Johanna Toruño is a Salvadoran-born, community-taught visual artist who uses the streets as a public platform and gallery. In this talk, Toruño will discuss how she utilizes street art as a tool of resistance.
The Center for Innovation, Research, and Creativity in the Arts (CIRCA) presents Queer Futures, a roundtable gathering of visionary queer artists, thinkers, and culture-makers designed to explore the evolving possibilities of queer life, art, and community. In an open and generative conversation, panelists will reflect on the current moment, imagine what’s ahead, and share how their creative and political practices are shaping the world to come.
When Ludwig van Beethoven published the 29th of his 32 piano sonatas, nicknamed “the Hammerklavier,” he is said to have quipped to his publisher in 1819 that the work would keep pianists busy for the next 50 years — and it’s still keeping pianists busy. Pianist Hui-Chuan Chen’s program, Beethoven Reimagined, features not only the massive and technically challenging Hammerklavier sonata, but also a new commissioned work by composer Daniel Pesca, Impromptu #2 (after Beethoven), directly inspired by Beethoven’s masterpiece.
The campus community is invited to explore Inclusive Excellence, a set of two visual arts installations in The Commons. Developed by students in the spring 2025 Professional Practices in Graphic Design course taught by adjunct professor Katie Heater ’09, visual arts, and MFA ’13, imaging and digital arts, the striking displays can be viewed in the Mezzanine Gallery and West Entrance to The Commons.
In June 2025, three UMBC choirs took part in an extraordinary summer performance tour through Europe. In this Choirs Homecoming Concert, the three choirs — the UMBC Camerata, the UMBC Jubilee Singers, and the UMBC Gospel Choir — will perform selections from their European tour, talk about their experiences, present photos and videos from the trip, and thank all the supporters who made this event possible.
The Center for Ethics and Values presents Energy Wars at Home and Abroad: A conversation with Andrew Light, Philosopher and Former Assistant Secretary of Energy for International Affairs at the Department of Energy (2021–2025). The conversation will be moderated by Blake Francis, Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Human Context of Science and Technology Program.
The Center for Innovation, Research, and Creativity in the Arts (CIRCA) presents a panel discussion, Entrepreneurship for Social Impact in the Arts and Humanities. Entrepreneurship is often defined as the process of identifying, developing, and bringing a new venture to life, often involving innovation, risk-taking, and the creation of economic value. This panel will highlight the entrepreneurial work of UMBC arts and humanities faculty in both their research and teaching.
The Center for Art, Design, and Visual Culture (CADVC) presents Pedagogy Study Hall, a collaborative exhibition, research project, and public humanities residency by interdisciplinary artist Tomashi Jackson and policy analyst and economic advocate Nia K. Evans. The project examines systems of investment and disinvestment in the arts and humanities as reflections of broader civic and economic structures. Drawing on Baltimore’s grassroots history of cultural labor and social justice organizing, Pedagogy Study Hall offers a multilayered model for public memory, artistic research, and civic pedagogy.
The Department of Music presents the UMBC Jazz Ensemble, directed by Matthew Belzer, in a program of music by Charles Mingus, Quincy Jones, Pat Metheny, Jack DeJohnette, Kenny Wheeler, and Fred Sturm.
The Center for Innovation, Research, and Creativity in the Arts (CIRCA) presents artist Mel Chin, known for the broad range of approaches in his art, including works that require multi-disciplinary, collaborative teamwork and works that enlist science as an aesthetic component to developing complex ideas. Chin's work is in the permanent collections of the National Gallery of Art, Museum of Modern Art, High Museum of Art, the Menil Collection, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Cantor Art Center at Stanford University. He was the recipient of a 2019 MacArthur Foundation “Genius” grant.
The study of Greek art is heavily influenced by the notion of the ideal and idealized human body, which has long been assumed to exclude various aspects of bodily difference and disability. In this Humanities Forum talk, Debby Sneed will present a marble sculpture of a korē (maiden) that was dedicated on the Athenian Acropolis in the late 6th century BCE.
Join us for two evenings of cutting edge modern dance as the Department of Dance presents Baye & Asa, who have presented their work at The Joyce Theater, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, La MaMa Experimental Theater Club, Baryshnikov Arts Center, Jacob’s Pillow, Pioneer Works, Guggenheim Works & Process, and the American Dance Festival. Named one of Dance Magazine’s "25 to Watch" in 2022, they were recipients of Dance Magazine’s 2023 Harkness Promise Award.
The Department of Music presents the Livewire 15: Blazing Trails new music festival. Through concerts and other events, Livewire celebrates the innovators, the brave, the experimental, the “firsts”: the trail blazers. The festival features music by composer in residence Zosha Di Castri in addition to works by Julius Eastman, Sofia Gubaidulina, Tania León, George Lewis, Joan Tower, Alison Knowles, John Cage, Beyoncé, David Baker, Jennifer Higdon, Myroslav Skoryk, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and others, performed by RUCKUS, Ensemble Bravura, and other noted musicians.
How have histories of colonialism and their foundational language of gender, race, sexuality, and nation shaped the language, terminology, and theories of the modern plant sciences? How and why do botanical theories remain grounded in the violence of their colonial pasts? In wrestling with these difficult origins, Subramaniam develops the concept of migrant ecologies to retheorize plant migration and reproductive biology. She explore new biological frameworks that harness the power of feminist thought in order to reimagine and reinvigorate our love of plants.
The Livewire 15: Blazing Trails new music festival presents RUCKUS, the faculty ensemble in residence at UMBC, in a concert of works by Zosha Di Castri, Sofia Gubaidulina, Tania León, George Lewis, and Joan Tower.
