All posts by: Tom Moore


Maurice Berger, CADVC, Discusses “Revolution of the Eye” on WYPR

061915_bergerMaurice Berger, research professor and chief curator at the Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture, was interviewed by WYPR’s Culture Editor for Maryland Morning, Tom Hall, about Revolution of the Eye: Modern Art and the Birth of American Television, an exhibition now on display at the Jewish Museum in New York. Berger curated the exhibition, which has been co-organized by the CADVC and the Jewish Museum, and authored the companion book by the same name, published by Yale University Press.

Revolution of the Eye is the first exhibition to explore how avant-garde art influenced and shaped the look and content of network television in its formative years, from the late 1940s to the mid-1970s. “Television and modern art became mutually beneficial forces, starting really at the very early days of television,” Berger explained to Hall. “The pioneers of television…looked to modern art—they were fascinated by it—as something that could help them perhaps prove that television was a discerning medium.”

The exhibition will visit UMBC’s Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture in Fall 2016.

To hear the full interview, which originally aired on WYPR’s Maryland Morning on Friday, June 19, click here.

Maurice Berger, CADVC, Latest “Race Story” in The New York Times

In the latest essay for his Race Stories column in The New York Times, Maurice Berger, research professor at the Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture, examines the work of Charles “Teenie” Harris, an African American staff photographer for the Pittsburgh Courier from the 1930s through the 1970s. Now held in the archives of the Carnegie Museum of Art, a selection of 80,000 images by Harris are now on display in “Teenie Harris Photographs: Cars,” second in a series of exhibitions that began with “Teenie Harris Photographs: Civil Rights Perspectives.” The museum “asked writers — including poets, playwrights and historians — to respond to ‘the social, cultural, and political content’ of Mr. Harris’s photos,” notes Berger.

Read “Past and Present Collide in Pittsburgh” and view the photographs at The New York Times Lens blog.

Berger’s Race Stories column, which appears monthly on The New York Times website, is “a continuing exploration of the relationship of race to photographic portrayals of race.”

String Octets (4/2)

On Thursday, April 2 at 8:00 p.m. in the Concert Hall, UMBC music faculty and guest join forces with students to perform the titanic Octet in E-flat Major, Op. 20 by Felix Mendelssohn, and more rarely heard Octet, Op. posth. by Max Bruch. Featured performers will include UMBC string faculty Christian Tremblay and Airi Yoshioka, violin; Amadi Azikiwe and Nana Gaskins Vaughn, viola; Gita Ladd, cello; Laura Ruas, double-bass; and student performers Ariel Byrd and Erika Koscho, violin; and Michael Bradshaw, cello. Complete information is available by clicking here.

Out of Rubble (4/2 – 5/16)

OutOfRubble01The Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture presents the exhibition Out of Rubble, which reacts to the wake of war — its realities and its representations. The rubble that each war leaves behind shapes today and tomorrow — physically, psychologically and spiritually. Responding to a wide range of violent encounters taking place over four continents, Out of Rubble presents works by seventeen artists and architects from over ten countries who consider its causes and consequences, its finality and future, moving from decimation and disintegration to the possibilities of regeneration and recovery. Featured artists and architects include: Taysir Batniji, Lenka Clayton, Andrew Ellis Johnson, Susanne Slavick, Monica Haller, Sara Pellegrini and DAAR, Simon Norfolk, Jennifer Karady, Heide Fasnacht, Wafaa Bilal, Elaine Spatz-Rabinowitz, Enrique Castrejon, Rocio Rodriguez, elin o’Hara slavick, Osman Khan, Hirokazu Fukawa, Jane Dixon and Samina Mansuri. The exhibition is curated by Susanne Slavick, Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Art at Carnegie Mellon University.

The exhibition’s opening reception will be held on Thursday, April 2, from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m.   The Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture is open Tuesday through Saturday from 10 am to 5 pm and is located in the Fine Arts Building. Admission is free. For complete information, click here.

Maryland All State Jazz Band (3/28)

On Saturday, March 28 at 4:00 p.m. in the Concert Hall, as part of the Department of Music’s Jazz Festival, the Maryland All State Jazz Band presents high school students from around the state performing big band jazz. Complete information is available by clicking here.

UMBC Jazz Faculty Ensemble (3/27)

On Friday, March 27 at 7:30 p.m. in the Concert Hall, as part of the Department of Music’s Jazz Festival, the UMBC Jazz Faculty Ensemble will perform an eclectic concert of creative, improvised music. Members include trumpeter Tom Williams, vibist Mike Noonan, guitarist Tom Lagana, pianist Harry Appelman, bassist Tom Baldwin, drummer Scott Tiemann, and saxophonist Matt Belzer. Complete information is available by clicking here.

These Shining Lives (3/26 – 3/29)

these-shining-lives-01-1000

UMBC’s Department of Theatre presents These Shining Lives by Melanie Marnich, directed by Nyalls Hartman. Performances will be presented March 26 through 29 in the Black Box Theatre in the Performing Arts and Humanities Building.

An emotionally-gripping story of survival, These Shining Lives chronicles the strength and determination of the women who worked at the Radium Dial Clock Company in Ottawa, Illinois during the 1920s and 1930s. Based on true events, the play dramatizes Catherine Donahue’s race against time and the bittersweet triumph of the women of Radium Dial as they stand up against oppression and injustice to hold the famous clock maker accountable for its negligence involving radium poisoning. Touching, wistful, and beautifully tragic, These Shining Lives turns back the hands of time and reminds us today that we must remain ever-vigilant in the fight against injustice to protect our own lives and the lives of those we love.

Complete information is available here.

Incidental Matters: An Exhibition of Emerging Artists from the Intermedia + Digital Arts (IMDA) MFA Program

marx01UMBC’s 2015 MFA candidates in the Intermedia + Digital Arts (IMDA) program — Tim (Silouan) Bubb, Chanan Delivuk, Kata Frederick, Jason Hughes, Meghan Marx and Victor Torres — are featured in Incidental Matters, an exhibition presented jointly at Jordan Faye Contemporaryand Maryland Art Place (MAP) (both at 218 West Saratoga Street), and Current Gallery (421 North Howard Street). The exhibition is sponsored by UMBC’s Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture (CADVC), Department of Visual Arts, and the College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences, in partnership with the Bromo Arts and Entertainment District. The exhibition continues on display through April 10.

An Opening Reception will be held simultaneously at all three spaces on Thursday, March 26, from 5 to 7 pm. At MAP, Victor Torres will perform from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m.; at Current Gallery, Kata Frederick will perform a drawing from 5:00 to 6:30 p.m.; and at Current Gallery Chanan Delivuk will perform an oral history beginning at 6:30 p.m.

Complete information about the exhibition is available by clicking here.

Eric Dyer, Visual Arts, in The Huffington Post

Eric Dyer ArtworkEric Dyer, associate professor of Visual Arts, has been featured in the February 20 Huffington Post, “Artist Transforms Zoetropes from Retro Visuals to the Stuff of Fine Art.” The article, which called Dyer “the modern master of the zoetrope,” contains several embedded videos of Dyer’s artworks, many of which are now on display in New York exhibitions. Read the complete article here.

Maurice Berger, CADVC, Latest “Race Story” in The New York Times

In the latest essay for his Race Stories column in The New York Times, Maurice Berger, research professor at the Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture, examines a new exhibition at the Bronx Museum of Art, “Three Photographers From the Bronx: Jules Aarons, Morton Broffman and Joe Conzo,” which opens Thursday, February 26. “Over the past 40 years,” writes Berger, “our collective view of the Bronx has all too often embraced the media-driven myth of its inexorable decline. For many, the blight, addiction and poverty that plagued parts of the South Bronx in the 1970s have come to symbolize the whole borough. But as Mr. Conzo’s photographs suggest, the reality of the Bronx has been far more complicated. They demonstrate the power of courage, cultural expression and political advocacy to sustain even the most endangered neighborhoods.”

Read “Complicating the Picture of Urban Life” and view the photographs at The New York Times Lens blog.

Berger’s Race Stories column, which appears monthly on The New York Times website, is “a continuing exploration of the relationship of race to photographic portrayals of race.”

Manifestations of the Spiritual: Photographs by Richard Jaquish (exhibition through 3/22)

Case 3 image, Untitled [shattered tree], Utah, Cibachrome print, ca. 2000s, Accession #P2006-01On display through March 22 in the Rotunda of the Albin O. Kuhn Library & Gallery is Manifestations of the Spiritual: Photographs by Richard Jaquish, an exhibition drawn from the holdings of the Richard Jaquish Archive in the Special Collections Department.

Richard Warren “Jake” Jaquish (1933–1999) was a passionate landscape photographer for whom making photographs was a spiritual quest. Being out in the middle of a wilderness area gave him great satisfaction especially when he made images that touched upon something elemental in the human spirit. The primordial landscape produced in him a heightened awareness of matters only explainable in terms of images.

Trained in photography at Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) during the late 1950s, Jaquish studied with notables such as Minor White and Beaumont Newhall. He graduated in 1960 taught elsewhere, and soon came to Baltimore to teach at the Maryland Institute College of Art. After eighteen years, he left teaching to work as a professional photographer for the Maryland State Department of Transportation where he was able to earn a living making his beloved landscape photographs.

The Richard Jaquish Archive was given to UMBC by Alwilda Scholler Jaquish, and supported by the Richard and Alwilda Scholler Jaquish Endowment. The show was produced by Tom Beck, Chief Curator, and Jazmin Smith, UMBC ’14.

Eric Dyer, Visual Arts, in Two New York Exhibitions

Eric Dyer, Visual Arts, is featured in Wave & Particle, a group exhibition that celebrates Creative Capital’s fifteenth anniversary, at Ronald Feldman Fine Arts in New York. The exhibition opened on Saturday, February 14 and will continue on display through March 21. More information is available by clicking here.

His work will also be featured in Moving Image New York, a group exhibition on display at the Waterfront Tunnel in Chelsea in New York, from March 5 through 8. Additional information about Moving Image is available by clicking here.