Reflections: An Ordinary Day. November 16, 2019–May 10, 2020
All events are free and take place at UMMA unless otherwise noted.
Storytime at the Museum promotes art enjoyment for our youngest patrons. Join us as we travel around the world and look at art from different countries. We read a story in the galleries and include a fun, age-appropriate, hands-on activity related to it. Parents must accompany children. Siblings are welcome to join the group. Meet in front of the UMMA Shop.
Join a docent on a journey through time and memory, as you explore over 1,000 found photographs together. Take Your Pick invites you—the Museum’s visitors—to select photographs for our permanent collection. What belongs in a permanent collection, and why? Who and what should be represented, and how should we decide? This exhibition considers these questions in regard to 1,000 amateur photographs on loan from the private collection of Peter J. Cohen, who has gathered more than 60,000 snapshots while exploring flea markets in the United States and Europe over two decades. The images he has collected depict all aspects of daily life and reveal the dynamic histories of amateur photography. Such pictures have particular significance in the current digital age, when it is much less common to make physical copies of personal photographs. They constitute important artifacts of twentieth-century visual culture and precedents for the photographs we still make today. You are invited to make your voice heard in the selection process by voting for the photographs that resonate most with you!
Born in a sandstone victorian farmhouse that has been in his family since it was built four generations ago, Andrew Brown is the son of a Motown session musician and grew up listening to the sounds of his dad’s piano as he steeped in musical influences from Duke Ellington to Stevie Wonder. As a young man returning from a trip to New Orleans with a newfound interest in Swing music, he co-founded the eclectic americana group Appleseed Collective, with whom he has toured 150+ dates a year. Traveling all over the continental United States, playing esteemed venues and festivals such as The Ark, Sisters Folk Festival, Wheatland, Cervantes Ballroom, Summercamp Music Festival, Schuba’s, and The Ann Arbor Folk Festival at Hill Auditorium, he cut his teeth as a guitarist, songwriter and band leader. Since slowing down his touring schedule in 2017 he began tirelessly practicing and performing the music of his favorite guitar player: Django Reinhardt. Since then he has studied at various music camps with many of the genres heavy hitting players such as Angelo Debarre, Sebastian Gineaux, and Gonzalo Bergara, and was even invited to back up Denis Chang at one of his concerts. Andrew currently plays throughout Michigan with his own project Djangophonique, his band Appleseed Collective, and his friends projects Third Coast Gypsy Jazz, Smoking Dandies. He also teaches guitar, both generally and specifically in the style of Django.
Our second exhibition on Inuit art explores the serene expressions of day-to-day activities found in mid-century to contemporary Inuit prints and sculptures. Donors inspired by the Power gift and the development of a Power Program for Inuit Art at UMMA contributed to this exhibition with diffuse offerings to incorporate into our holdings, or with loans to expand our conversations.
Arthur Sze is a poet, translator, and editor. He has published ten books of poetry, including Sight Lines, Compass Rose, The Ginkgo Light, Quipu, The Redshifting Web: Poems 1970-1998, and Archipelago, all from Copper Canyon Press. He has also published The Silk Dragon: Translations from the Chinese and edited Chinese Writers on Writing. A bilingual Chinese/English selected poems, Pig’s Heaven Inn, was published in Beijing, and he has also collaborated with sculptor Susan York to create a book and installation, The Unfolding Center.
Known for his difficult, meticulous poems, Sze’s work has been described as the “intersection of Taoist contemplation, Zen rock gardens and postmodern experimentation” by the critic John Tritica. The poet Dana Levin described Sze as “a poet of what I would call Deep Noticing, a strong lineage in American poetry… Dispassionate presentation of ‘the thing itself’ is its prevailing attribute, yet Sze’s attention is capacious; it’s attracted to paradox; it takes facing opponents and seats them side by side.” In addition, K. Michel, a Dutch poet writing for Poetry International says, “Sze’s work is characterized by its unusual combination of images and ideas, and by the surprising way in which he makes connections between diverse aspects of the world. In his poetry he combines images from urban life and nature, ideas from modern astronomy and Chinese philosophy as well as anecdotes from rural and industrial America. In this way, he creates texts that capture and reflect the complexity of reality.”
Sze’s many awards include The Jackson Poetry Prize from Poets & Writers, a Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Writers’ Award, a Lannan Literary Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, two National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing fellowships, a Howard Foundation Fellowship, and five grants from the Witter Bynner Foundation for Poetry. From 2012-2017, he served as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets and, in 2017, was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is a professor emeritus at the Institute of American Indian Arts and lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Arthur Sze is a poet, translator, and editor. He has published ten books of poetry, including Sight Lines, Compass Rose, The Ginkgo Light, Quipu, The Redshifting Web: Poems 1970-1998, and Archipelago, all from Copper Canyon Press. He has also published The Silk Dragon: Translations from the Chinese and edited Chinese Writers on Writing. A bilingual Chinese/English selected poems, Pig’s Heaven Inn, was published in Beijing, and he has also collaborated with sculptor Susan York to create a book and installation, The Unfolding Center.
Known for his difficult, meticulous poems, Sze’s work has been described as the “intersection of Taoist contemplation, Zen rock gardens and postmodern experimentation” by the critic John Tritica. The poet Dana Levin described Sze as “a poet of what I would call Deep Noticing, a strong lineage in American poetry… Dispassionate presentation of ‘the thing itself’ is its prevailing attribute, yet Sze’s attention is capacious; it’s attracted to paradox; it takes facing opponents and seats them side by side.” In addition, K. Michel, a Dutch poet writing for Poetry International says, “Sze’s work is characterized by its unusual combination of images and ideas, and by the surprising way in which he makes connections between diverse aspects of the world. In his poetry he combines images from urban life and nature, ideas from modern astronomy and Chinese philosophy as well as anecdotes from rural and industrial America. In this way, he creates texts that capture and reflect the complexity of reality.”
Sze’s many awards include The Jackson Poetry Prize from Poets & Writers, a Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Writers’ Award, a Lannan Literary Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, two National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing fellowships, a Howard Foundation Fellowship, and five grants from the Witter Bynner Foundation for Poetry. From 2012-2017, he served as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets and, in 2017, was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is a professor emeritus at the Institute of American Indian Arts and lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
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 Meagean L. Dugger and Logan Lane.
Meagean is a writer from Central Appalachia. She now lives in Ann Arbor.
Logan Lane is a writer from Akron, Ohio. He lives in Ann Arbor and writes stories about the Rust Belt.
Benjamin Green & Elijah Meisse explore sounds and soundscapes through the medium of the analog synthesizers and iconic drum machines of the 1970s and 1980s. Inspired by masters such as Jeff Mills and Blake Baxter. Benjamin Green is a senior Jazz Studies major in the School of Music, Theatre, and Dance (SMTD). Elijah Meisse is also in the SMTD, studying Performing Arts Technology.
Far from being frowned upon as uncreative, in China, Korea, and Japan, copying has long been considered a valuable practice. Through works of art spanning ancient to contemporary times, Copies and Invention in East Asia challenges our understanding of originality, and presents copying as an act of imaginative interpretation. The exhibition includes burial goods that conjure a world for the deceased; Buddhist sculptures produced in multiples to amplify religious experience and meaning; paintings in which a master’s brushstrokes are faithfully duplicated as a way of shaping the self; and contemporary works that address multiplicity and duplication in the modern world. A museum docent will interpret the complex ways that Asian artists have produced multiple artworks through time.
Help build our collection of “ordinary” American 20th-century photographs by joining Assistant Curator of Photography, Jennifer M. Friess, for an interactive tour in the new ArtGym gallery. We will discuss the significance of “everyday” photographs, the sometimes unknowable stories of these historic images, and what the photographs might contribute to UMMA’s permanent collection for future audiences. Visit the gallery, reflect on our long history of photographing ourselves and our experiences, and then cast your vote for your favorites!
Formed by three students at the University of Michigan School of Music, Human Kind is focused on using their unique instrumentation to create new textures and sounds through jazz. They perform anything from open improvisation, to thoroughly composed music.
Michael Hu is a Sophomore in Jazz Studies from Rochester, Michigan. Specializing in saxophone and other woodwind instruments, he frequently plays music for audiences varying from pit orchestras, to the Detroit club scene. More info can be found on his website.
Hailing from Milwaukee Wisconsin, pianist Joshua Catania has developed a name for himself at such a young age. A freshman in jazz studies, he frequently plays for festivals and clubs throughout Wisconsin.
Guitarist Travis Swanson is a first-year Master's of Improvisation student at U-M. From Marquette, Michigan, he balances teaching and performing music ranging from free jazz, to blues.
Join a docent on a journey through time and memory, as you explore over 1,000 found photographs together. Take Your Pick invites you—the Museum’s visitors—to select photographs for our permanent collection. What belongs in a permanent collection, and why? Who and what should be represented, and how should we decide? This exhibition considers these questions in regard to 1,000 amateur photographs on loan from the private collection of Peter J. Cohen, who has gathered more than 60,000 snapshots while exploring flea markets in the United States and Europe over two decades. The images he has collected depict all aspects of daily life and reveal the dynamic histories of amateur photography. Such pictures have particular significance in the current digital age, when it is much less common to make physical copies of personal photographs. They constitute important artifacts of twentieth-century visual culture and precedents for the photographs we still make today. You are invited to make your voice heard in the selection process by voting for the photographs that resonate most with you!
Far from being frowned upon as uncreative, in China, Korea, and Japan, copying has long been considered a valuable practice. Through works of art spanning ancient to contemporary times, Copies and Invention in East Asia challenges our understanding of originality, and presents copying as an act of imaginative interpretation. The exhibition includes burial goods that conjure a world for the deceased; Buddhist sculptures produced in multiples to amplify religious experience and meaning; paintings in which a master’s brushstrokes are faithfully duplicated as a way of shaping the self; and contemporary works that address multiplicity and duplication in the modern world. A museum docent will interpret the complex ways that Asian artists have produced multiple artworks through time.
Korean artist Chul Hyun Ahn uses mirrors and light to create geometric shapes that repeat infinitely into the distance. Ahn’s repetitions of circles, squares, and lines resonate with Zen Buddhist ink painting, which aims to transmit complex teachings through minimalist brushstrokes and basic shapes. In this informal gallery talk, Ahn will discuss the techniques and concepts behind his mesmerizing works which have fascinated many visitors to the UMMA exhibition Copies and Invention in East Asia. The exhibition challenges our understanding of originality, and presents copying as an act of imaginative interpretation, through works of art spanning ancient to contemporary times.
Shane McCrae’s book of poems, The Gilded Auction Block (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019), puts the news in poems and fits the news into history and futurity. His poems speak of both the ridiculousness and the unnerving familiarity of today. Dan Chiasson, writing for the New Yorker, praises McCrae’s “beautifully up-to-date, old-fashioned work, where the dignity of English meters meets, as in a mosh pit, the vitality―and often the brutality―of American speech.”
McCrae is also the author of Sometimes I Never Suffered (to be published in spring, 2020, by Farrar, Straus and Giroux); In the Language of My Captor, which was a finalist for the National Book Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and the William Carlos Williams Award, and won the 2018 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Poetry; The Animal Too Big to Kill, winner of the 2014 Lexi Rudnitsky Editor’s Choice Award; Forgiveness Forgiveness; Blood; and Mule. He is the recipient of a Whiting Writer's Award, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, the 2017 Lannan Literary Award for Poetry, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He teaches at Columbia University and lives in New York City.
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 Asher Dark and Kassy Lee.
Asher Dark is a writer from New Jersey. He loves basketball and VHS tapes.
Kassy Lee is a poet, writer, and translator of poetry. She grew up in San Diego and graduated from Columbia University with a degree in Comparative Literature & Society.
Storytime at the Museum promotes art enjoyment for our youngest patrons. Join us as we travel around the world and look at art from different countries. We read a story in the galleries and include a fun, age-appropriate, hands-on activity related to it. Parents must accompany children. Siblings are welcome to join the group. Meet in front of the UMMA Shop.
Join us in the gallery for the last day of voting in Take Your Pick! Show up to cast your ballot for your favorites and watch as the results roll in. The 250 photographs with the most votes will enter UMMA’s permanent collection. Swag and refreshments.
Final selections on view: Tuesday, January 14 – Sunday, February 23, 2020.
Make your voice heard!
Join a docent on a journey through time and memory, as you explore over 1,000 found photographs together. Take Your Pick invites you—the Museum’s visitors—to select photographs for our permanent collection. What belongs in a permanent collection, and why? Who and what should be represented, and how should we decide? This exhibition considers these questions in regard to 1,000 amateur photographs on loan from the private collection of Peter J. Cohen, who has gathered more than 60,000 snapshots while exploring flea markets in the United States and Europe over two decades. The images he has collected depict all aspects of daily life and reveal the dynamic histories of amateur photography. Such pictures have particular significance in the current digital age, when it is much less common to make physical copies of personal photographs. They constitute important artifacts of twentieth-century visual culture and precedents for the photographs we still make today. You are invited to make your voice heard in the selection process by voting for the photographs that resonate most with you!
Lake Effects, a 6-month-long focus on the impact of the Great Lakes will encourage campus and community-wide conversations about the history, cultures, and environments that have shaped the Great Lakes region as well as the pressing challenges and transformative possibilities in the years to come. Join us to kick off the theme semester at UMMA with "Dynamic Lakes and Lake Dynamics," the first in a series of panel discussions surveying key issues that confront the Great Lakes and the people who depend on them.
Featured speakers include: Drew Gronewold, U-M Associate Professor of Environment and Sustainability, and Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering; Guy Meadows, Director, Marine Engineering Laboratory and Professor of Sustainable Marine Engineering at Michigan Tech University; Susan Och, Leeland Township Supervisor, and Dick Norton, U-M Professor of Urban & Regional Planning and in the Program in the Environment.
Additional events in the series take place at the Michigan League and include: The Fishery — Living in Living Systems (February 3); Great Lakes Histories — Indigenous Cultures Through Common Futures (February 24); Using and Moving the Water — Rights, Access, and Equity (March 16); Politics and Policies — The Great Lakes Task Force (April 6); and Looking Forward — Legal and Policy Prescriptions for the Great Lakes (April 20).
Each event will include brief presentations from each speaker, a panel discussion, and time for questions from the audience. An informal gathering with light refreshments will follow each session.
Japanese artist Mari Katayama (born 1987) features her own body in a provocative series of works combining photography, sculpture, and textile. Born with a developmental condition, the artist had both her legs amputated at the age of nine and has worn prosthetics ever since. In order to fill a deep gap between her own understanding of self and physicality, and contemporary society’s simplistic categorizations, Katayama began to explore her identity by objectifying her body in her art. In photographs she assumes different personas, dressed in revealing lingerie in private, domestic spaces or in dramatic waterscapes. The unflinching display of the vulnerabilities and limits of Katayama’s body opens up a broader conversation about anxieties and wounds for all of us—disabled or nondisabled—living in an age obsessed with body image. UMMA’s installation will be the artist’s first solo exhibition in the U.S.
Please join us for a monthly gathering that offers a starting point to discover a variety of narratives pertaining to the cultures of North American Indigenous people featuring the works of Inuit authors. We will meet on the third Sunday of each month in the University of Michigan Museum of Art’s exhibition, Reflections: An Ordinary Day. The prints, drawings, and sculptures featured in this exhibition of Inuit art explore the relationship between the artist and the representation of everyday experiences. Each of the four gatherings will present an opportunity to enjoy traditional storytelling as well as discuss books written by contemporary Inuit and Native American authors. Our book club facilitator is Elizabeth James, a Detroit-based Powhatan storyteller and Program Manager at the U-M Department for AfroAmerican and African Studies.
3rd Sunday of the month at at 3 p.m.
January 19: The Right to Be Cold: One Woman's Story of Protecting Her Culture, the Arctic and the Whole Planet by Sheila Watt-Cloutier
February 16: House Made of Dawn [50th Anniversary Ed]: A Novel (P.S.) Anniversary Edition
by N. Scott Momaday
March 22: Sanaaq: An Inuit Novel by Mitiarjuk Nappaaluk (Author), Peter Frost (Translator)
April 19: Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer
Books will be available for sale in the UMMA Shop. Book Club participants will receive a 10% discount.
Cullen Washington, Jr.’s work offers meditations on human interconnectivity and “the universal framework that undergirds all things.” Fusing together seemingly disparate concepts via the connective tissues of mixed media, Washington uses non-representational abstraction to understand order, chaos, social relationships, and other natural phenomena. The work takes audiences on a vibrant journey through and with materiality – a concerted and haptic interplay between gestures of painting and drawing and the modes of reproduction.
In the exhibition Cullen Washington, Jr.: The Public Square, his most recent series, Agoras, explores the “agora”— the ancient Greek public space — as a "gathering place" for activated assembly that functions as the heart of the commercial, spiritual, and political life in the city. Washington describes the contemporary agora as an “area of convergence, where the displaced can find a place.”
Washington’s work is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum and has been exhibited at the Queens Museum, Saatchi Gallery London, and the Studio Museum in Harlem. He has been an artist in residence at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, The Studio Museum in Harlem, Yaddo, and The Joan Mitchell Foundation. He is also a recipient of the Joan Mitchell Foundation Award.
Co-presented by the Penny Stamps Distinguished Speaker Series and UMMA as part of the 2020 Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Symposium.
Cullen Washington, Jr.: The Public Square will be on view at UMMA January 25 - May 17, 2020.
Rion Amilcar Scott’s story collection, The World Doesn’t Require You (Norton/Liveright, August 2019), shatters rigid genre lines to explore larger themes of religion, violence, and love—all told with sly humor and a dash of magical realism.
Scott’s debut story collection, Insurrections (University Press of Kentucky, 2016), was awarded the 2017 PEN/Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction and the 2017 Hillsdale Award from the Fellowship of Southern Writers. His work has been published in journals such as The Kenyon Review, Crab Orchard Review, and The Rumpus, among others. One of his stories was listed as a notable in Best American Stories 2018 and one of his essays was listed as a notable in Best American Essays 2015. He was raised in Silver Spring, Maryland, and earned an MFA from George Mason University where he won both the Mary Roberts Rinehart award and a Completion Fellowship. He is currently a Kimbilio fellow and lives in Annapolis, MD.
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 Cherline Bazile and Aozora Brockman.
Cherline Bazile is a Haitian-American writer from Florida. She studied at Harvard University and is a Paul & Daisy Soros Fellow.
Aozora Brockman is a poet, essayist, and dancer. She was raised on an organic vegetable farm in Illinois and often wishes she could be a child again, elbow-deep in dirt.
Families with children ages six and up are invited to look, learn, and create together in this hands-on workshop. Take a tour of abstract paintings in UMMA's Collection Ensemble installation, as well as work by artists such as Helen Frankenthaler and Joan Mitchell, followed by a hands-on workshop where you will create an abstract painting of your own! Led by local artist and UMMA docent Susan Clinthorne.
Please note: Adults must accompany children. We cannot guarantee your spot if you arrive more than 15 minutes late.
.Everyone and their cousin is trying to become a folk singer these days— Lily Talmers is no exception. Hailing from metro Detroit, and now a student in Ann Arbor, her songwriting is introspective and often cutting, drawing mostly from the 60's folk tradition. She is a singer, and multi-instrumentalist, accompanying herself on guitar, piano, and clawhammer banjo. Her writing technique is delicate, in which she intermingles the political and the extremely personal. Inspired by writers such as Gillian Welch, Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen, and Andrew Marlin (of Mandolin Orange), she perfectly balances the lyrical "heaviness" with a lightness in voice and accompaniment.
You can find her on Instagram, Facebook, and check her out on Spotify.
DescriptionFamilies with children ages six and up are invited to look, learn, and create together in this hands-on workshop. Take a tour of abstract paintings in UMMA's Collection Ensemble installation, as well as work by artists such as Helen Frankenthaler and Joan Mitchell, followed by a hands-on workshop where you will create an abstract painting of your own! Led by local artist and UMMA docent Susan Clinthorne.
Please note: Adults must accompany children. We cannot guarantee your spot if you arrive more than 15 minutes late.
Artist Cullen Washington, Jr. uses non-representational abstraction to understand order, chaos, and social relationships. His practice makes use of the grid to physically and metaphorically flatten hierarchies and rank to create a new conception of the possibilities for a public square. Washington sees this public space as an ideal "gathering place" for activated assembly and inclusive democracy. Historically, the public square has also been the site of spectacles and public humiliations; today, the internet holds out the promise of a level playing field with access for all that also includes space for extreme views and falsehoods. Please join Mr. Washington and exhibition curator Vera Grant on opening day for a conversation about the role of art, artists, and the “hope of abstraction” within our current battles for the public square.
Light refreshments to follow.
This expansive look at the work and concerns of emerging contemporary artist Cullen Washington, Jr. pivots around the artist’s most recent series, Agoras. The compositions explore the ancient Greek public space as a site for activated assembly and the heart of the artistic, spiritual, and political life of the city. UMMA’s installation is designed with an actual public square at its center, complete with sound components featuring noted political and aesthetic discourse and surrounded by Washington’s soaring monumental collages. Works from four earlier series by the artist form the perimeter of the Museum’s largest special exhibition space. The artist describes his work as “abstract meditations on the grid and humanity.”
Dessa Cosma is a social justice activist and the founding director of Detroit Disability Power, which works to bridge the gap between the disability community and social justice movements. For Cosma, disability is a key part of her identity and of critical importance socially and politically—just like race, gender, sexual orientation, and religion. In this informal gallery talk, she will respond to the works of Japanese artist Mari Katayama and reflect upon her experiences and political expression as a disability activist. Mari Katayama uses her disabled body as the subject in her provocative series of works combining photography, sculpture, and textiles. Katayama was born with two fingers on one hand and had both of her legs amputated by the age of nine; she has worn prosthetics ever since. In order to fill a deep gap between her own understanding of self and her physicality in the context of contemporary society’s simplistic categorizations, Katayama began to explore her identity by objectifying her body in her art.
In the midst of the political and cultural upheavals of the 60s and 70s, artists, critics, and the public grappled with the relationship between art, politics, race, and feminism. During these decades, the notion that abstraction was a purely formal and American art form, concerned only with timeless themes disconnected from the present, was met with increased skepticism. Women artists and artists of color began to actively and assertively explore abstraction’s possibilities. The artworks in Abstraction, Color, and Politics: The 1960s and 1970s demonstrate both radical and disarming changes in how artists worked and what they thought their art was about. Their new formal and intellectual strategies—seen here across large-scale and miniature work—dramatically transformed the practice of abstraction in the 1960s and 1970s in a politically shifting American landscape.
Ilya Kaminsky’s widely acclaimed parable in poems, Deaf Republic (Graywolf, 2019), reads like a two-act political drama in which lyric poems trace the experiences of citizens living under martial law. A New Yorker review called it a work of “profound imagination.” Poems from Deaf Republic were awarded Poetry magazine's Levinson Prize and the Pushcart Prize.
Kaminsky is also the author of Dancing In Odessa (Tupelo Press, 2004), and Musica Humana (Chapiteau Press, 2002). Kaminsky has won the Whiting Writer's Award, the American Academy of Arts and Letters' Metcalf Award, the Dorset Prize, a Ruth Lilly Fellowship, and the Foreword Magazine’s Best Poetry Book of the Year award. Recently, he was on the short-list for the Neusdadt International Literature Prize. His poems have been translated into numerous languages and his books have been published in many countries including Turkey, Holland, Russia, France, Mexico, Macedonia, Romania, Spain and China, where his poetry was awarded the Yinchuan International Poetry Prize. His poems have been compared to work by Anna Akhmatova, Osip Mandelstam, and Marina Tsvetaeva.
He is the editor of several anthologies, among them The Ecco Anthology of International Poetry (Ecco, 2010), co-edited with Susan Harris, which John Ashbery praised as “immediately indispensable;” A God in the House: Poets Talk About Faith (Tupelo Press, 2012), co-edited with Katherine Towler; Gossip and Metaphysics: Russian Modernist Poets and Prose (Tupelo Press, 2014), co-edited with Katie Farris and Valzhyna Mort; and In the Shape of the Human Body I am Visiting the Earth: Poems from Far and Wide (McSweeney's, 2017) with Dominic Luxford and Jesse Nathan. With Jean Valentine, he has co-translated Dark Elderberry Branch: Poems of Marina Tsvetaeva.
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 Sofia Ergas Groopman and Isabel Neal.
Sofia Ergas Groopman is a writer from New York. She is a second year in the Helen Zell Writers Program and lives with her dachshund, Roger, in Ann Arbor.
Isabel is a poet and educator from Boston. She is a Gemini.
Families with children ages six and up are invited to look, learn, and create together in this hands-on workshop inspired by UMMA's second exhibition of Inuit Art, Reflections: An Ordinary Day. Guided by local artist Sajeev Vadakoottu, participants will make a drawing of an image from their own imagination directly on a screen, essentially creating a stencil, and use that stencil to make prints on paper, bags or t-shirts. (Please bring your own canvas bags or t-shirts!)
Please note: Adults must accompany children. We cannot guarantee your spot if you arrive more than 15 minutes late.
Families with children ages six and up are invited to look, learn, and create together in this hands-on workshop inspired by UMMA's second exhibition of Inuit Art, Reflections: An Ordinary Day. Guided by local artist Sajeev Vadakoottu, participants will make a drawing of an image from their own imagination directly on a screen, essentially creating a stencil, and use that stencil to make prints on paper, bags or t-shirts. (Please bring your own canvas bags or t-shirts!)
Please note: Adults must accompany children. We cannot guarantee your spot if you arrive mroe than 15 minutes late.
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.
Our second exhibition on Inuit art explores the serene expressions of day-to-day activities found in mid-century to contemporary Inuit prints and sculptures. Donors inspired by the Power gift and the development of a Power Program for Inuit Art at UMMA contributed to this exhibition with diffuse offerings to incorporate into our holdings, or with loans to expand our conversations.
The votes are in! For the last four months UMMA visitors have voted for their top favorite photographs of the 1,000 on view in the Take Your Pick exhibition. Now what? Join Jennifer M. Friess, Assistant Curator of Photography, to look at the 250 winning photographs that will be acquired into the Museum’s permanent collection and discuss the exciting research and exhibition potential of this new acquisition, as well as the significance of snapshot photography in the digital age.
Please join us for a monthly gathering that offers a starting point to discover a variety of narratives pertaining to the cultures of North American Indigenous people featuring the works of Inuit authors. We will meet on the third Sunday of each month in the University of Michigan Museum of Art’s exhibition, Reflections: An Ordinary Day. The prints, drawings, and sculptures featured in this exhibition of Inuit art explore the relationship between the artist and the representation of everyday experiences. Each of the four gatherings will present an opportunity to enjoy traditional storytelling as well as discuss books written by contemporary Inuit and Native American authors. Our book club facilitator is Elizabeth James, a Detroit-based Powhatan storyteller and Program Manager at the U-M Department for AfroAmerican and African Studies.
3rd Sunday of the month at at 3 p.m.
January 19: The Right to Be Cold: One Woman's Story of Protecting Her Culture, the Arctic and the Whole Planet by Sheila Watt-Cloutier
February 16: House Made of Dawn [50th Anniversary Ed]: A Novel (P.S.) Anniversary Edition
by N. Scott Momaday
March 22: Sanaaq: An Inuit Novel by Mitiarjuk Nappaaluk (Author), Peter Frost (Translator)
April 19: Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer
Books will be available for sale in the UMMA Shop. Book Club participants will receive a 10% discount.
Courtney McClellan is an artist and writer from Greensboro, N.C., and the current Roman Witt Artist in Residence at the Stamps School of Art & Design. Her work addresses public ritual, institutional space, and objects that invite or demand speech. Her explorations result in sculpture, performance, installation, writing, and video. Her studio practice includes experimenting with materials, but also reaches to fields like law, theater, and journalism. For the past five years she has studied legal simulation.
At UMMA, McClellan will mount Witness Lab, an architectural courtroom installation and performance series. The facsimile courtroom located in the glassed-in Stenn Gallery will host legal simulations from participating groups including The Trial Advocacy Society and the Oral Argument Competition from the University of Michigan Law School, as well as the undergraduate team of the Collegiate American Mock Trial Association. Additionally, court transcript readings and trial advocacy workshops will be performed in the gallery. Stamps students will observe and document the courtroom activity through drawing, text, photography, and video. The accumulated documents will result in a publication.
Witness Lab offers audiences a complex truth. By studying the courtroom as a space of performance, and the lawyers as agents of justice, participants and passersby consider the physical and social architecture of the law.
Acclaimed by The New Yorker as “an American Master,” Composer David Lang is part visionary sound artist, part musical mad scientist. With one foot in the classical tradition and one in the future, his music explores meaning and musical relationships in a way that is at once fiercely intellectual and plain-spoken. Join the U-M Chamber Choir, under the direction of Eugene Rogers, for a stunning performance of Lang's Pulitzer-Prize winning work, the little match girl passion. The New York Times describes this touching work as “understated and ethereal… tender and mysterious.” The performance on February 18 will be the opening event of his week-long William Bolcom Guest Residency at the University of Michigan, which will feature performances of his music and other events across campus.
Catherine Lacey’s short story collection, Certain American States (FSG, 2018), portrays Americans tortured by the mundanity of their lives. The Chicago Tribune calls it "exactly what you would expect from Lacey: perfect sentences, penetrating insights, devastating epiphanies.”
Lacey is also the author of The Answers (FSG, 2017), a New York Times Top 10 Book of 2017, and Nobody is Ever Missing (FSG, 2014), a New Yorker Best Book of 2014. She has won a Whiting Award, was a finalist for the NYPL's Young Lions Fiction Award, was named one of Granta Magazine's Best Young American Novelists, and has been compared to both Don DeLillo and Margaret Atwood.
Writing about The Answers, The Los Angeles Times said, "Like the work of Clarice Lispector or Rachel Cusk, Lacey’s novels seem to be on the verge of inventing a new genre somewhere between prose poem and fugue state." Discussing The Answers with Interview Magazine, Lacey notes, “I want things to be both beautiful and readable. I’m not trying to alienate a reader, or make someone think they can’t read it because they like more commercial things. I hope that there’s room for any sort of mind to encounter the book.”
Her work has been translated into French, Italian, Spanish, Dutch and German. With Forsyth Harmon, she co-authored a nonfiction book, The Art of the Affair. Her work has appeared in McSweeney’s Quarterly, The Believer, The Paris Review Daily, The Atlantic, and others.
Storytime at the Museum promotes art enjoyment for our youngest patrons. Join us as we travel around the world and look at art from different countries. We read a story in the galleries and include a fun, age-appropriate, hands-on activity related to it. Parents must accompany children. Siblings are welcome to join the group. Meet in front of the UMMA Shop.
Radio Campfire and UMMA present Town Square -- audio stories that unfold in public places
Set to the backdrop of artist Cullen Washington’s large scale abstract Agoras paintings, this Radio Campfire event will feature a series of creative audio stories, soundscapes, and sonic postcards that, like Washington’s paintings, tell us stories about the places where civic life ensues.
Radio Campfire is a community listening event series based in southeast Michigan. Going to a Radio Campfire is “like going to the movies for your ears.” We gather, we dim the lights, and listen to a specially curated selection of creative audio stories on a theme. If you like podcasts, you’ll love Radio Campfire.
Inspired by the UMMA exhibition Cullen Washington, Jr.: The Public Square (on view through May 17, 2020), Radio Campfire: Town Square will be hosted and produced by Stephanie Rowden and Juliet Hinely.
The event begins at 7 p.m. Doors open at 6:45 p.m. The gallery is located on Floor 2 of the Alumni Memorial Hall building.
UMMA is wheelchair accessible.
This event is best for ages 14+
Join a docent on a journey through time and memory, as you explore over 1,000 found photographs together. Take Your Pick invites you—the Museum’s visitors—to select photographs for our permanent collection. What belongs in a permanent collection, and why? Who and what should be represented, and how should we decide? This exhibition considers these questions in regard to 1,000 amateur photographs on loan from the private collection of Peter J. Cohen, who has gathered more than 60,000 snapshots while exploring flea markets in the United States and Europe over two decades. The images he has collected depict all aspects of daily life and reveal the dynamic histories of amateur photography. Such pictures have particular significance in the current digital age, when it is much less common to make physical copies of personal photographs. They constitute important artifacts of twentieth-century visual culture and precedents for the photographs we still make today. You are invited to make your voice heard in the selection process by voting for the photographs that resonate most with you!
