UCLA Arts Newsletter
This past weekend, I had the honor of celebrating the opening of our new UCLA Margo Leavin Graduate Art Studios in Culver City. It’s so humbling and thrilling to witness the creation of a new space—or the re-invention of an old space—that will be dedicated to the making of art, to the nurturing and development of artists, and to the cultivation of community.
As I welcome everyone—returning students, faculty and staff and nearly 200 new students—to the 2019–20 academic year—UCLA’s Centennial year—and as we move forward amidst the many challenges in our world, it is especially inspiring to have inaugurated this new space in which our artists and teachers and staff will forge ideas and work that will illuminate our lives and help shape the future.
It’s the work we all must do, metaphorically, at the beginning of each year. How do we create the space that gives our students, educators, and staff—that gives ourselves and our community—the opportunity to grow, to create, to respond, and to engage with our world and our time?
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| UCLA Arts invites the public into the classroom for 10 Questions: Centennial Edition |
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| Architecture award honors five women, including professor Dana Cuff |
Disabled dancers learn to redefine the aesthetics of |
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| ‘It’s about time!’ Betye Saar’s long climb to the summit |
Artforum reviews Lari Pittman: Declaration of |
On September 26, the UCLA Margo Leavin Graduate Art Studios officially opened its doors with a private dinner for artists, colleagues, students, and friends of Leavin. Designed by the Los Angeles-based architecture firm Johnston Marklee, the world-class facility is dedicated to supporting emerging artists and strengthening Los Angeles’s position as a world arts capital.
The major restoration and expansion creates a new building for the nation’s top-ranked public university to support its leading graduate program as the fall quarter begins. During the project’s development, the architects engaged with students and faculty to best understand their needs and design a highly functional building that engenders a creative community.
Our interest in coordinating the New Wight Biennial exhibition consisted in looking for work about intimacy in the field of address, with a deep materiality and a social rigor. The exhibition expands knowledge of community, time, capital, presence, language, histories, and ontologies. The exhibition would address postcolonial possibilities and the ways that can be expressed and understood through varied experiences and identities. In thinking of alternative histories we must also challenge the where and why of who performs labor. There is a sacredness to the undisclosed interior, that which we externalize vs. that which must remain private—and in so doing subverting the expectation placed on the Other to perform, to conceal, or to assimilate according to terms outside their own.
We proposed a show about the life cycle of intimacy through a postcolonial lens. The life cycle of intimacy can be understood through a global positioning or a social location, but need not necessarily name its context within the world at large. Intimacy is something that can be understood as private, as well as public; as care, but also as violence. Intimacy can grow and can be stolen, and the right to share and visualize intimacy through labor and production is an individual decision impacted by experience, structural power, and identity. Historically, intimacy has been visualized by a particular community—as in white, cis, heterosexual, able-bodied—and therefore ownership is relegated to only that population. We aim to expand that voice and expression of this experience and what it looks and feels like.
Department of Architecture and Urban Design Professor and Director of xLAB at UCLA, Hitoshi Abe launched a new initiative called the Architecture Urban Design for Disaster Risk Reduction and Resilience initiative (ArcDR3). This three-year global interdisciplinary architecture education initiative centers on the study and design of resilience in our contemporary environment to create a more effective integration of theory (research) and practice (design).
Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance Studio Professor Kyle Abraham’s company, Abraham.In.Motion, will perform in New York and Arizona this fall.
In October, the catalogue for Striking Iron: The Art of African Blacksmiths, edited by Marla C. Berns, the Shirly and Ralph Shapiro Director of the Fowler Museum at UCLA and Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance Professor Allen Roberts, will be published.
After launching the podcast, Pang!, this summer, Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance Professor and Chair Dan Froot will present live performances in three cities in New England where he has partnered with community members and social service agencies to begin the process of fostering cross-class dialogue around food insecurity and income disparity that culminates in the live performances.
Department of Architecture and Urban Design Adjunct Assistant Professor Julia Koerner is showing work in group exhibitions in New York, Jordan, Philadelphia, and Switzerland this fall. She will also be giving a lecture at the AIA Arizona State Conference in Phoenix in November.
Department of Art Assistant Professor Candice Lin will have a solo exhibition, A Materialist History of Contagion, on view at the Walter Phillips Gallery in Banff, Alberta, Canada this fall, as well as work in group exhibitions in Denmark, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Lebanon.
On the occasion of UCLA’s Centennial, UCLA Arts is proud to present 100 for 100—a collection of stories that celebrate the rich history of the arts at UCLA over the past century. Each monthly newsletter throughout the yearlong celebration will feature a new story that reflects on our past and imagines what’s possible for our future. We invite our community to explore these stories and contribute their own to the collection.
This month's contribution is by Professor Allen Roberts, UCLA Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance
July 23rd, 2019, marked the sixteenth Sheikh Amadu Bamba Day, as recognized by a proclamation of the Los Angeles City Council on behalf of the Senegalese community of Southern California. Amadu Bamba (1853-1927) was a Sufi saint whose life lessons of generosity through hard work inspire many Senegalese Muslims.
Assisting in creation of this poignant day of remembrance were the late Mary “Polly” Nooter Roberts (1959–2018), then Chief Curator and Deputy Director of the Fowler Museum of Cultural History and later Professor in the Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance, and Allen F. Roberts, Professor of World Arts and Cultures. Such outreach was central to the Robertses’ exhibition and book program called “A Saint in the City: Sufi Arts of Urban Senegal” that was sponsored by the Fowler through major funding from the National Endowment of the Humanities.
Senegalese artists and members of the LA community brainstormed and otherwise assisted every aspect of the project, for their collaboration was the point: what would they like American audiences to know about their creative lives?
Celebrate UCLA's centennial by sharing your own story that reflects on the institution’s 100-year legacy by looking back at the past or forward into the future.
We invite you to share reflections on your time at UCLA, lessons learned at UCLA and how they have shaped your life and work, moments from UCLA’s history that have inspired or influenced you, and/or hopes for UCLA’s future.
Submissions could take any number of forms from brief comments, to short essays, to photographs, to drawings, to videos, to performances, etc., but should be formatted or documented with the end goal of digital distribution. Submissions can respond to a single moment, work, individual, project, exhibition, performance, or space relating to the arts and architecture at UCLA; a through-line that can be followed over time at the institution; or anything in between. Critique is welcomed – one could explore gaps or missteps throughout our institution’s history and share related hopes for our future.
Announcements
RSVP for 10 Questions: Centennial Edition
This hybrid undergraduate course and public event series engages leading scholars, artists, scientists, activists, philosophers, executives and more for an energetic exchange of ideas addressing a range of fundamental issues that both shape and transcend our current moment in history. Every Tuesday evening from Oct. 1 through Dec. 3, we invite you to join UCLA students in the classroom to explore an essential question, such as: What is community? What is creativity? What is justice? and What matters? RSVP here.
Save the date: The Opening 2018–19
Attention all UCLA Arts students, faculty, and staff! Kick off the academic year with the UCLA Arts community at the school's annual opening event. Join us on Wednesday, October 16 from 5–7 p.m. for art, music, food, drinks, and giveaways.
Read the latest stories about UCLA Arts students, faculty, and alumni
From campus news to faculty and alumni activities around the globe the UCLA Arts website is updated daily to aggregate the best news and stories about and written by the School of the Arts and Architecture community. Arts and Architecture community.
Stay engaged. Use #UCLAarts to stay connected.
