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.
Adam Kahana is a singer, guitarist, pianist, and composer based in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Born in Seattle, he currently lives in Ann Arbor, where he studies jazz guitar, data science, and business at the University of Michigan. Adam is currently a Geri Allen Fellow in the Carr Center Gathering Orchestra, under the direction of Professor Rodney Whitaker. He is also a member of the Bluenote Vocal Jazz Ensemble, the University of Michigan’s only such group. In addition to giving guitar lessons in the area, Adam can be seen performing around town with his groups, as well as with the acclaimed Ann Arbor Guitar Trio.
Darianna Videaux Capitel is a bassist, vocalist, and educator. She discovered the bass at the age of 10 in her home province of Guantanamo, Cuba, where she attended the Arts School. She continued her musical education to earn her Bachelor of Music degree from the University of the Arts in Havana. A classically-trained bassist, she won a position in the National Radio and Television Orchestra of Cuba, as well as an alternating guest-bassist position with the renowned Camerata Romeu. While living in Havana, she was introduced to traditional Cuban music. Darianna enjoys playing everything– from Son, Salsa, and Timba Cubana, to an entire array of Afro-Cuban and Afro-Caribbean genres. With anything from traditional aggrupations to salsa orchestras, she has performed in acclaimed venues across the island of Cuba, as well as in Eastern Europe. She is currently pursuing a Masters Degree in Jazz and Contemporary Improvisation at the University of Michigan's School of Music, Theatre & Dance.
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!
The Wee Wisdom Women, named after a street on North Campus, is composed of music students Elena Chambers (violin), Abby Carpenter (voice, guitar), and Tess Lauer (flute) at the University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre & Dance. The three of them share a love of traditional Irish/Scottish folk tunes, and they love putting their own spin on these old classics as well as originating their own works.
For bookings, you can email them at weewisdomwomen@gmail.com
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 in the midst of the political and cultural upheavals of the 1960s and 70s. Kaleidoscope, UMMA’s third and final edition of this exhibition series, examines the constantly changing practices of local Detroit artists, women artists, and artists of color as they actively embraced abstraction’s possibilities. Their strategies dramatically transformed the practice of abstraction in a shifting American political landscape. Join an UMMA docent on a tour through this eye-opening exhibition.
Families with children ages six and up are invited to look, learn, and create together in this hands-on workshop inspired by the UMMA exhibition Cullen Washington, Jr.: The Public Square. Visit the exhibition—the compositions are soaring monumental collages exploring the idea of the public square as the heart of the artistic, spiritual, and political life of the city —and create an original art work. Led by local artist and long-time UMMA docent Susan Clinthorne.
Parents must accompany children. We cannot guarantee your spot if you arrive more than 15 minutes late.
Singer-songwriter Nadim Azzam will be performing his unique blend of acoustic blues, pop, and hip-hop. Nadim's catchy and conscious lyrics paired with his melodic rapping have earned him the stage at Top of the Park, Sonic Lunch, and Buttermilk Jamboree this year, as well as a national tour with Matisyahu.
Families with children ages six and up are invited to look, learn, and create together in this hands-on workshop inspired by the UMMA exhibition Cullen Washington, Jr.: The Public Square. Visit the exhibition—the compositions are soaring monumental collages exploring the idea of the public square as the heart of the artistic, spiritual, and political life of the city —and create an original art work. Led by local artist and long-time UMMA docent Susan Clinthorne.
Parents must accompany children. We cannot guarantee your spot if you arrive more than 15 minutes late.
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.
On the evening of the Michigan primaries, UMMA offers up a late night student event with live music, food, and election updates in partnership with the Residential College, the Ginsberg Center’s Big Ten Voter Challenge and the School of Music Theatre & Dance.
This program is part of UMMA's on-going commitment to and partnership with the Big Ten Voter Challenge and is offered in connection with the winter term exhibition Cullen Washington, Jr.: The Public Square (on view January 25 - May 17, 2020) in which questions about democratic society are expressed through large-scale abstract art.
Professor Len Niehoff will lead a U-M Law School seminar discussion of the Salem Witch Trials with twelve students before a public audience. The March 11 session will focus on the history of the trials and the legal issues they raise. The March 18 session will include live performances of actual parts of the trials, along with conversation about the lessons they convey. Professor Niehoff has a forthcoming article on the witch trials and is working on a book about them as well. Come get a glimpse into both a law school classroom and a 1692 colonial witch trial!
Before Grace Lin was an award-winning and New York Times bestselling author and illustrator of picture books, early readers and middle grade novels, she was the only Asian girl (except for her sisters) going to her elementary school in Upstate New York. That experience, good and bad, has influenced her books—including her Newbery Honor Where the Mountain Meets the Moon, her Geisel Honor Ling & Ting, her National Book Finalist When the Sea Turned to Silver and her Caldecott Honor A Big Mooncake for Litte Star.
That experience also causes Lin to persevere for diversity: She is an occasional New England Public Radio commentator, she gave a TEDx talk titled “The Windows and Mirrors of Your Child’s Bookshelf,” and she authored a PBSNewHour video essay called "What to do when you realize classic books from your childhood are racist?" She continues this mission with her two podcasts kidlitwomen* and Book Friends Forever. In 2016, Lin’s art was displayed at the White House and Lin was recognized by President Obama’s office as a Champion of Change for Asian American and Pacific Islander Art and Storytelling.
Greenhills Middle School students will speculate about a trial that never happened. Riffing on Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, students will put Romeo on trial. You decide: Is Romeo responsible for Tybalt’s death?
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 Zahir Janmohamed and Joumana Altallal.
Zahir Janmohamed is a fiction writer from Sacramento, California.
Joumana Altallal is an Iraqi-Lebanese poet and educator. Before moving to Ann Arbor, she lived in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Collection Ensemble presents the first major reinstallation of UMMA's iconic entry space in over a decade. It exchanges Alumni Memorial Hall's previous focus on European and American painting for a broad mix of American, European, African, and Asian art from across media, sampling the Museum's remarkable, disparate holdings. The installation is organized into thematic and formal vignettes that respond to the concepts and ideas resonating from an extraordinary large-scale photograph of a vacant cathedral by contemporary German artist Candida Höfer. Featuring works of art by numerous famous and not-so-famous artists, many of them artists of color and women—including Charles Alston, Christo, Theaster Gates, Jenny Holzer, Roni Horn, Do-Ho Suh, Kara Walker, and others, Collection Ensemble reimagines the collection not as a fixed entity with one set of meanings to be unearthed, but instead as an active, creative, sometimes startling source of material and ideas, open for debate and interpretation.
Professor Len Niehoff will lead a U-M Law School seminar discussion of the Salem Witch Trials with twelve students before a public audience. The March 11 session will focus on the history of the trials and the legal issues they raise. The March 18 session will include live performances of actual parts of the trials, along with conversation about the lessons they convey. Professor Niehoff has a forthcoming article on the witch trials and is working on a book about them as well. Come get a glimpse into both a law school classroom and a 1692 colonial witch trial!
Jenny Zhang’s story collection, Sour Heart (Lenny, 2017), centers on immigrants who have traded their endangered lives as artists in China and Taiwan for the constant struggle of life at the poverty line in 1990s New York City. It examines the many ways that family and history can weigh us down and also lift us up. From the young woman coming to terms with her grandmother’s role in the Cultural Revolution to the daughter struggling to understand where her family ends and she begins, to the girl discovering the power of her body to inspire and destroy, these seven stories illuminate the complex and messy inner lives of girls struggling to define themselves.
Zhang is also the author of the poetry collection Dear Jenny, We Are All Find. Her second collection of poetry, My Baby First Birthday, is forthcoming from Tin House. She is the recipient of the Pen/Bingham Award for Debut Fiction and the LA Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction.
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 Sarah Duffett and Michael M. Weinstein.
Sarah Duffett is a writer from New England and the cohost of the Webster Reading Series. She currently lives in Ann Arbor.
Michael M. Weinstein is a poet, teacher, translator, and cohost of the Webster Reading Series. Originally from New York, he now lives in Ann Arbor.
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.
Jacob Warren is a multi-style bassist originally from Ann Arbor, MI. Jacob's background and interests include a wide variety of acoustic styles, such as classical, traditional and contemporary folk, jazz, bluegrass, newgrass, Swedish, and many others. He obtained his Bachelor's in Music Performance at the University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre & Dance. He also holds a Masters of Music in Improvisation and Chamber Music from the University of Michigan. This program will feature an eclectic mix of solo double bass arrangements from many different genres.
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.”
Witness Lab is a project of Roman Witt Artist-in-Residence, Courtney McClellan. It is part museum exhibit, part performance art, part research project, which seeks to illuminate the intersection of performance and the law in new ways. Join McClellan for a discussion of her exploration of the act of witnessing as it relates to her art practice. Additionally, she will share motivations for creating Witness Lab and current findings from work in progress.
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 and indigenous 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.
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.
Ambiance Dance Team, a U-M Student organization, is a collective of dancers interested in fostering a social, artistic and diverse community. Their latest work, Deviation, acknowledges the struggle and strength of young women making their mark in a male dominated world.
Arabesque Dance Troupe, a U-M Student organization, brings focus to Middle Eastern and North African Culture through artmaking. “Arab Expressions” brings these art forms together for a yearly celebration. Arabesque will perform an excerpt from this concert, highlighting their history, culture and experiences.
Iraqi Student Association (ISA) aims to promote and raise awareness of Iraqi and Middle Eastern culture. The association strives to bring the Iraqi community together while educating the student population at the University of Michigan on topics within the Iraqi and Middle Eastern society. ISA will invite the audience to join in learning “Chobi”, a traditional dance performed at public events and weddings. *Audience Participation Optional
Queer Artist Collective, an organization founded by dance majors Alana Packo and Rose Janusiak, aims to create a space where Queer artists from any craft can establish community. Their latest work, “An Exploration of Intimacy in Queer Friendship," asks the question how can two people of the same sexuality develop a friendship of deep intimacy despite the prospect of attraction?
Meleko Mokgosi's monumental installation Pan-African Pulp presents a complex and multi-layered reflection on histories of Pan-Africanism, Black Consciousness, and Southern African resistance movements. Made up of five parts, it engages with its audience in various ways, encouraging visitors to access this rich history through the medium of history painting, through popular posters, through comic books, academic literature or stories written in Mokgosi's mother tongue - Setswana. Multiple interpretations and readings are not only possible but are explicitly encouraged by the artist, whose work is saturated with archival research, theory and deep thinking about the history of artmaking and the powerful role artworks have (and continue to have) as sites of resistance and activism.
Taking Pan-African Pulp as their starting point, five different speakers from the University of Michigan and Michigan State University will bring their unique points of view to the table, offering up new and perhaps unexpected interpretations, exploring how one artwork may act as a prism for diverse readings.
The program will take place in the Mokgosi installation on the first floor between the UMMA Shop and Cafe.
Speakers include:
Bénédicte Boisseron, from the U-M Department of Afroamerican and African Studies (DAAS), will respond to the mural examining the complexity of blackness;
Anita Gonzalez, from the U-M School of Music, Theatre & Dance, the stories from Setswana oral tradition.
Annette Joseph-Gabriel, from the U-M Department for Romance Languages and Literatures, the 1969 Algiers Pan-African manifesto annotated by the artist;
Jamie Monson, Director, African Studies Center at Michigan State University, on the historical posters from internationalist and Pan-African movements from around the world;
Randall Scott, from the MSU Comic Art Collection, the large-scale panels inspired by African photo novels of the 1960s and ’70s.
The discussion will be moderated by Laura De Becker, UMMA’s Helmut & Candis Stern Associate Curator of African Art.
Chief Justice Bridget McCormack teaches the basics of the Michigan Supreme Court. Using famous Michigan cases, McCormack will illuminate today’s important judicial decisions. Attend one or both.
Judge Timothy Connors and Margaret Connors will teach vital lessons from their lauded U-M trial advocacy class. Law students and viewers will consider the importance of performance and movement when mediating a case. Traditional courtroom negotiations will be addressed, as well as alternative forms of adjudication.
The Ann Arbor Film Festival returns for its 58th year March 24 - 29, 2020. Thousands of influential filmmakers and artists have showcased work at the AAFF, including Andy Warhol, Yoko Ono, Gus Van Sant, Barbara Hammer, Lawrence Kasdan, Devo, and George Lucas. The longest-running avant-garde and experimental film festival in North America, it presents films of all lengths and genres, including experimental, animation, documentary, fiction, and performance-based works. The festival serves as one of a handful of Academy Award®-qualifying festivals in the United States.
This year, the AAFF is featuring a Music Videos in Competition program. These contemporary music videos include beard-based lifeforms, an unexpected visitor, a journey forward, a setar player, a future so remote it looks like the past, an exorcism attempt, power dynamics and sexual abuse, a Jungian alternate universe wormhole, another dimension, mesmerizing voices, disturbing arte-facts brought to light, a blackhole, and a haunted car ride with Kim Gordon.
Kathleen Graber’s poetry collection, The River Twice (Princeton University Press, 2019), is an elegiac meditation on impermanence and change. She presents a fluid world in which so much―including space and time, the subterranean realm of dreams, and language itself―seems protean.
Graber is also the author of two previous books of poetry, Correspondence and The Eternal City, which was a finalist for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. She is the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Guggenheim Foundation. She is an associate professor of English at Virginia Commonwealth University.
Join Docent Laura Seligman for a contemplative gallery experience. You will have the opportunity to personally engage with one work of art for an extended period of time, followed by brief discussion. Tour will begin promptly. Please meet outside the Museum Shop. No prior meditation experience is necessary. Laura Seligman is a visual artist and has been practicing mindful meditation for decades.
Native American students and faculty at the University of Michigan have been bringing the annual powwow to the Ann Arbor area since 1972. At this year’s 48th Annual Dance for Mother Earth Powwow, Isabel Engel, the Andrew W. Mellon Academic Teaching Fellow at the University of Michigan Museum of Art, will share images from and information about UMMA’s new Power Family Program for Inuit Art. This collection of sculptures and prints from Kinngait (Cape Dorset), in the Nunavut region of Canada, will foster rich inquiry and discussion. Learn about the current installation, Reflections: An Ordinary Day, the art and the artists, and plans for the future of the program.
The powwow is one of the largest in North America and is a time for "celebration for and by the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and Native American communities alike," according to the Native American Student Association, which coordinates the event. The two-day event begins Saturday and features vendors, traditional music, dancing, and ceremonial outfits.
Join Docent Laura Seligman for a contemplative gallery experience. You will have the opportunity to personally engage with one work of art for an extended period of time, followed by brief discussion. Tour will begin promptly. Please meet outside the Museum Shop. No prior meditation experience is necessary. Laura Seligman is a visual artist and has been practicing mindful meditation for decades.
Jury Duty is a jazz quartet consisting of U-M School of Music, Theatre and Dance (SMTD) sophomores Eric Banitt, Mitchell Dangler, Reuben Stump, and Ian Thompson. The group began playing together in preparation for their annual performance examinations in the jazz department. These examinations are called "juries," birthing the group's name. After adequately preparing for their freshman year jury, Jury Duty began writing and performing their original compositions in dorm rooms, houses, and other venues around Ann Arbor.
A yooper hailing from Marquette, Michigan, Eric Banitt is a jazz piano major. With his roots in classical music, Eric also plays the trumpet and violin. Mitch Dangler is a sophomore from Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Mitch plays the drum-set, and if you’re lucky he’ll whip out a couple of spoons. Reuben Stump is from Lansing, Michigan, and has been playing the bass for over 4 years. Reuben grew up performing and listening to the Great American Songbook. Ian Thompson is from Troy, Michigan and has been playing guitar for 5 years. Ian's roots are in classical and rock music, having studied the piano and trumpet before switching to guitar.
Judge Timothy Connors and Margaret Connors will teach vital lessons from their lauded U-M trial advocacy class. Law students and viewers will consider the importance of performance and movement when mediating a case. Traditional courtroom negotiations will be addressed, as well as alternative forms of adjudication.
New York based artist Abigail DeVille creates immersive works and installations designed to bring attention to these forgotten stories, such as with the sculpture she built on the site of a former African American burial ground in Harlem. With family roots spanning back at least two generations, DeVille’s work about New York City is both personal and political. Acting as an archaeologist, DeVille collects and reallocates found materials to give physical presence to unspoken stories and forgotten pasts. Her work often focuses around themes of displacement, migration, marginalization, and cultural invisibility. As an extension of her installation practice, DeVille also designs sets for theatrical productions, including the Stratford Festival and Harlem Stage. Her work is part of some of the most prestigious collections in the world and has been exhibited internationally, including the Institute of Contemporary Art (Los Angeles); The Studio Museum in Harlem (New York); the Pinchuk Art Centre (Kiev); New Museum (New York); and the Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam). An honors fellow at The Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard, a Creative Capital grantee, and an OBIE Award for Design recipient, DeVille is currently in residence at the American Academy in Rome.
Co-presented with the Institute for Humanities, presenting No Space Hidden (Under Heaven), an exhibition of work by Abigail DeVille, on view at the IH Gallery April 1-May 7, 2020. There will be an exhibition reception at the IH Gallery following this event.
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 in the midst of the political and cultural upheavals of the 1960s and 70s. Kaleidoscope, UMMA’s third and final edition of this exhibition series, examines the constantly changing practices of local Detroit artists, women artists, and artists of color as they actively embraced abstraction’s possibilities. Their strategies dramatically transformed the practice of abstraction in a shifting American political landscape. Join an UMMA docent on a tour through this eye-opening exhibition.
Chief Justice Bridget McCormack teaches the basics of the Michigan Supreme Court. Using famous Michigan cases, McCormack will illuminate today’s important judicial decisions. Attend one or both.
Lauren Groff’s latest book, Florida (Riverhead Books, 2018), explores loneliness, rage, family, and the passage of time. With shocking accuracy and effect, she pinpoints the moments, decisions and connections behind human pleasure and pain, hope and despair, love and fury—the moments that make us alive. Florida won the Story Prize and was a finalist for the National Book Award, the Southern Book Prize, and the Kirkus Prize.
Groff is also the author of the short story collection, Delicate Edible Birds, and three novels: The Monsters of Templeton, a finalist for the Orange Prize for New Writers; Arcadia, a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in Fiction; and Fates and Furies, a finalist for the National Book Award, National Book Critics Circle Prize, and the Kirkus Prize, and the winner of the Grand Prix de l'Héroïne in France.
Groff’s short fiction has won prizes including the Pushcart Prize, the PEN/O. Henry Prize, and the Paul Bowles Prize, and has appeared frequently in the New Yorker and the Best American Short Stories anthology. She has held fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the Radcliffe Foundation, and her work has been published in over 30 languages. She lives in Gainesville, Florida.
Njideka Akunyili Crosby, a 2017 MacArthur Genius Grant recipient, is a Nigerian-born visual artist working in Los Angeles. Crosby uses collage and photo transfer-based paintings to expose and explore moments of collision, moments of unity, and moments of hybridity found in cross-cultural relationships and in cultures of colonization. Crosby’s work is both personal and universal, as she draws upon her lived experience with interracial marriage, immigration, and dual ideas of home, and the deep traces of colonization in Nigeria. In 2019, Crosby was a participant in the Venice Biennale 58th International Art Exhibition, May You Live in Interesting Times, curated by Ralph Rugoff. Recent solo exhibitions include Njideka Akunyili Crosby: The Beautyful Ones at the National Portrait Gallery in London and Counterparts, which debuted at the Baltimore Museum of Art in 2017 before traveling to the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas, in 2018. She received an honorary doctorate of art from Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania in 2019 and was named among the Financial Times' “Women of the Year” in 2016.
Lauren Groff’s latest book, Florida (Riverhead Books, 2018), explores loneliness, rage, family, and the passage of time. With shocking accuracy and effect, she pinpoints the moments, decisions and connections behind human pleasure and pain, hope and despair, love and fury—the moments that make us alive. Florida won the Story Prize and was a finalist for the National Book Award, the Southern Book Prize, and the Kirkus Prize.
Groff is also the author of the short story collection, Delicate Edible Birds, and three novels: The Monsters of Templeton, a finalist for the Orange Prize for New Writers; Arcadia, a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in Fiction; and Fates and Furies, a finalist for the National Book Award, National Book Critics Circle Prize, and the Kirkus Prize, and the winner of the Grand Prix de l'Héroïne in France.
Groff’s short fiction has won prizes including the Pushcart Prize, the PEN/O. Henry Prize, and the Paul Bowles Prize, and has appeared frequently in the New Yorker and the Best American Short Stories anthology. She has held fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the Radcliffe Foundation, and her work has been published in over 30 languages. She lives in Gainesville, Florida.
How do we arrive at an understanding of truth within our courts and justice system? What constitutes witnessing in our current tech and data saturated context? Courtney McClellan, the 2019-2020 Roman J. Witt Artist in Residence, will discuss Witness Lab, an installation and performance project that investigates who performs the role of witness in our society and examines the relationship between performance and law. She will be joined by an international group of science and technology studies (STS) scholars—humanists and social scientists who study the relationships between science, technology, politics, and society—for an informal conversation that explores the role of science and technology in our understanding of witnessing and the construction of standards of truth.
Following the gallery discussion, please join us for a film screening of El Panóptico Ciego (The Blind Panopticon) at 5:30 p.m. in UMMA’s Helmut Stern Auditorium.
In August of 2014 a film crew stumbled across a century-old bureaucratic archive of the main men’s prison in Quito, Ecuador. Roof-high stacks of paperwork crammed into a nineteenth-century vault. This decaying archive recorded the daily institutional life of Ecuador’s oldest penitentiary, Centro de Rehabiltacion de Varones, Numero Uno Quito (CRSVQ1); originally titled Penal Garcia Moreno after the President who oversaw its construction between 1869 and 1874. El Panóptico Ciego (Blind Panopticon) documents an extensive array of official records hoarded during 139 years of prison functioning, countless everyday items left behind by prisoners transferred without notice also became part of this archive, and the prison itself came to constitute an archive of events inscribed on its walls.
2015. 52 min. In Spanish with English subtitles. Director: Mateo Herrera; scriptwriter and ethnography: Jorge Núñez; photography: Simón Brauer; producer: Nathalie Moller; and subtitles: Jennifer Fleetwood.
Followed by a Q&A with Jorge Nuñez.
Emma Lee Aboukasm is an award-winning, Detroit-based recording artist, vocalist, pianist, and composer. Educated in classical and jazz music at the University of Michigan, she is now performing in a variety of venues, ranging from intimate venues like the Dirty Dog Jazz Cafe to the Detroit Jazz Festival. Emma Lee is on the vanguard of contemporary music in the heart of metro-Detroit.
Aboukasm won the Youth Vocal Jazz Competition in Detroit in 2014. In 2015, she made the top five finalists out of 2,000 applications worldwide in the International Sarah Vaughan Vocal Jazz Competition. There, she performed for a panel of judges including Christian McBride and Cyrille Aimée and played tracks from her CD on WBGO radio in Newark, NJ.
Currently, Emma Lee Aboukasm resides in Southeast Michigan as she completes her bachelor degrees in Jazz Studies and Science in Information Analysis at the University of Michigan. She continues to write and arrange music for a new project to be announced soon.
Alex Anest has been teaching, performing, and recording music professionally in the Southeast Michigan area since 1996. He founded and leads the Ann Arbor Guitar Trio and is also currently playing with the Alex Anest Trio, the Bluewater Kings, Kat Steih, and Klezmephonic. Alex studied guitar with Miles Okazaki and Chris Buzzelli. He holds a Masters of Music in Improvisation from University of Michigan, where he studied with Benny Green, Mark Kirschenmann, and Ellen Rowe. Alex was a founding member of the electric jazz group Giraffe, the Jericho Guitar Trio, Never Nebula, Secret 7, and Delta 88. He has toured Switzerland, Germany, Austria and Italy with songwriter Kevin Meisel and has played on stages throughout the Midwest and New England. Alex has also appeared on over 30 albums, mostly recorded in Michigan.
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.
UMMA is partnering with WeListen, a grassroots campus organization focused on building empathy across the political spectrum with the goal of creating listeners across the country, to catalyze a conversation about the fundamental building blocks of our society. This interactive dialogue will take up questions like: what is democracy and what role do citizens really play in shaping their government? What values should guide our government and how have your experiences shaped your beliefs? Has the United States government expanded too far beyond its purpose? Or should it do more to fulfill the needs of its citizens? Join us to discuss all of these questions and more!
Arrive at 7:30 p.m. for light refreshments and a chance to preview the gallery. Program to begin at 8 p.m.
Jacob Warren and Grant Flick explore the nuanced textures of a two-person band. Using both original material and personally arranged standards from many genres, the group finds new depth in the simplicity of duets. The two met at the 2015 Acoustic Music Seminar, a program accepting only sixteen young string players from around the world to participate in a week of intense improvisation, composition and performance training. With Jacob’s classical foundation and Grant’s experience in bluegrass and jazz, their contrasting backgrounds give Warren & Flick a unique and compelling musical narrative.
You can find out more on their website, or follow them on Instagram and Facebook.
Collection Ensemble presents the first major reinstallation of UMMA's iconic entry space in over a decade. It exchanges Alumni Memorial Hall's previous focus on European and American painting for a broad mix of American, European, African, and Asian art from across media, sampling the Museum's remarkable, disparate holdings. The installation is organized into thematic and formal vignettes that respond to the concepts and ideas resonating from an extraordinary large-scale photograph of a vacant cathedral by contemporary German artist Candida Höfer. Featuring works of art by numerous famous and not-so-famous artists, many of them artists of color and women—including Charles Alston, Christo, Theaster Gates, Jenny Holzer, Roni Horn, Do-Ho Suh, Kara Walker, and others, Collection Ensemble reimagines the collection not as a fixed entity with one set of meanings to be unearthed, but instead as an active, creative, sometimes startling source of material and ideas, open for debate and interpretation.
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 and indigenous 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.
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).
Join Docent Laura Seligman for a contemplative gallery experience. You will have the opportunity to personally engage with one work of art for an extended period of time, followed by brief discussion. Tour will begin promptly. Please meet outside the Museum Shop. No prior meditation experience is necessary. Laura Seligman is a visual artist and has been practicing mindful meditation for decades.
In conjunction with Earth Day's 50th anniversary and its Artists for the Earth program, The Vocal Arts Ensemble of Ann Arbor will be presenting a new choral drama at UMMA. Curated by Ben Cohen, Music for a Meanwhile Earth, interlaces actors, soloists and choral artists in a program that is both an existential exploration and a call to action. Antaeus, the giant who draws strength when in contact with the earth, faces a crisis when Hercules lifts him off the ground on his way to his eleventh labor. What do they say to each other in the bearhug? Music and texts from the Renaissance to contemporary surround and intersperse the story, including a world premiere by composer Evan Hause, a setting of Yeats' poem "The Two Trees".
Families with children ages six and up are invited to look, learn, and create together in this hands-on workshop. Take a tour of Collection Ensemble, the vibrant reinstallation of UMMA’s Tisch Apse, followed by a watercolor and assemblage workshop where you will learn painting techniques and create two of your own works of art. Led by Stamps School of Art and Design students Emily Considine and Bre Boersma.
Parents must accompany children. We cannot guarantee your spot if you arrive more than 15 minutes late.
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.
Families with children ages six and up are invited to look, learn, and create together in this hands-on workshop. Take a tour of Collection Ensemble, the vibrant reinstallation of UMMA’s Tisch Apse, followed by a watercolor and assemblage workshop where you will learn painting techniques and create two of your own works of art. Led by Stamps School of Art and Design students Emily Considine and Bre Boersma.
Parents must accompany children. We cannot guarantee your spot if you arrive more than 15 minutes late.
Betsy Richards and Matthew Davis bring a blend of traditional folk music from around the world in a dynamic duo consisting of fiddle, banjo, and other string instruments. Their influences range from Swedish polskas, to Irish jigs and reels– all through the lens of American old-time and bluegrass. Having grown up as friends in the Midwest, Richards and Davis have since lived in many places and traveled the country, allowing different folk traditions to shape their playing. Now, the two reside in Southeast Michigan and enjoy a reunion of their different musical experiences in this duo project.
Join Docent Laura Seligman for a contemplative gallery experience. You will have the opportunity to personally engage with one work of art for an extended period of time, followed by brief discussion. Tour will begin promptly. Please meet outside the Museum Shop. No prior meditation experience is necessary. Laura Seligman is a visual artist and has been practicing mindful meditation for decades.
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.”
Collection Ensemble presents the first major reinstallation of UMMA's iconic entry space in over a decade. It exchanges Alumni Memorial Hall's previous focus on European and American painting for a broad mix of American, European, African, and Asian art from across media, sampling the Museum's remarkable, disparate holdings. The installation is organized into thematic and formal vignettes that respond to the concepts and ideas resonating from an extraordinary large-scale photograph of a vacant cathedral by contemporary German artist Candida Höfer. Featuring works of art by numerous famous and not-so-famous artists, many of them artists of color and women—including Charles Alston, Christo, Theaster Gates, Jenny Holzer, Roni Horn, Do-Ho Suh, Kara Walker, and others, Collection Ensemble reimagines the collection not as a fixed entity with one set of meanings to be unearthed, but instead as an active, creative, sometimes startling source of material and ideas, open for debate and interpretation.
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.
Witness Lab is a project of Roman Witt Artist-in-Residence, Courtney McClellan. It is part museum exhibit, part performance art, part research project, which seeks to understand and illuminate the intersection of performance and the law. During the run of the project, classes investigating different aspects of the courts and our legal system, as well as performances of mock trials and trial scenes, have all taken part in creating and shaping the Witness Lab project. McClellan will discuss her findings from this form of research. She will focus her conversation on the art museum and the University of Michigan as a site specific places in which to make art.
Singer-songwriter Nadim Azzam will be performing his unique blend of acoustic blues, pop, and hip-hop. Nadim's catchy and conscious lyrics paired with his melodic rapping have earned him the stage at Top of the Park, Sonic Lunch, and Buttermilk Jamboree this year, as well as a national tour with Matisyahu.
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.”
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 in the midst of the political and cultural upheavals of the 1960s and 70s. Kaleidoscope, UMMA’s third and final edition of this exhibition series, examines the constantly changing practices of local Detroit artists, women artists, and artists of color as they actively embraced abstraction’s possibilities. Their strategies dramatically transformed the practice of abstraction in a shifting American political landscape. Join an UMMA docent on a tour through this eye-opening exhibition.
Collection Ensemble presents the first major reinstallation of UMMA's iconic entry space in over a decade. It exchanges Alumni Memorial Hall's previous focus on European and American painting for a broad mix of American, European, African, and Asian art from across media, sampling the Museum's remarkable, disparate holdings. The installation is organized into thematic and formal vignettes that respond to the concepts and ideas resonating from an extraordinary large-scale photograph of a vacant cathedral by contemporary German artist Candida Höfer. Featuring works of art by numerous famous and not-so-famous artists, many of them artists of color and women—including Charles Alston, Christo, Theaster Gates, Jenny Holzer, Roni Horn, Do-Ho Suh, Kara Walker, and others, Collection Ensemble reimagines the collection not as a fixed entity with one set of meanings to be unearthed, but instead as an active, creative, sometimes startling source of material and ideas, open for debate and interpretation.
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 in the midst of the political and cultural upheavals of the 1960s and 70s. Kaleidoscope, UMMA’s third and final edition of this exhibition series, examines the constantly changing practices of local Detroit artists, women artists, and artists of color as they actively embraced abstraction’s possibilities. Their strategies dramatically transformed the practice of abstraction in a shifting American political landscape. Join an UMMA docent on a tour through this eye-opening exhibition.
