape knowledge, memory, and identity.

The works in the UMMA exhibition Abstraction, Color, and Politics in the Early 1970s explore intersections of social justice, race and gender through the large scale, abstract works of the artists. Join Larry M. Gant, Professor of Social Work and Professor, Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design for an interpretative retrospective of the large-scale abstract works of Al Loving and Sam Gilliam. Gant explores the challenges and controversies experienced by the artists, suggesting  ways that their approaches have and continue to generate, in the words of James Baldwin, “the evidence of things unseen."

Student Docents will enliven your afternoon and kick off the weekend with a brisk but intense encounter with a few key pieces of art and an engaging theme connecting their selections. Love and death, politics and humor, history, mythology, materiality, fashion, food, or other entry points will draw you in for a sweet peek at the UMMA collection. Each tour will last 10-15 minutes. Meet at the UMMA Store. 

Student Docents will enliven your afternoon and kick off the weekend with a brisk but intense encounter with a few key pieces of art and an engaging theme connecting their selections. Love and death, politics and humor, history, mythology, materiality, fashion, food, or other entry points will draw you in for a sweet peek at the UMMA collection. Each tour will last 10-15 minutes. Meet at the UMMA Store. 

On the occasion of the exhibition Art in the Age of the Internet, UMMA and Vault of Midnight-Ann Arbor have partnered up to form the UMMA Book Club: The Age of the Internet in Comic Books. Join David Choberka, Andrew W. Mellon Manager of Academic Outreach & Teaching, for a discussion in the gallery that connects the art on view to  themes in the selected comics. Open to anyone, regardless of participation in the book club.

Art museums generally give primacy to the sense of sight. Religious and ritual objects, on the other hand, stimulate an array of multisensory experiences. Focusing on works from UMMA’s collection associated with different types of Japanese Buddhism, we engage all of the six senses in this exhibition. These six are integral to Buddhist devotion: sight, hearing, smell, touch, taste, and mind (or the activity of thinking, including what is perceived via the other senses). The “Six Senses” gallery experience extends beyond vision to include: the sound of chanting and ritual implements; the fragrance of incense; the feel of bronze, ceramic, and silk; and the creation of mental images. Gain a deeper understanding of the nature and histories of objects used in Buddhist practice with a docent tour of this fascinating exhibition.

UM Chamber Choir 
Eugene Rogers, conductor
with Imani Winds

SMTD@UMMA welcomes UM Chamber Choir’s new director Eugene Rogers for an evening of new and favorite works celebrating discovery and freedom, including the premiere of Jocelyn Hagen’s multi-movement The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci for chorus, chamber orchestra, and projected visuals. Grammy-nominated quintet Imani Winds joins the flagship SMTD choral ensemble on this and an arrangement of American Spirituals by Imani Winds member Jeff Scott. Also featured are Eric Whitacre’s Leonardo and his Flying Machine and Lee Hoiby’s Last Letter Home.

Student Docents will enliven your afternoon and kick off the weekend with a brisk but intense encounter with a few key pieces of art and an engaging theme connecting their selections. Love and death, politics and humor, history, mythology, materiality, fashion, food, or other entry points will draw you in for a sweet peek at the UMMA collection. Each tour will last 10-15 minutes. Meet at the UMMA Store. 

Join the U-M History of Art department as they honor longtime faculty members Alexander Potts and Susan Siegfried during this symposium on the social history of art featuring renowned art historians Thomas Crow (Institute of Fine Arts, NYU) and Darcy Grigsby (UC Berkeley).

Student Docents will enliven your afternoon and kick off the weekend with a brisk but intense encounter with a few key pieces of art and an engaging theme connecting their selections. Love and death, politics and humor, history, mythology, materiality, fashion, food, or other entry points will draw you in for a sweet peek at the UMMA collection. Each tour will last 10-15 minutes. Meet at the UMMA Store. 

Fang Zhang, Hughes Fellow at the U-M Liberthal-Rogel Center for Chinese Studies and wife of the artist Wang Qingsong, will lead a public tour of Wang Qingsong/Detroit/Beijing to kick off the symposium Chinese Contemporary Art: Exhibition, Collection, and Criticism. 

The tour will be followed by a public reception at the Liberthal-Rogel Center for Chinese Studies at 5:30 p.m. located in Weiser Hall, 500 Church Street, Suite 400, in Ann Arbor.

The symposium will take place at UMMA on Saturday, April 6, beginning at 9 a.m., and focus on the contributions of museums, exhibitions, collections and criticism to expand our understanding contemporary Chinese art practice.

Presented during the UMMA exhibition Wang Qingsong/Detroit/Beijing (February 2 - May 26, 2019), this symposium celebrates three decades of active engagement between American and Chinese artists, museum directors, curators, collectors, and scholars. The program includes two panels and two roundtable discussions that will focus on the contributions of museums, exhibitions, collections and criticism to expand our understanding contemporary Chinese art practice.

A public tour of Wang Qingsong/Detroit/Beijing will kick off the symposium on Friday, April 5, at 4 p.m. The tour is followed by a public reception at the Liberthal-Rogel Center for Chinese Studies at 6 p.m. located in Weiser Hall, 500 Church Street, Suite 400, in Ann Arbor.

Consider art from a new and irreverent angle. Join representatives of UM student improv groups as they approach the lesser known un-highlights of the collection, uncover the shady ladies and gents within the frames, and make unexpected connections between various art works on the walls. With humor, contemporary pop culture references, and possibly games, these tours will be lively and entertaining, not necessarily enlightening. Join the fun and add your voice to these diverting episodes in the galleries. Meet at the UMMA Store.

The internet has changed every aspect of contemporary life—from how we interact with each other to how we work and play. Art in the Age of the Internet, 1989 to Today, examines the radical impact of internet culture on visual art since the invention of the web in 1989. Join UMMA docents as they explore the more than forty works across a variety of media—painting, performance, photography, sculpture, video, and web-based projects—in this exciting exhibition.

This program explores belief during times of crisis within a newly conceived narrative. Runyonland Productions rethinks Adam Guettel’s song cycle Myths & Hymns with a fresh cast of characters. Students in SMTD’s celebrated Musical Theater program, guided by Broadway director Geoff Packard with Broadway music director Jason DeBord leading an expanded instrumental arrangement, join art historians and leaders from three world religions to draw out a 21st-century moral of understanding and acceptance.

This program explores belief during times of crisis within a newly conceived narrative. Runyonland Productions rethinks Adam Guettel’s song cycle Myths & Hymns with a fresh cast of characters. Students in SMTD’s celebrated Musical Theater program, guided by Broadway director Geoff Packard with Broadway music director Jason DeBord leading an expanded instrumental arrangement, join art historians and leaders from three world religions to draw out a 21st-century moral of understanding and acceptance.

A 2009 MacArthur fellow, Edwidge Danticat is the author of several books, including Breath, Eyes, Memory, an Oprah Book Club selection, and Krik? Krak!, a National Book Award finalist. She is also the editor of The Butterfly’s Way: Voices from the Haitian Dyaspora in the United States, Best American Essays 2011, and has written six books for children and young adults, including Anacaona, Behind the Mountains, and Eight Days. Her memoir, Brother, I’m Dying, was a 2007 finalist for the National Book Award and a 2008 winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for autobiography. The Art of Death: Writing the Final Story, published in 2017, was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism.

A 2009 MacArthur fellow, Edwidge Danticat is the author of several books, including Breath, Eyes, Memory, an Oprah Book Club selection, and Krik? Krak!, a National Book Award finalist. She is also the editor of The Butterfly’s Way: Voices from the Haitian Dyaspora in the United States, Best American Essays 2011, and has written six books for children and young adults, including Anacaona, Behind the Mountains, and Eight Days. Her memoir, Brother, I’m Dying, was a 2007 finalist for the National Book Award and a 2008 winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for autobiography. The Art of Death: Writing the Final Story, published in 2017, was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism.

Student Docents will enliven your afternoon and kick off the weekend with a brisk but intense encounter with a few key pieces of art and an engaging theme connecting their selections. Love and death, politics and humor, history, mythology, materiality, fashion, food, or other entry points will draw you in for a sweet peek at the UMMA collection. Each tour will last 10-15 minutes. Meet at the UMMA Store. 

Student Docents will enliven your afternoon and kick off the weekend with a brisk but intense encounter with a few key pieces of art and an engaging theme connecting their selections. Love and death, politics and humor, history, mythology, materiality, fashion, food, or other entry points will draw you in for a sweet peek at the UMMA collection. Each tour will last 10-15 minutes. Meet at the UMMA Store. 

​Storytime at the Museum promotes art enjoyment for our youngest patrons. We read a story in the galleries and include a fun, age-appropriate, hands-on activity related it. Children ages three to six are invited to join us as we celebrate The Six Senses of Buddhism by meeting a giant panda named Stillwater in the book Zen Shorts. Parents must accompany children. Siblings are welcome to join the group. Meet in front of the UMMA Store.

Relax and think about art by drawing in the galleries. Taking the time to look carefully and record what you see in a drawing enhances your enjoyment and understanding of art in the museum. Student Docents or other facilitators will be on hand to provide free sketching materials and facilitate your experience of looking and drawing. Beginners welcome! Meet by the Museum Store. 

Student Docents will enliven your afternoon and kick off the weekend with a brisk but intense encounter with a few key pieces of art and an engaging theme connecting their selections. Love and death, politics and humor, history, mythology, materiality, fashion, food, or other entry points will draw you in for a sweet peek at the UMMA collection. Each tour will last 10-15 minutes. Meet at the UMMA Store. 

In celebration of UMMA’s new Power Family Program for Inuit Art, the Museum presents a special exhibition of two incredible, intertwining stories. One traces the development of contemporary Inuit art in the Canadian Arctic from the 1950s to the present. The other relates the fascinating story of the Power family’s important role in supporting and promoting Inuit art from the outset, bringing public attention to its artistic strength and cultural importance. The Power family’s collection is unusual in its strong representation of early contemporary carvings, incised drawings on ivory and antler, soapstone sculptures, and prints that evolved as Inuit artists developed their own artistic voices and responded creatively to their changing world. 

Daring Dances Student Fellows present global dance exploration of social issues in this  evening performance. The Daring Dances project, led by U-M dance professor Clare Croft, embraces how dance invites us into difficult conversations. This project  includes a Student Fellowship program to support U-M students with interests in dance and social justice.

Abstraction, Color, and Politics in the Early 1970s explores large-scale works of art by Helen Frankenthaler, Louise Nevelson, Sam Gilliam, and Al Loving, within the context of highly-charged debates of the early 1970s about aesthetics, politics, race, and feminism. This exhibition explores the gendered and racialized terms upon which great art was defined and assessed, and the strategy of artists to question the identity and aesthetics of the artist making the art. UMMA docents will help visitors look through the lens of the four artists’ works to explore the aesthetic choices inherent in abstraction as well as the acts of staining, pouring, draping, —or even taking apart the wall itself—within this charged political context.

Join us for a close up look at the collage art of contemporary artist, Mark Bradford. Using paper, interesting materials, and surprising techniques we will create abstract landscapes or cityscapes. The workshop begins with a tour of UMMA's gallery of Modern and Contemporary art, followed by a hands-on workshop with local artist, and UMMA community Docent, Susan Clinthorne. Designed for families with children of ages six and above. Parents must be present during the workshop.

Join us for a close up look at the collage art of contemporary artist, Mark Bradford. Using paper, interesting materials, and surprising techniques we will create abstract landscapes or cityscapes. The workshop begins with a tour of UMMA's gallery of Modern and Contemporary art, followed by a hands-on workshop with local artist, and UMMA community Docent, Susan Clinthorne. Designed for families with children of ages six and above. Parents must be present during the workshop.

​Participate in the ancient practice of yoga in the beautiful surroundings of the Museum of Art. This will be gentle yoga, especially appropriate for students in the throes of exams, led by a U-M RecSports teacher. All levels and community members welcome. This event is free but registration is required. Registration will open in March. Please bring your own yoga mat.

Art museums generally give primacy to the sense of sight. Religious and ritual objects, on the other hand, stimulate an array of multisensory experiences. Focusing on works from UMMA’s collection associated with different types of Japanese Buddhism, we engage all of the six senses in this exhibition. These six are integral to Buddhist devotion: sight, hearing, smell, touch, taste, and mind (or the activity of thinking, including what is perceived via the other senses). The “Six Senses” gallery experience extends beyond vision to include: the sound of chanting and ritual implements; the fragrance of incense; the feel of bronze, ceramic, and silk; and the creation of mental images. Gain a deeper understanding of the nature and histories of objects used in Buddhist practice with a docent tour of this fascinating exhibition.

Meet Me at UMMA invites people with mild memory loss to enjoy a guided gallery experience along with family members or care partners. This program is designed for people who live at home and their companions.

If you or someone you care about is experiencing mild memory loss, research has shown that the visual and expressive arts can be good for your mind. In addition, great enjoyment is to be found in seeking out the sights, sounds, textures, and good feelings that come with looking at, learning, and sharing feelings about paintings, music, and other creative arts.

UMMA's trained docents will accompany small groups for a guided tour and provide the opportunity for everyone to experience different kinds of art and share their responses.

The Art, Ideas, & Politics Book Club is a partnership between UMMA and Literati Bookstore in connection with UMMA's exhibition Abstraction, Color, and Politics in the Early 1970s. Surrounded by the large-scale artworks by Sam Gilliam, Helen Frankenthaler, Al Loving, and Louise Nevelson, we will read and discuss bold and critical voices—both fiction and nonfiction—guided by Literati Bookstore's Creative Programs Manager, Gina Balibrera Amyx. Books will explore visions and critiques relevant to abstract art as well as the immense social changes of the period, and include Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power (Jan 10), Art on My Mind, Visual Politics by bell hooks (March 14), Ninth Street Women by Mary Gabriel (May 9), Flamethrowers by Rachel Kushner (July 11), and How We Get Free, edited by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor (Sept 12).

Gina Balibrera Amyx is the Creative Program Manager at Literati Bookstore, and a graduate of Zell MFA Program. Her writing has been featured in the Boston Review, Ploughshares, Michigan Quarterly Review, and The Wandering Song, an anthology of the Central American diaspora.

The Art, Ideas, & Politics Book Club will meet on the second Thursday of the month, 12-1 p.m. in the exhibition gallery. Pick and choose or come to all of them. Books will be available for sale at Literati Bookstore as well as after book club meetings at UMMA, at a 15% book club discount.

The Art, Ideas, & Politics Book Club is a partnership between UMMA and Literati Bookstore in connection with UMMA's exhibition Abstraction, Color, and Politics in the Early 1970s. Surrounded by the large-scale artworks by Sam Gilliam, Helen Frankenthaler, Al Loving, and Louise Nevelson, we will read and discuss bold and critical voices—both fiction and nonfiction—guided by Literati Bookstore's Creative Programs Manager, Gina Balibrera Amyx. Books will explore visions and critiques relevant to abstract art as well as the immense social changes of the period, and include Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power (Jan 10), Art on My Mind, Visual Politics by bell hooks (March 14), Ninth Street Women by Mary Gabriel (May 9), Flamethrowers by Rachel Kushner (July 11), and How We Get Free, edited by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor (Sept 12).

Gina Balibrera Amyx is the Creative Program Manager at Literati Bookstore, and a graduate of Zell MFA Program. Her writing has been featured in the Boston Review, Ploughshares, Michigan Quarterly Review, and The Wandering Song, an anthology of the Central American diaspora.

The Art, Ideas, & Politics Book Club will meet on the second Thursday of the month, 12-1 p.m. in the exhibition gallery. Pick and choose or come to all of them. Books will be available for sale at Literati Bookstore as well as after book club meetings at UMMA, at a 15% book club discount.

The Art, Ideas, & Politics Book Club is a partnership between UMMA and Literati Bookstore in connection with UMMA's exhibition Abstraction, Color, and Politics in the Early 1970s. Surrounded by the large-scale artworks by Sam Gilliam, Helen Frankenthaler, Al Loving, and Louise Nevelson, we will read and discuss bold and critical voices—both fiction and nonfiction—guided by Literati Bookstore's Creative Programs Manager, Gina Balibrera Amyx. Books will explore visions and critiques relevant to abstract art as well as the immense social changes of the period, and include Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power (Jan 10), Art on My Mind, Visual Politics by bell hooks (March 14), Ninth Street Women by Mary Gabriel (May 9), Flamethrowers by Rachel Kushner (July 11), and How We Get Free, edited by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor (Sept 12).

Gina Balibrera Amyx is the Creative Program Manager at Literati Bookstore, and a graduate of Zell MFA Program. Her writing has been featured in the Boston Review, Ploughshares, Michigan Quarterly Review, and The Wandering Song, an anthology of the Central American diaspora.

The Art, Ideas, & Politics Book Club will meet on the second Thursday of the month, 12-1 p.m. in the exhibition gallery. Pick and choose or come to all of them. Books will be available for sale at Literati Bookstore as well as after book club meetings at UMMA, at a 15% book club discount.