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!  

Zachary Brown is a cellist, hailing from Brentwood, NY.  Zachary began the cello age the age of thirteen. He completed a double degree in cello performance and jazz studies from Ithaca College in 2016 as well as a masters in cello performance from SUNY Purchase in 2019. He has appeared as a guest artist and has given instructional workshops on “chopping” and improvisation at the New Directions Cello festival as well in at the Ithaca Winter Strings Festival.
 
 Matthew Davis is an up and coming banjoist in the world of new acoustic music, and elsewhere. His influences include artists like Béla Fleck, Donald Fagen, the Punch Brothers, Julian Lage, and many others. Growing up playing piano, it wasn’t until Matthew was 12 years old when he decided to pick up the banjo for the first time. Since then, he has continued to improve himself as a musician with a strong desire to find ways to take the banjo into new musical areas. Matthew’s list of achievements include the 2016 National Banjo Champion, 2016 & 2017 Acoustic Music Seminar Alumni, and the 2017 Rockygrass Banjo Champion. He currently studies jazz at the University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre & Dance in Ann Arbor, MI.

For more about this dynamic duo, visit www.westboundsituation.com

Back by popular demand! UMMA Director Christina Olsen wants to chat with you about the Museum. Come say hello, share your reactions to recent exhibitions and changes, and bring your ideas of what you’d like to see at UMMA. Meet Tina in the new, comfortable UMMA Living Rooms in Alumni Memorial Hall. Dates and times as follows:

Thursday, Sept. 12, 12–1 p.m.
Friday, Sept. 13, 3–4 p.m.

Thursday, Sept. 19, 12–1 p.m.
Friday, Sept. 20, 3–4 p.m.

Thursday, Sept. 26, 12–1 p.m.
Friday, Sept. 27, 3–4 p.m. -- CANCELED

Thursday, Oct. 3, 12–1 p.m.
Friday, Oct. 4, 3–4 p.m.

Thursday, Oct. 10, 12–1 p.m. --CANCELED
Friday, Oct. 11, 3–4 p.m. -- CANCELED

Thursday, Oct. 17, 12–1 p.m.
Friday, Oct. 18, 3–4 p.m. -- CANCELED
 

How are settler colonial and Indigenous listening practices different? How can listening be extractive, a way to access and use Indigenous resources? What are alternative listening practices that connect listener and song-life rather than make a distinction between them? This presentation provides an overview of forms of extractive or “hungry” perception, and alternatives to these that emerge from Indigenous sensory engagement. 

Dylan Robinson is a xwélméxw artist and writer (Stó:lō Nation, Sqwa), and the Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Arts at Queen’s University. His current work focuses on the re-connection of Indigenous songs with communities who were prohibited by law to sing them as part of Canada’s Indian Act from 1882-1951. Robinson’s previous publications include the edited volumes Music and Modernity Among Indigenous Peoples of North America (2018); Arts of Engagement: Taking Aesthetic Action in and Beyond the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (2016); and Opera Indigene (2011). His monograph, Hungry Listening, is forthcoming with Minnesota University Press in early 2020. Additionally, Robinson is curator of the Ka’tarohkwi Festival of Indigenous Arts in Kingston, and along with Candice Hopkins, is curator of the internationally touring exhibition Soundings featuring “scores for decolonial action” by Indigenous artists.

CM Burroughs’ book of poems, The Vital System (Tupelo Press), illuminates what she calls "the protective capability of violence.” In the words of renowned French feminist scholar Hélène Cixous: “Burroughs delves into the ultra-sensitive roots of being; where sufferings and desires take shape, she gathers each breath as yet unheard and leads it to speech.”

Burroughs is an Associate Professor of Poetry at Columbia College Chicago. She has been awarded fellowships and grants from Yaddo, the MacDowell Colony, Djerassi Foundation, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and Cave Canem Foundation. She has received commissions from the Studio Museum of Harlem and the Warhol Museum to create poetry in response to art installations. 

Her poetry has appeared in journals and anthologies including Poetry, Callaloo, jubilat, Ploughshares, VOLT, and Best American Experimental Writing 2015. Her second book, Master Suffering, will be published by Tupelo Press in 2020.

Conceived in connection with Collection Ensemble, the recent re-installation of UMMA's historic Apse, this program of sacred and spiritual music weaves together radiant sonorities and shimmering timbres that play on the installation's celebration and critique of community, faith, and the spaces that hold us. Led by SMTD Director of Choirs, Professor Eugene Rogers, the U-M Chamber Choir presents a concert with works from around the globe, including a world premiere by Brehm Prize winner, SMTD composition graduate student Ari Sussman.  Vera Grant, UMMA Deputy Director for Curatorial Affairs and curator of Collection Ensemble, will join Rogers to further illuminate the threads of connection between art and music.

Back by popular demand! UMMA Director Christina Olsen wants to chat with you about the Museum. Come say hello, share your reactions to recent exhibitions and changes, and bring your ideas of what you’d like to see at UMMA. Meet Tina in the new, comfortable UMMA Living Rooms in Alumni Memorial Hall. Dates and times as follows:

Thursday, Sept. 12, 12–1 p.m.
Friday, Sept. 13, 3–4 p.m.

Thursday, Sept. 19, 12–1 p.m.
Friday, Sept. 20, 3–4 p.m.

Thursday, Sept. 26, 12–1 p.m.
Friday, Sept. 27, 3–4 p.m. -- CANCELED

Thursday, Oct. 3, 12–1 p.m.
Friday, Oct. 4, 3–4 p.m.

Thursday, Oct. 10, 12–1 p.m. --CANCELED
Friday, Oct. 11, 3–4 p.m. -- CANCELED

Thursday, Oct. 17, 12–1 p.m.
Friday, Oct. 18, 3–4 p.m. -- CANCELED
 

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 Karolina Letunova and Mariya Zilberman. 

Born and raised in a Siberian coal town, Karolina Letunova writes fiction. She is working on her first novel. 

Mariya Zilberman is an Ann Arbor-based poet. She immigrated to the United States from Minsk, Belarus and grew up in Maryland. 
 

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 Copies and Invention in East Asia.  Visit the exhibition—which looks at the practice of copying in art making and includes works from China, Korea, and Japan, spanning ancient to contemporary times—and create an original art work with the potential to become many. 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.

Max Bowen is an Ann Arbor born jazz guitarist. An alumnus of Community High School's jazz program, he recently completed a Masters of Music at University of Michigan. His influences include Grant Green, Barney Kessel, and Pat Martino. At Michigan he studied guitar privately with Miles Okazaki and performed with the Jazz Ensemble under the direction of professor Ellen Rowe. Max has performed in venues around the Midwest, including Cliff Bell's in Detroit, Andy's in Chicago, and Milwaukee's Jazz Estate. He recently toured with the hip-hop collective Ruby Yacht, opening for Future Islands. 

Aidan Cafferty is an accomplished bassist whose passion for jazz and improvised music started in middle school.

Aidan pursued his love for jazz at Michigan State Univeristy's School of Music, where he spent four years studying under Rodney Whitaker. Aidan received his bachelor’s degree jazz performance in 2016. In 2017, Aidan enrolled in the University of Michigan’s School of Music, Theater and Dance, where he studied jazz improvisation under Robert Hurst. Aidan was awarded the degree of Master of Music (Improvisation) in 2019.

Aidan continues to perform with numerous groups in recording sessions and concerts throughout the Midwest. Aidan is actively touring as the bassist with Talking Ear, a five-piece progressive music ensemble committed to providing a unique experience for listeners through composition, collaboration, and improvisation and Estar Cohen. Aidan also tours with Travis Swanson and performed on all tracks on his album When it's time to say goodbye (2017). Aidan was previously the bassist for Malena Quartet, both in concert and on all tracks of the album Behind the Eyes (2016).

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 Copies and Invention in East Asia.  Visit the exhibition—which looks at the practice of copying in art making and includes works from China, Korea, and Japan, spanning ancient to contemporary times—and create an original art work with the potential to become many. 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.

The reinstallation of UMMA’s Apse, called “Collection Ensemble” highlights the breadth and variety of the Museum’s collection and juxtaposes works of art from different artists, periods, areas, and media. The installation is organized around a very large photograph of a Baroque church by Candida Höfer. From this centerpiece, the works of art are grouped in scenes or distinctive vignettes comprised of a broad mix of American, European, African, and Asian art from across media. The reinstallation doesn’t adhere to either chronological or geographic boundaries. Curated by Vera Grant, UMMA’s Deputy Director for Curatorial Affairs, Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art. Of this installation, she says: “The exhibition recasts the role of the collection as an active, creative, sometimes startling source of material and ideas, open for debate and interpretation. The arrangements remind us that works of art can change in meaning and affect when placed in new contexts.” Join an docent to explore and interpret this exciting new project.

The U-M Museum Studies Department is pleased to present William S. Pretzer, Senior Curator of History, Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture  

The Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture opened on the National Mall in Washington, DC, in September 2016.  More than six million individuals have visited the museum in its first three years of operation. 

The Presidential Commission created in 2001 directed the museum to “give voice to the centrality of the African American experience and make it possible for all people to understand the depth, complexity, and promise of the American experience.”  

From the beginning, Founding Director Lonnie G. Bunch III and his staff heeded the exhortation of historian John Hope Franklin, chair of the museum’s Scholarly Advisory Committee, “to tell the unvarnished truth.” That principle energized an exhibition plan informed by public conversations, a collecting program relying on individual and family legacies, a narrative format balancing the personal with the social, and a funding strategy emphasizing the “African American experience as the lens through which we understand what it is to be American.”

This presentation demonstrates the impact of these foundational principles and strategies through an illustrated tour of the inaugural exhibitions.

Appropriating the aesthetics of fashion editorials and advertising, New York-based Marilyn Minter’s photorealist paintings examine banal realities, such as frozen peas or kitchen floors, often relegated to a hyper-feminized realm in popular culture and marketing, as well as contemporary notions of beauty and sensuality. Adding sweat, spit, hair, and dirt to the high-gloss veneer of advertising campaigns, Minter juxtaposes in-your-face beauty with the down-and-dirty reality of being human. Minter first gained popularity in the early 1990s, and has been featured in major solo exhibitions nationally and internationally including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Cincinnati Contemporary Arts Center, La Conservera Centro de Arte Contemporáneo in Spain, and the Deichtorhallen in Germany. Her video Green Pink Caviar was exhibited in the lobby of the MoMA, and was also shown on digital billboards on Sunset Boulevard and in Times Square. Most recently, her retrospective Marilyn Minter: Pretty/Dirty opened at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston and traveled to the Museum of Contemporary Art in Denver; the Orange County Museum of Art; and the Brooklyn Museum.

Heather Igloliorte is an Inuk scholar, curator, and art historian, leading the field of contemporary Inuit art curatorial practice and working to develop the next generation of Inuit leaders. Join us on Friday, October 25, to hear her public talk that kicks off the 2019 Inuit Art Society Annual Meeting on the last weekend of UMMA's exhibition The Power Family Program for Inuit Art: Tillirnanngittuq.

Heather Igloliorte holds the University Research Chair in Circumpolar Indigenous Arts at Concordia University, where she leads the Inuit Futures in Arts Leadership Partnership Grant and Co-Directs the Initiative for Indigenous Futures Cluster (IIF) in the Milieux Institute for Arts, Culture and Technology with Professor Jason Edward Lewis. Igloliorte currently serves as the Co-Chair of the Indigenous Circle for the Winnipeg Art Gallery, working on the development of the new national Inuit Art Centre; and sits on the Board of Directors for the Native North American Art Studies Association, the Inuit Art Foundation, and the Nunavut Film Board, among others. 

Please join us for a reception and opportunity to see the exhibition at 5:30 p.m. More information about the Inuit Art Society Annual Meeting can be found on their website at www.inuitartsociety.org.

Circus without Borders is a documentary about Guillaume Saladin and Yamoussa Bangoura, best friends and world-class acrobats from remote corners of the globe who share the same dream: To bring hope and change to their struggling communities through circus. Their dream unfolds in the Canadian Arctic and Guinea, West Africa, where they help Inuit and Guinean youth achieve unimaginable success while confronting suicide, poverty and despair.
Seven years in the making, this tale of two circuses–Artcirq and Kalabante–is a culture-crossing performance piece that offers a portal into two remote communities, and an inspiring story of resilience and joy.

Directed by Susan Gray and Linda Matcha
69 min | USA (2015)

Watch the trailer

On the occasion of the UMMA exhibition The Power Family Program for Inuit Art: Tillirnanngittuq​, UMMA invites you to enjoy a selection of documentary and fictional films about Inuit culture. Sundays, September 22 and October 27: Film screenings at 12:40 and 3:15 p.m; guided exhibition tours 2-3 p.m.

Sunday, September 22
12:40 Kinngait: Riding Light into the World​ (2010, 65 min)
2:00 Exhibition Tour, Special Exhibitions Gallery, 2nd floor
3:15 Maliglutit (Searchers) (2016, 94 min)

Sunday, October 27
12:40 Circus without Borders (2015, 69 min)
2:00 Exhibition Tour, Special Exhibitions Gallery, 2nd floor
3:15 Angry Inuk​ (2016, 85 min)

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

Seal hunting, a critical part of Inuit life, has been controversial for a long time. Now, a new generation of Inuit, armed with social media and their own sense of humor and justice, are challenging the anti-sealing groups and bringing their own voices into the conversation. Director Alethea Arnaquq-Baril joins her fellow Inuit activists as they challenge outdated perceptions of Inuit and present themselves to the world as a modern people in dire need of a sustainable economy.

Directed by Alethea Arnaquq-Baril
85 min | Canada (2016)

Watch the trailer

On the occasion of the UMMA exhibition The Power Family Program for Inuit Art: Tillirnanngittuq​, UMMA invites you to enjoy a selection of documentary and fictional films about Inuit culture. Sundays, September 22 and October 27: Film screenings at 12:40 and 3:15 p.m; guided exhibition tours 2-3 p.m.

Sunday, September 22
12:40 Kinngait: Riding Light into the World​ (2010, 65 min)
2:00 Exhibition Tour, Special Exhibitions Gallery, 2nd floor
3:15 Maliglutit (Searchers) (2016, 94 min)

Sunday, October 27
12:40 Circus without Borders (2015, 69 min)
2:00 Exhibition Tour, Special Exhibitions Gallery, 2nd floor
3:15 Angry Inuk​ (2016, 85 min)

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 Annesha Sengupta and Bryan Byrdlong. 

Annesha Sengupta is a writer from Richmond, VA. 

Bryan Byrdlong is a Haitian/African-American writer from Chicago, Illinois. He recently graduated from Venderbilt University where he received an undergraduate English/Creative Writing degree. He currently studies and teaches English at the University of Michigan.

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.

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

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

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

Anelise Chen is the author of So Many Olympic Exertions (Kaya Press 2017), an experimental novel that blends elements of sportswriting, memoir, and self-help. A finalist for the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award, the novel challenges modes of contemporary mythmaking and the validity and usefulness of our current narratives of success.
 
Chen’s essays and reviews have appeared in numerous publications, such as the NY Times, New Republic, Village Voice, and BOMB Magazine. She has received residencies and fellowships from the Asian American Writers’ Workshop, Blue Mountain Center, Banff Centre, the Wurlitzer Foundation, and she is currently a 2019-2020 Literature Fellow at the Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart, Germany. She is an assistant professor of creative writing at Columbia University.
 
Chen is currently at work on a hybrid memoir, Clam Down (One World Random House), based on her mollusk column for the Paris Review. Bringing to mind Helen MacDonald, Rebecca Solnit, and Maggie Nelson, Chen transforms the ordinary clam into an unlikely metaphor for deep self-examination—how the specific shells we build for ourselves reflect our experiences of grief, assimilation, and connection.

Families with children ages six and up are invited to look, learn, and create together in this hands-on workshop inspired by Meleko Mokgosi's new commission at UMMA, Pan-African Pulp. Mokgosi’s work, inspired by African photo novels of the 1960s and 70s, transforms images of people and their surroundings into larger-than-life panels. Guided by local artist Sajeev Vadakoottu, participants will transfer, compose, and transform their own images (please bring your phones!) to create a relief print, acting as characters in scenes of their own making. 
 
This workshop will give a basic introduction to the block printing (a relief printmaking technique). Block printing refers to a technique where images are transferred from paper to the raised portion of a carved or etched block. In this technique, drawings are made on a foam sheet or soft kut block and the negative space is carved out from the desired areas. In the next stage, ink is applied on the surface using a roller. Finally, prints are taken using a manual spooning technique, which applies pressure to the ink and paper transfers the image to paper. 

Parents must accompany children. 

Please note:  

Relief printmaking requires sharp tools to carve the cut block.
In traditional relief printmaking, sharp tools are used to carve the cut block. This technique requires close parental supervision and is best suited for children ages 8 and above.

 
For families that prefer to avoid the use of sharp tools, alternate materials will be available.
We cannot guarantee your spot if you arrive more than 15 minutes late.
 
Parents 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 Meleko Mokgosi's new commission at UMMA, Pan-African Pulp. Mokgosi’s work, inspired by African photo novels of the 1960s and 70s, transforms images of people and their surroundings into larger-than-life panels. Guided by local artist Sajeev Vadakoottu, participants will transfer, compose, and transform their own images (please bring your phones!) to create a relief print, acting as characters in scenes of their own making. 
 
This workshop will give a basic introduction to the block printing (a relief printmaking technique). Block printing refers to a technique where images are transferred from paper to the raised portion of a carved or etched block. In this technique, drawings are made on a foam sheet or soft kut block and the negative space is carved out from the desired areas. In the next stage, ink is applied on the surface using a roller. Finally, prints are taken using a manual spooning technique, which applies pressure to the ink and paper transfers the image to paper. 

Parents must accompany children. 

Please note:  

Relief printmaking requires sharp tools to carve the cut block.
In traditional relief printmaking, sharp tools are used to carve the cut block. This technique requires close parental supervision and is best suited for children ages 8 and above.

 
For families that prefer to avoid the use of sharp tools, alternate materials will be available.
We cannot guarantee your spot if you arrive more than 15 minutes late.
 

 
Parents must accompany children. We cannot guarantee your spot if you arrive more than 15 minutes late.

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.

Through works of art spanning ancient to contemporary times, UMMA's exhibition Copies and Invention in East Asia challenges our understanding of originality, and presents copying as an act of imaginative interpretation. But what is the connection between copying and invention? How does the practice of copying an artist’s work increase a drawing student’s own creativity? How do computers look at works of art to learn how to emulate a particular artist’s style? Consider these questions along with Raj Rao Nadakuditi, Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computers and expert in machine learning and signal processing; Jeff Evans, Clinical Associate Professor Emeritus of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at the Medical School, Lecturer in the Residential College, and scholar of the psychology of creativity; and Natsu Oyobe, UMMA Curator of Asian Art.

Through works of art spanning ancient to contemporary times, UMMA's exhibition Copies and Invention in East Asia challenges our understanding of originality, and presents copying as an act of imaginative interpretation. But what is the connection between copying and invention? How does the practice of copying an artist’s work increase a drawing student’s own creativity? How do computers look at works of art to learn how to emulate a particular artist’s style? Consider these questions along with Raj Rao Nadakuditi, Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computers and expert in machine learning and signal processing; Jeff Evans, Clinical Associate Professor Emeritus of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at the Medical School, Lecturer in the Residential College, and scholar of the psychology of creativity; and Natsu Oyobe, UMMA Curator of Asian Art.

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). 

There will be a post event reception in the Trotter Multicultural center.

Los Angeles-based artist Suzanne Lacy is internationally renowned as a pioneer in the field of socially engaged and public art. Her work incorporates the visions and voices of scores of people, in a practice that recognizes the essential collaborations involved in creativity. Her installations, videos, and performances have dealt with issues of sexual violence, rural and urban poverty, incarceration, gender identity, labor, and aging. Working collaboratively within traditions of fine art performance and community organizing, Lacy has realized large-scale projects in London, Brooklyn, Medellin, Los Angeles, Quito, Northwest England, Madrid, and, most recently, along the Irish border exploring local reactions to Brexit. She has exhibited at the Tate Modern in London, The Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, the Whitney Museum, the New Museum, and MoMA PS1 in New York, the Bilbao Museum in Spain, and most recently at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in a two-museum career retrospective.

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 Charlotte Rutty and Jennifer Huang. 

Charlotte Rutty is a fiction writer from Maine. Her work has appeared in Headland and Electric Literature.

Jennifer Huang grew up in Rockville, Maryland to parents who grew up in Taipei, Taiwan. She currently lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where she teaches and writes poetry. 

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.

Kabuki, a 400-year old Japanese form of theater, is known for its fantastically colorful stage, dramatic stories, and utterly beautiful men and women played by an all male cast. Still popular in modern day Japan, kabuki performers are specially trained from a young age to faithfully copy their predecessors’ forms and styles until they have the skills to develop their own styles. Join us for a dynamic lecture and demonstration with veteran onnagata (actor specializing in female roles), Kyozo ​Nakamura. Mr. Nakamura​ will introduce the basics of male and female acting in kabuki and talk about his own path to become a ripened actor. The audience will also begin their kabuki performance training, copying Nakamura's movements in an interactive call and response.

This program is presented in conjunction with Copies and Invention in East Asia, an exhibition which highlights the creative possibilities of copying as an artistic practice. Following the performance, the gallery will be open to enjoy.

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! 

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.

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!  

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.

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. The artist describes his work as “a meditation on the practice of painting and a resistance to historical and contemporary readings of the black body.” Join a museum docent in an exploration of this exciting temporary exhibition. 

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.

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. 

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!