Faculty Spotlight
Fall 2018
On any given day, the work of our faculty enlivens museums, galleries, performance venues, lecture halls, public spaces, and more—both at home and abroad. Their creative and scholarly contributions mine the complexities of the human condition, asking essential questions of our time while expanding the potential of creativity and the depth, diversity, and real-world impact of the arts.
This fall, UCLA Arts presents 10 Questions, a program that brings together 40 leading minds from a wide range of disciplines to discuss 10 timely and fundamental questions like What is beauty? What is freedom? What is failure? 15 of the 40 faculty members come from the UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture. See the full listing and RSVP here.
Marla Berns, the Shirley & Ralph Shapiro Director of the Fowler Museum, will moderate the keynote presentation for the Striking Iron Symposium. Celebrating the Fowler’s acclaimed exhibition, this two-part symposium explores iron in the context of its history, spiritual potencies, cultural roles and meanings, and artistic possibilities in Africa and its Diasporas. Berns curated the exhibition with World Arts and Cultures/Dance Professor Allen Roberts. The curators also coauthored the exhibition catalog (forthcoming, end of 2018). More info…
Art Professor Jennifer Bolande presents a solo exhibition titled, The Composition of Decomposition, at Pio Picos Projects in Los Angeles. The show includes photographs, sculpture, and the debut of her film of the same name and examines how truth is conditioned by the frameworks through which it is received; how meaning shifts and transmogrifies in the passage from one material or context to another, from “news” to history. More info…
Architecture and Urban Design Professor Dana Cuff will be presenting at The Atlantic’s Sustainability Summit in October. This event brings stakeholders and leaders across industries together to explore the makings of a sustainable world. More info…
Design Media Arts Assistant Professor Isla Hansen presents Aeromorphiscope, a new interactive sculpture commissioned by the Akron Art Museum in Ohio for its group exhibition titled, Planes, Trains & Automobiles. More info…
Design Media Arts Professor Erkki Huhtamo has lent pieces from his extensive media archaeological collection to the Los Angeles County Museum to be shown in their exhibition, 3D: Double Vision, which is the first American exhibition to survey a full range of artworks, dating from 1838 to the present, that produce the illusion of three dimensions. Huhtamo also contributed an essay to the exhibition catalog. More info…
Design Media Arts Professor Willem Henri Lucas illustrated and coauthored a new book titled, The Frank Ceramk Action Wheel – The New American Method, which will be published in October by Cermak Ochoa Creative LLC.
Architecture and Urban Design Distinguished Professor Thom Mayne will give the closing keynote address at UCLA Innovations’ Technologies for a Sustainable Future event, which provides an opportunity for UCLA inventors, investors, and industry executives to establish new relationships for furthering innovation. More info.,.
Architecture and Urban Design Chair Heather Roberge and Distinguished Professor Thom Mayne will give presentations that examines the fast-paced evolution of facade technology and explore innovative, sustainable design practices at the Facades conference in Los Angeles. More info…
Design Media Arts Assistant Professor Lauren McCarthy was awarded a Journalism 360 Award from the Knight Foundation for her project called, Home With Our Stories. The project explores the potential of using a system of smart home devices as a remote reporting tool, offering an alternative, immersive relationship between journalist and interviewee based on intimacy and care, while questioning the implications of bringing monitoring and automation technologies into the home. She is also participating in the Media City Biennale in Soul, South Korea.
Design Media Arts Professor Rebeca Méndez curated the exhibition, Selects, from the collection of the Cooper Hewitt Museum in New York. Called one of the “best design exhibitions to see this fall” by Vogue, the exhibition investigates the interaction of humanity, nature, design, and science. More info…
Art Professor Catherine Opie presents two solo exhibitions beginning in November at Lehmann Maupin in New York and the Princeton University School of Architecture. Her work is also on view in eight group exhibitions taking place in museums and galleries around the world. More info…
Art Professor Silke Otto-Knapp has a solo exhibition, titled Silke Otto-Knapp: Violets, on view at the Taka Ishii Gallery in Tokyo. She is also presenting work in two other group exhibitions in Europe this fall. More info…
Art Distinguished Professor Lari Pittman has a solo exhibition on view at Regen Projects in Los Angeles. Portraits of Textiles & Portraits of Humans asks viewers to question what constitutes a portrait and what differentiates it from a still life. Pittman is also showing work in group exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art and Skidmore College. More info…
World Arts and Cultures/Dance Professor David Roussève presents Halfway to Dawn at REDCAT. Mixing luscious movement for nine exquisite performers with bold video imagery, his work invokes the life and spirit of composer and arranger Billy “Sweet Pea” Strayhorn, who wrote such famous hits as Take the A Train, Chelsea Bridge and Lush Life for Duke Ellington’s orchestra, but was a relatively unknown African-American gay man living in Harlem of the '40s to the '60s. More info…
World Arts and Cultures/Dance Distinguished Professor Peter Sellars is directing Tristan Und Isolde at the Paris Opera. Sellars’ production makes use of a dematerialised setting bared of all earthly contingencies accompanied by videos created by Bill Viola that are detached from the stage, suspended like altarpieces. More info…
Header Image: Bird Specimen, Montezuma Oropendola (Psarocolius montezuma); Skin (male), wing; Division of Birds, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, 562726. Included in exhibition curated by UCLA Department of Design Media Arts Professor Rebeca Méndez at the Cooper Hewitt Museum in New York this fall.
Stay engaged. Use #UCLAarts to stay connected.
