Picturing Mobility explores what it meant to seek leisure and travel as a Black American during the Jim Crow era, and features snapshots and travel ephemera of Black leisure experiences from the mid-Atlantic during the 1920s to 1960s. From beach outings to family road trips, these images offer glimpses into everyday moments of happiness, relaxation and community, challenging dominant narratives that define the era solely through restriction and struggle. Viewers are encouraged to reflect on the emotional power of these images of Black resistance and mobility.
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.
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.
Join us for a special afternoon with soprano Seyoung Jeong, pianist Edwin Kim, and cellist DoYeon Kim, as they explore Faces of Love, featuring Robert Schumann’s song cycle Frauenliebe und -leben, Clara Schumann’s Drei Romanzen for Cello and Piano, and five of the most popular Korean contemporary art songs.
Please join us for presentations by two accomplished alumni, Ellington Carthan ’18, music (jazz studies and music technology), and Linehan Artist Scholar Hannah Korangkool ’15, visual arts (graphic design), who will tell us about their journeys from UMBC to their current careers. This event is hosted by the Center for Innovation, Research, and Creativity in the Arts (CIRCA).
Stop by the Library Gallery for a Special Collections open house with Lindsay DiCuirci’s English 243 class! Rare books, serials, pamphlets, and even comics from the historical publications collections in Special Collections will be on display. The student docents will be available to talk with you about each item.
UMBC Theatre presents Shakespeare in Harlem by Langston Hughes, adapted and directed by Gerrad Alex Taylor, a special co-production of UMBC Theatre, Chesapeake Shakespeare Company, and CSC's Black Classical Acting Ensemble. A rare gem from Langston Hughes, this collection of monologue poems revives the rhythms of jazz, the blues, and the pulse of the Harlem Renaissance—its love, struggles, and street-corner spirit. In director Gerrad Alex Taylor’s adaptation, Hughes’ words come alive in a dynamic full-length play, blending poetry, music, and dance for an immersive journey into the world he so vividly celebrated.
The Department of Visual Arts hosts Rich Zim, who is about to celebrate 40 years of professional stop motion animation, for an artist talk and claymation workshop. His notable credits include Gumby, Pee-wee's Playhouse, The Nightmare Before Christmas, James and the Giant Peach, Coraline, and The SpongeBob Movie. He is currently the CEO and president of Zim animation, where he has been making psychedelic oozing dripping clay animation sequences in his own studio for projects such as Smiling friends, Rick and Morty, Middlemost Post and many other TV shows and movies.
The UMBC Department of Music invites you to the 2025 Annual UMBC Piano Day This event is FREE and open to all pianists, friends, family, and colleagues. Meet our piano […]
Jayme McLellan is a curator, gallery director, artist, and educator. Over the past two decades, she has curated 150 solo, group, and thematic exhibitions of contemporary artists. In this presentation by the Center for Innovation, Research, and Creativity in the Arts (CIRCA), she will share stories about successes and failures in her efforts to help artists carve out their own sustainable paths.
SPARK VII: Industrial Afterglow, a collaboration between UMBC and Towson University, brings together over twenty artists working across sculpture, installation, sound, photography, video, textiles, and ecological documentation to explore what lingers in the wake of industrial and technological systems.
The Shriver Hall Concert Series presents the Baltimore debut of the Abeo Quartet in a program featuring works by Johannes Brahms, Felix Mendelssohn and Adolphus Hailstork.
Join us on campus to experience life a UMBC Theatre Major! Our Prospective Student Days usually sell out, so be sure to claim your spot early. Included in the Day: […]
Journey beyond the earthly realm with Inscape Chamber Orchestra as they explore musical visions of the divine. This extraordinary concert weaves together three masters whose works touch the very essence of the sacred and sublime — Gustav Mahler, J.S. Bach, and Arvo Pärt.
In the 47th Annual W. E. B. Du Bois Distinguished Lecture, Ousseina Alidou examines life and being human in West African Sahel women’s ecological thoughts as articulated in their literary and cultural narratives. Alidou’s aim is to expand our understanding of Sahelian women’s enduring contributions to ethical engagement with environmental concerns and preservation, climate change, vulnerability, migration, gender equity, and resilience.
The Center for Innovation, Research, and Creativity in the Arts presents a talk by visual artist Eric Millikin. An assistant professor of visual arts, Millikin was awarded the 2024 CIRCA-IMET Artist-in-Residence Fellowship, during which he worked on Mecha/Magical Marine Materials, an ongoing series of wearable electronic and robotic sculptures based on marine biology for performances with live-coded ambient sound and spiraling video projections. The work is based in part on the work of IMET Assistant Professor Allison Tracy as well as on Edgar Allan Poe’s tales of sea-faring science and the supernatural, including depictions of necromancers creating mechanical sea monsters.
What could possibly bring together the intricate melodies of Indian raga, the driving beats of techno, the infectious groove of New Orleans brass band music, the drama of powerful Western Classical works, and the innovative jazz influences of Charles Mingus? The answer, brought to life by the UMBC Wind Ensemble, is fire — in all its primal power and rich symbolism. This program will feature the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra's OrchKids Brass Band (Jared Perry, director), internationally renowned tabla artist Neelamjit Dhillon, the UMBC Percussion Ensemble (Dustin Donahue. director), and UMBC's String Chamber Orchestra (Philip Mann, director). The Wind Ensemble is directed by Brian Kaufman.
Until recently, the history profession has expressed skepticism about using history to understand contemporary events. At the same time, many historians have excelled at using historical comparisons to illuminate the current order of things. The annual Robert K. Webb Lecture, part of the Fall 2025 Humanities Forum, explains the origins of the recent turn to the present in the professional study of history, while looking at its promises and perils for the field.
The Department of Music presents the UMBC Gamelan Ensemble under the direction of Michelle Purdy. The ensemble performs on a central Javanese gamelan (a gong-chime orchestra of Indonesia), and also on a Balinese gamelan angklung (one of many types of gong-chime orchestras from the island of Bali, Indonesia).
The United States Army Field Band Saxophone Quartet performs a program of works by Chick Corea and Marc Mellits alongside works by UMBC student composers Jean Nguyen and Alexander Edwards.
The Department of Music presents UMBC Jazz in Concert, featuring the Jazz Guitar Ensemble, the Jazz Small Groups, and the Jazz Ensemble, under the direction of Tom Baldwin, Tom Lagana, and Matthew Belzer.
The Department of Music presents the UMBC Percussion Ensemble under the direction of Dustin Donahue in a concert of music by William Duckworth, Philip Glass, Fritz Hauser, JLIN, and Yousif Sheronick.
The Department of Music presents the UMBC Camerata under the direction of Lulu Mwangi Mupfumbu. Their program Through Perspectives INjustice, featuring works by Joel Thompson and Jarrett Roseborough, will explore the critical social justice issue of police brutality and its far-reaching effects on society, with a particular emphasis on its impact on youth of color.
The campus community is invited to participate in an event to celebrate the life and work Fluxus artist Alison Knowles, who had a long and impactful relationship with the arts at UMBC. Knowles passed away on October 29. An exhibition of her books, boxes, and performance work will be on display in the Library Rotunda, and attendees are invited to participate in a performance of Shoes of Your Choice.
In conjunction with the exhibition the exhibition Picturing Mobility: Black Tourism and Leisure during the Jim Crow Era, on display from September 2 through December 19, the Albin O. Kuhn Library Gallery presents a panel discussion.
The Center for Ethics and Values and the Dresher Center for the Humanities present a panel discussion on The Ethics of Cryptocurrency, with speakers Yaya J. Fanusie, Amy Froide, and Tobey Scharding, moderated by Michael Nance.
UMBC Theatre presents Street Scenes, with text by Langston Hughes and his contemporaries, and music Kurt Weill and others. This production is adapted and directed by Eve Muson, with musical direction by Andrew Hann. Street Scenes weaves together scenes and songs from Langston Hughes, his contemporaries, and artistic descendants — playwrights who, like Hughes, explored the promises and failures of the American Dream. Their works pulse with young characters fighting barriers of class, faith, work, and identity, all bound by a shared mission: honoring the dignity of everyday people.
Celebrate the Arts at UMBC the evening on December 5, when we'll present an extravaganza of concurrent events featuring dance, music, theatre, and the visual arts!
The Center for Art, Design, and Visual Culture presents a special one-night-only outdoor screening and performance with KaMag, the performance collaboration between artist María Magdalena Campos-Pons and musician Kamaal Malak. Vignettes in 3 Sessions: An Immersive Ancestral Experience with KaMag is an interactive performance created for the CADVC. KaMag invites members of the public into a shared ritual environment — “a sacred space where ancestral energies transcend temporal boundaries, creating a transformative portal between past and present.” The performance unfolds as a multi-media, multi-sensory sanctuary combining spoken word, live music, sound design, and other sensorial experiences in an intimate, participatory format.
The Department of Music presents the UMBC Symphony Orchestra and the UMBC String Chamber Orchestra under the baton of Philip Mann. Violinist Airi Yoshioka, professor of music at UMBC, will be the featured soloist in Alexander Glazunov's Violin Concert in A minor, Op. 82. The concert will also feature the world premiere of Chesapeake, written by Rich Sigwald ’03, music, in honor of E. Michael Richards, professor of music and former conductor of the UMBC Symphony Orchestra, who passed away in 2023.
Join us for a Film and Animation Showcase, featuring works by students and recent graduates of UMBC's Visual Arts and Intermedia and Digital Arts (IMDA) programs.
