The photography exhibition currently on display in the Albin O. Kuhn Library Gallery, N. Jay Jaffee Photographs from Public to Personal, 1947-1997, received praise this week in the Baltimore Sun.

The review discusses the personal background and career of Jaffee, in relation to his “visceral” and “compelling” photographs of New York City life. The author Tim Smith states that, “N. Jay Jaffee might not be among the best known American photographers of the 20th century, but a sizable and engrossing exhibit of his works at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, makes it obvious that he deserves much wider recognition.”

Read “UMBC presents exhibit of N. Jay Jaffee photos: New Yorker had keen eye for scenes of the city and its people” at the Baltimore Sun‘s website.

N. Jay Jaffee Photographs from Public to Personal, 1947-1997 is on display in the Library gallery though Sunday, March 23. Learn more at our Arts and Culture Calendar.

This week, a project by Jason Hughes, IMDA, was included in a New York Times Education Life slideshow that highlights the work of students whose art creatively solves a problem. One of only 17 featured artworks, Hughes’ limited edition Artistic Futures Savings Bonds aim to raise and sustain support for future artworks. He says, “they can be bought for $100 and increase in value every six months, to $250 in 10 years. Art patrons can trade in the bond toward the acquisition of a new work or hold onto it as an artwork itself.”

View the full slideshow including Hughes’ work: “Students Get Creative”

The piece will also be included in an education supplement of the New York Times this Sunday, February 9. Learn more about Hughes’ artwork at his portfolio website.

MFA candidate and Shriver Peaceworker Fellow, Charlotte Keniston was featured this week in the National Peace Corps Association blog. The article, “Returned Volunteer Takes on Food Deserts of Baltimore,” discusses an ongoing project by Keniston that tackles food challenges in Baltimore. Keniston cites her Peace Corps experience in Guatemala and her involvement as a Shriver Fellow as a major influence in her work saying, “While in Guatemala, I spent a lot of time cooking and eating with people. I learned that healthy food doesn’t just nourish the body, but growing food and eating it together can also nourish the community . . . The conversations I had in weekly Peaceworker sessions challenged me to view my neighborhood through a ‘Peace Corps’ lens- to see the possibility for positive change.”

Learn more about Keniston’s work, including her A Full Plate project — in which Baltimore area participants “discuss what food means to them in relation to their families, their communities, their health, power, place and spirituality” — at her website. Her work will be on display in the 2014 MFA Thesis Exhibition at the CADVC this April.

The exhibition, Digital Disclosure: UMBC Faculty Perspectives, featuring the work of visual arts faculty members Vin Grabill, Neal McDonald and Steve Silberg, received praise last week by the Baltimore Sun, in a review, “Art’s future and past linked in ‘Digital’ exhibition.” While describing the works, the author states that the collection is successful in displaying “high-tech ways in which artists acknowledge art history while also taking art forward.”

Digital Disclosure continues through Friday, February 21 at the Howard County Center for the Arts. The gallery is open Monday – Friday, 10 a.m. – 8 p.m., Saturday until 4 p.m. and Sunday from Noon – 4 p.m.

Learn more at the Howard County Center for the Arts website.

Charlotte Keniston, UMBC MFA student and Shriver Peaceworker Fellow, was featured in a blog post by the National Peace Corps Association for her food justice project, Pigtown Food for Thought.

Her upcoming work at the MFA thesis exhibition opens April 3rd at the Center for Art, Design and Visual Cultural at UMBC, and will feature her work in Pigtown. For more information on Charlotte’s art, check out her website: www.charlottekeniston.com

This Saturday, January 11, Jason Hughes ’15 and Gary Kachadourian ’12, imaging and digital arts, will present work in Baltimore Artists + WPA + Mera Rubell = Love, an exclusive preview that displays the artwork of those chosen for SELECT 2014 — an art auction curated by Mera Rubell, co-founder of the Rubell Family Collection.

Baltimore Artists + WPA + Mera Rubell = Love is presented by the Washington Project for the arts, and will be on display January 11 through 8, at the Marianne Boesky Gallery‘s uptown space:
118 E 64th Street
New York, NY 10065

The gallery is open Tuesday – Saturday: 10am – 6pm. Admission is free.

Simple Stories: The Photography of Robert Houston, a curatorial project of the Museum Practice class (Art 427), was mentioned this week in an interview with the artist in City Paper and in the contemporary art blog, Bmore Art, as “best Baltimore art opening.”

Read the interview, “Images of Struggle,” at City Paper‘s website, or see which other exhibitions top the list of Bmore Art picks.

Simple Stories explores the work of photographer, Robert Houston whose photographic career documents half a century of portraits and everyday life, including his work for LIFE magazine and images of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Museum Practice is a course under the Art History/Museum Studies concentration in the Department of Visual Arts taught in the fall by Sandra Abbott, curator of collections & outreach at the CADVC. The course addresses professional museum and gallery practice, includes several visits to area institutions — such as the BMA, Homewood Museum and the Archaeological Museum at Johns Hopkins University — and then culminates in a student-curated exhibit at a Baltimore institution.

Simple Stories opened at the Creative Alliance at the Patterson December 6, and continues through December 14. Starting at 8:30 pm on Thursday, December 12, the Marquee Lounge will host “A Night with the Storyteller,” in which the artist shares accounts from his career of visually chronicling those from all walks of life. The Amalie Rothschild Gallery is open Tuesday through Sunday, 11 a.m. — 7 p.m.

The Baltimore Sun’s special education supplement last month featured William D’Eugenio ’14, theatre, and Nyalls Hartman, theatre, as they discussed the features of the Black Box Theatre and the Performing Arts and Humanities Building Theatre.

D’Eugenio spoke about the influence the new facilities had in his decision to apply to UMBC and become a part of the theatre design and production program, saying that “they are built to the standards of today and offer a real broadway style experience. Working with lighting systems that are being used in professional theaters gives me an advantage when applying for jobs.”

Read more of the article, “More than Just Performing: Music, Theatre Students Learn Diverse Skills”

“Are we creating a world where atrocities can be committed at the push of a button, and then immediately forgotten?,” asks City Paper’s H. Dean Freeman in response to the exhibition currently on display in the CADVC, Visibility Machines: Harun Farocki and Trevor Paglen. Using the exhibition as a vehicle with which to discuss “what happens when technology sets its sights on mimicking human perception,” Freeman describes works in the exhibition, as “arresting” and “invigorating.”

Read the article, “Droning On: UMBC show takes on technology, capitalism, and warfare”

Visibility Machines, organized by visiting curator Niels Van Tomme, is on display through Feburary 22. The CADVC is open Tuesday through Saturday, 10 a.m. until 5 p.m.

In the latest essay for his Race Stories column for the New York Times, Maurice Berger, CADVC, discusses Civil Rights Photographer Jon Lewis’ pictures of farm workers outside of the Jim Crow South. Berger writes about Lewis’ “precise and moving” documentation of the Delano Grape Strike that, “offers great insights about the strike and the canny understanding of photography of its leader, Cesar Chavez.”

Read “A Civil Rights Photographer, and a Struggle, Are Remembered” at the New York Times Lens Blog.

Berger’s Race Stories column has featured several essays centered upon race and photography including, Malcolm X as image maker, Ken Gonzales-Day, images of emancipation, the photographs of Deborah Will, the civil rights work of James Karales, and the woman in a civil rights photo, fifty seven years later.