Warren & Flick explore the nuanced textures of a two-person band. Using both original material and standards from many genres they have arranged in a personal style, the group finds new depth in the simplicity of the duo. Jacob Warren plays double bass, while Grant Flick plays violin, tenor guitar and mandolin. Currently based out of Ann Arbor, Michigan, the two met at the 2015 Acoustic Music Seminar (AMS), a program accepting only sixteen young string players from around the world to participate in a week of intense improvisation, composition, and performance training. A part of the Savannah Music Festival in Georgia, AMS is led by multi-instrumentalist Mike Marshall with the help of guitarist Julian Lage.

After discovering their shared musical interests, Jacob and Grant began collaborating as a duo as well as in larger projects including The Leafless and Westbound Situation, both comprised of former AMS participants. Jacob and Grant attend University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre, & Dance, where they spend much of their time arranging, composing and performing together. With Jacob’s classical foundation and Grant’s experience in bluegrass and jazz, their contrasting backgrounds give them a unique and compelling musical narrative.
​
Find them on Facebook.

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.

Tillirnanngittuq (pronounced “tid-ee-nang-ee-took” and meaning “unexpected”) is UMMA’s first exhibition to showcase The Power Family Program for Inuit Art and presents 34 engaging sculptures and 24 striking prints.  In mid-20th-century, the Inuit of Canada’s Arctic experienced profound cultural change – moving from a semi-nomadic hunting culture (one of the last hunting cultures on earth) into permanent settlements, where the Inuit came into daily contact with the technology and values of the increasingly global economy.  Contemporary Inuit art first gained public attention in the 1950s and quickly attracted international acclaim for both its cultural interest and its artistic strength.  Join guest curator, Mame Jackson, for an overview of this fascinating history and for a discussion of the traditional cultural values and “world view” of the Inuit as revealed in time-honored Inuit legends and expressed in Inuit art.

UMMA and Arts at Michigan celebrate Welcome Week by introducing new University of Michigan students to the Museum of Art for an evening of  live music, performances, dance, poetry, film, games, prize raffle, and a variety of art-making activities.  During the event, students will  have the opportunity to become familiar with the Museum and everything it has to offer, as well as experience the wide array of possibilities for arts participation across campus. 

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.

Christian Boltanski was born in Paris in the wake of its liberation from Fascist control. Perhaps as a result of his childhood experiences, he has explored themes of memory, death, and mourning in a variety of media—film, paint, photography, and found objects. His evocative, often ephemeral installations archive and memorialize anonymous individual loss. Monument to the Lycée Chases is part of a series of works Boltanski began in 1987, inspired by a found photograph of the 1931 graduating class from a private Jewish high school in Vienna, Austria. His re-photographed images are mere silhouettes or intimations of corporal presences that together comprise a moving meditation on loss and endurance.
 

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.

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

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

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

UMMA's exploration of abstract art, politics, and identity continues with Abstraction, Color, and Politics: The 1960s and 1970s.  Join UMMA and Literati Bookstore for the Art, Ideas & Politics Book Club which will include texts relevant to abstract art as well as the immense social changes of the period. Surrounded by the artworks by Howardena Pindell, John T. Scott, Richard Hunt, Helen Frankenthaler, and Louise Nevelson, we will read and discuss bold and critical voices—both fiction and nonfiction—guided by Literati Bookstore's Creative Programs Manager, Gina Balibrera Amyx. Books include Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power (Jan 10), Art on My Mind, Visual Politics by Bell Hooks (March 14), Ninth Street Women by Mary Gabriel (May 9),  Flamethrowersby Rachel Kushner (July 11), and How We Get Free, edited by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor (Sept 12).

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

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

Gala Mukomolova’s full-length poetry book, Without Protection (Coffee House Press 2019), explores her complex identity―Jewish, post-Soviet, refugee, New Yorker, lesbian― through a Russian fable.

Mukomolova is a Moscow-born, Brooklyn-raised poet and essayist. She is the author of the chapbook One Above One Below: Positions and Lamentations (YesYes Books 2018). She received her MFA from the Helen Zell Writers’ Program at the University of Michigan. Her past residencies include Vermont Studio Center, Six Points Fellowship for Emerging Jewish Artists and The Pink Door. Her poems and essays have appeared in Poetry, PEN American, PANK and elsewhere. She writes articles on astrology for NYLON and is cohost of the podcast Big Dyke Energy.

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.

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

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

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

The Ann Arbor Guitar Trio was founded on the idea that more guitar is better. Alex Anest formed the group with Evan Veasey and Adam Kahana in April 2016. All three musicians are talented, creative players who have been performing and recording in the Ann Arbor area for years. With three guitars there are endless possibilities and the A2G3 looks to explore as many of them as they can. For their performance at UMMA, the group has chosen compositions by Abby Clemens, Alex Anest, Janelle Reichman, The Beach Boys, and JS Bach. The repertoire was specifically selected to work with the reverberant nature of the museum's space. For more information and recent recordings, visit https://annarborguitartrio.com/

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 act of producing copies has a special meaning in Buddhism. From simply reciting and rewriting Buddha’s teachings to creating multiple images of sacred Buddhist figures, objects and texts, or the commissioning of one million pagodas, copying served to increase karmic merit—​guaranteeing a better afterlife and eventually leading to enlightenment. In this conversation, Kevin Carr, Associate Professor of Japanese Art History at University of Michigan and specialist of Buddhist art, and Natsu Oyobe, UMMA Curator of Asian Art, will illuminate the significance of copies in Buddhist religious practices, and guide us through Buddhist art objects featured in the current UMMA exhibition Copies and Invention in East Asia. 

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.

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

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

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

Wayétu Moore’s debut novel She Would Be King reimagines the dramatic story of Liberia’s early years. It was named a best book of 2018 by Publishers Weekly, Booklist, Entertainment Weekly & BuzzFeed. 

Moore is the founder of One Moore Book, a non-profit organization that creates and distributes culturally relevant books for underrepresented readers. Her first bookstore opened in Monrovia, Liberia in 2015. Her writing can be found in The Paris Review, Frieze Magazine, Guernica, The Atlantic Magazine and other publications. She has been featured in The Economist Magazine, NPR, NBC, BET and ABC, among others, for her work in advocacy for diversity in children’s literature.
 
She is a graduate of Howard University, University of Southern California and Columbia University.  Moore is a founding faculty member of Randolph College MFA program and a Distinguished Visiting Writer at Syracuse University.  

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.

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

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

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

Storytime at the Museum promotes art enjoyment for our youngest patrons. Join us as we travel around the world and look at art from different countries. We read a story in the galleries and include a fun, age-appropriate, hands-on activity related to it. Parents must accompany children. Siblings are welcome to join the group. Meet in front of the UMMA Shop.

Join us to celebrate an exciting new season at UMMA! Enjoy live music, gallery talks, food, and more at this free community event.

Painter and printmaker Meleko Mokgosi’s newly commissioned work, Pan-African Pulp, transforms UMMA’s Vertical Gallery into a multimedia exploration of the history of global Pan-Africanism, a movement with significant history in Detroit. Mokgosi will give a talk at 7:30 p.m. in the Auditorium.

This fall, UMMA launches a new experimental space, ArtGym, with Take Your Pick: Collecting Found Photographs. Cast your vote and be part of our crowdsourcing experiment to choose the 250 photographs UMMA will add to our permanent collection.

Copies and Invention in East Asia, in our Taubman Gallery, will challenge your understanding of originality and delight you with an exploration of Japanese, Chinese, and Korean art spanning ancient to contemporary times.

We look forward to seeing you there!

For his UMMA commission, Botswana-born artist Meleko Mokgosi explores the history of Pan-Africanism, the global movement to unite ethnic groups of sub-Saharan African descent. Entitled Pan-African Pulp, the exhibition features large-scale panels inspired by African photo novels of the 1960s and ’70s, a mural examining the complexity of blackness, posters from Pan-African movements founded in Detroit and Africa in the 1960s, and stories from Setswana literature.

Meleko Mokgosi is an artist, and an associate professor in painting and printmaking at The Yale School of Art. By working across history painting, cinematic tropes, psychoanalysis, and post-colonial theory, Mokgosi creates large-scale project-based installations that interrogate narrative tropes and the fundamental models for the inscription and transmission of history. His artwork has been exhibited nationally and internationally at venues including the Botswana National Gallery, The Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art Museum, The Studio Museum in Harlem, The Armand Hammer Museum of Art and Culture Center, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, the Lyon Museum of Contemporary Art, Institute of Contemporary Art Boston, Rochester Contemporary Art Center, The University of Rochester's Memorial Art Gallery, Williams College Museum of Art, The Fowler Museum at UCLA, and the Baltimore Museum of Art.
 

A first hand account of how the isolated Inuit community of Kinngait became the internationally celebrated art capital of the North.

A portrait of the Kinngait Studios celebrating its 50th year of continuous successful operation; the film introduces the remarkable artists who overcame cultural barriers and the hardships of a harsh environment to give birth to a vivid new expression of Inuit life. It tells of how the tiny, isolated community of Kinngait (Cape Dorset), against all odds, turned the making of art into a multimillion dollar co-operative business run by the Inuit townsfolk. Richly illustrated with the work of successive generations of Kinngait artists expressing the immense changes experienced by Inuit to their way of life and environment over the past half-century.

Directed by Annette Mangaard
65 min | Canada (2010)

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. 

Inspired by John Ford’s, The Searchers, Maliglutit is a story about a man who embarks on a perilous mission across the tundra in search of his kidnapped wife and daughter. In telling this western classic from an indigenous perspective, directors Zacharias Kunuk and Natar Ungalaaq, craft a stirring epic that explores community, revenge, and the meaning of justice. This film includes a score by award-winning Inuit throat singer, Tanya Tagaq.

Directed by Zacharias Kunuk, Nata Ungalaaq (co-director)
94 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)

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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 Carl Lavigne and Ian Burnette. 

Carl Lavigne is from Georgia, Vermont. He lies for a living. 

Ian Burnette is a poet from South Carolina via Ohio.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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 Nishanth Injam and Monica Rico.

Nishanth Injam is a fiction writer from Telangana, India. He currently lives in Ann Arbor. 

Monica Rico is a second generation Mexican-American from Saginaw, MI and a 2019 CantoMundo Fellow. She works for the Bear River Writers' Conference. 

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.

Collection Ensemble is the first major reinstallation of UMMA's historic entry space in over a decade. The reinstallation highlights the breadth and variety of the Museum’s collection and juxtaposes works of art from a diverse set of artists, periods, areas, and media—sometimes in startling ways. The works of art are grouped in scenes between and around the tall white columns of the entry, and the entire installation becomes a series of distinctive vignettes leaving open for the visitors a range of interpretations. Information on the printed labels is deliberately minimal. The goal is to share an expansive and mutable understanding of art, that forefronts art’s radiant properties and engages the audience in multi-layered dialogue.

Join Vera Grant, UMMA’s Deputy Director for Curatorial Affairs, Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, and curator of Collection Ensemble, for a discussion of how the vignettes may work in a variety of ways, and how art museums are rethinking their collection displays, in ways that demonstrate art’s powerful capacities and connections.

Award-winning author, curator, feminist, and activist Lucy R. Lippard is one of the world’s leading voices on contemporary art. Hailed for “the breadth of her reading and the comprehensiveness with which she considers the things that define place” (New York Times), Lippard began her career as an art critic in 1962, when she began contributing to publications such as Art International and, later, Artforum. In the late 1970s, she became a founding member of the feminist journal Heresies. As a curator, she gave audience to minimal and conceptual artworks including texts, books, and posters. Lippard also sought to improve the lives of artists through the founding of the Art Workers’ Coalition,  an advocacy group for artists' rights. 
 

In this conversation with Faith Wilding — multidisciplinary artist; recognized authority on feminist art theory and cyber feminism; and founding member of the Feminist Art Program at CalArts — Lippard discusses her work and the current creative-political climate in the U.S.

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.

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

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

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

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, she has only two fingers on one hand and had both her legs amputated at the age of nine; she 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. Katayama treats her entire body, bodily parts, and prosthetics as “materials” to be arranged in photographs, read as soft sculptures, and decorated with lace, shells, and shiny objects. As the protagonist in intricately arranged narrative scenes, the artist invites the viewer to voyeuristically experience a private space developed from her imagination. Katayama’s work exposes anxieties that haunt many of us—disabled or nondisabled—living in an age obsessed with body image. One of the most exciting new artists emerging from contemporary Japan, Katayama’s work is featured this year’s Venice Biennale in Italy. Her exhibition at UMMA, Mari Katayama (on view October 12, 2019–January 26, 2020), will be the artist’s first solo exhibition in the U.S. The talk will be moderated by Natsu Oyobe, Curator of Asian Art at UMMA and the exhibition curator.

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.

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

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

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

Moscow x Detroit: Transnational Modernity in the Built Environment will bring together distinguished historians of art, architecture, urbanism, and social history, to consider a critical moment in twentieth-century history, one that branches outward from the late 1920s to the later industrialization of the US and the USSR, affecting culture and the built environment for decades after. The symposium will focus on infrastructure development, and the impact of built environments (factories, housing, green zones) on cities built to serve industry. Participants, including specialists in both the American and the Soviet situation, will consider the hidden effects of the “second Industrial Revolution” on culture, social organization, and the built environment on two continents.Friday night's keynote at UMMA features Jean-Louis Cohen,
Sheldon H. Solow Professor in the History of Architecture at the NYU Institute of the Arts, who will be discussing his paper: Americanized Bolshevism and its New New Worlds.

Moscow x Detroit: Transnational Modernity in the Built Environment will bring together distinguished historians of art, architecture, urbanism, and social history, to consider a critical moment in twentieth-century history, one that branches outward from the late 1920s to the later industrialization of the US and the USSR, affecting culture and the built environment for decades after. The symposium will focus on infrastructure development, and the impact of built environments (factories, housing, green zones) on cities built to serve industry. Participants, including specialists in both the American and the Soviet situation, will consider the hidden effects of the “second Industrial Revolution” on culture, social organization, and the built environment on two continents.

Storytime at the Museum promotes art enjoyment for our youngest patrons. Each month we'll travel to a new gallery to look at art from different parts of the world. 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!  

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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)

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.

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.

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.

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!  

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. 

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!