Command Z: Artists Working with Phenomena and Technology curated by Lisa Moren, presented by the Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture last spring was featured today as one of the top ten art exhibitions of 2012 by City Paper.

The show, described as one that “reawakened our sense of wonder and possibility,” was alongside exhibitions presented by the Contemporary Museum, Open Space, Nudashank and others. Command Z also made the top ten list of Baker award-winning artist, Gary Kachadourian.

See the list here: “2012 Top Ten Art Shows.”

Image: Leçon de Piano, Lisa Moren and Jocelyn Robert.

The exhibition currently running at the Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture, For All The World to See: Visual Culture and the Struggle for Civil Rights, curated by Dr. Maurice Berger, was reviewed this morning by City Paper.

The review uses commentary from Berger, chronicles the impact of items featured in the exhibition and the discusses overall power of the story told through For All The World to See, to examine the way in which the exhibition relates to the evolution of black identity in America.

Read the review “Visual Politics: UMBC Show Looks at The Visual Culture Surrounding the Civil Rights Movement.”

For All The World to See is currently on display at the CADVC and will continue through March 10. For more information about the exhibition, and for the Center’s hours during winter break, visit the Arts and Culture Calendar.

Visual Arts major, Diana Chou’s painting, Play the Cards, has been selected for inclusion in a prominent, annual anthology of student work. Chou’s work originally appeared in the 2012 issue of Bartleby, where Chou’s piece wasn’t the only one to capture the attention of the judges. The highly selective collection, Bennington’s plain china: Best Undergraduate Writing 2012, will feature Chou’s work, along with fiction, poetry, non-fiction writing and fine art from a select few students of colleges and universities around the country.

The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts has awarded Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture Research Professor and Chief Curator, Dr. Maurice Berger, a $50,000 curatorial research fellowship award for his forthcoming project Revolution of The Eye: Modern Art and the Birth of American Television. This exhibition and publication project represents the first collaborative institutional effort between the CADVC and the Jewish Museum in New York, where Berger holds the title of Consulting Curator. The grant will be administered through the Jewish Museum.

About Revolution of The Eye:

“From the early-1940s through the mid-1960s, a dynamic new visual medium emerged in the United States that, in its risk-taking and aesthetic experimentation, paralleled the cutting-edge nature of modern art: television. The revolutionary and uncharted medium attracted younger television executives, writers, producers, and directors. Scores of socially and culturally progressive and predominantly Jewish network executives, producers, directors, art directors, and writers—figures such as Paddy Chayefsky, William Golden, Leonard Goldenson, Robert Kintner, Ernie Kovacs, Dan Melnick, William S. Paley, David Sarnoff, Frank Stanton, David Susskind, and Rod Serling—mined the aesthetic, stylistic, and conceptual possibilities of a new and powerful technology. These innovators worked in a cultural milieu far less constricted by the competition for box office revenue and the censorious production codes then preoccupying the motion picture industry.

As the geographic focus of the networks shifted from the Hollywood movie studios to a television industry initially centered in New York, the proximity of these innovators to the city’s dynamic artistic and cultural community—particularly the avant-garde art and philosophies of the New York School, an artistic milieu also with a significant Jewish presence—would result in a powerful conceptual and stylistic synergy between modern art and early television.”

Revolution of The Eye: Modern Art and the Birth of American Television is scheduled to be presented at the Jewish Museum in New York in the spring of 2016, and at the CADVC in 2017.

Dr. Maurice Berger is also curator of the exhibition currently on display in the CADVC, For All The World to See: Visual Culture and the Struggle for Civil Rights.

As we’ve mentioned many times before on this blog, philanthropy is intensely personal. Which is why the story behind the naming gift made by Todd Carton ’77, interdisciplinary studies, is especially touching; the gift honors his late brother.

Carton has always been interested in the arts, as was his brother, so when he heard about the new Performing Arts and Humanities Building at UMBC, he was eager to see the space students from all disciplines would be able to be touched by the arts. His gift — the naming of the building’s new box office — will not only help all who visit the building, but represents one brother’s love, and another’s legacy.

Watch a Q&A with Todd Carton ’77 here.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTrHFuGZYMo]

FROM: Greg Simmons, Vice President for Institutional Advancement & Keith Harmon, Director of the Meyerhoff Scholars Program

Earnestine Baker announced Monday at a combined Meyerhoff Scholars Family Meeting that she will retire from UMBC this month. Ernie has been an extraordinary member of the UMBC community for almost 30 years, and it is fitting that the Meyerhoff Scholars be among the first to receive this news, as she has spent most of her career at UMBC working to support the growth and success of this program and its students.

Ernie joined UMBC in 1983 as the Coordinator of Minority Recruitment in the Office of Admissions.  Between 1987 and 1992 she served as Associate Director for Scholarships at the University. In 1992, she was appointed Director of the Meyerhoff Scholars Program. For two decades, she has worked tirelessly alongside President Freeman Hrabowski and campus faculty and staff to build the program into a nationally recognized model for talented students interested in pursuing terminal degrees in the sciences, mathematics, engineering, and computer science.

Ernie, now Executive Director of the program, has a well-earned reputation as a firm but fair mentor, colleague, and leader. More than 1,000 Meyerhoff Scholars have been introduced to “Ms. Baker” at Meyerhoff scholarship “selection weekends” and Summer Bridge programs as a demanding, but dedicated and compassionate presence.  Her expectations – clearly and directly stated – were that each Meyerhoff Scholar prepare rigorously for the classroom and lab, act professionally in any situation, and serve compassionately on campus and in the community. Her deep relationships with Meyerhoff Scholars have extended far beyond graduation.  She has advised and mentored graduates in their pursuit of graduate degrees, and networked on behalf of our graduates to ensure that they have good and clear options available at vital career junctures.

In July 2009, Science, the leading journal of scientific research, news and commentary, recognized UMBC’s Meyerhoff Scholars Program as a national model demonstrating “what it takes” to help more minority students earn science degrees. Ernie has been a fundamental part of the program’s success.  Throughout the years, she has been a tireless advocate for students, applying her rich knowledge of the academic community with an innovative and pragmatic approach to problem solving. This approach has allowed her to build solid and lasting partnerships with research faculty, develop internships and summer research experiences, and forge institutional relationships for UMBC with the nation’s most prestigious colleges and universities. Her standards have been high and exacting; at the same time, she has generously demonstrated the magnanimity of spirit, humility, and compassion that is required to prepare future leaders for success.

Through her work with the Meyerhoff Program, Ernie also has served on numerous STEM advisory boards and represented the program at conferences and events throughout the nation and abroad, including participating in the 2012 College Completion Symposium with U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. Her dedication and commitment was recognized by the University System of Maryland (USM) Board of Regents, which honored Ernie as the USM Outstanding Staff Member for extraordinary public service to the university and the greater community in 2008.

Ernie has served the UMBC community with dignity, grace, and wisdom for almost 30 years. She will continue to serve on several commissions and boards, and will consult with UMBC and the Meyerhoff Scholars Program on several on-going initiatives. We intend to host a reception in January for Ernie to celebrate her numerous contributions to the UMBC community, and will share that information as details are solidified. Until that time, please join us in congratulating her for all that she has accomplished at UMBC.

On December 10, the New York Times profiled weather prognosticator William O’Toole, III, of the J. Gruber’s Hagerstown Town and Country Almanack in an article entitled “Divining the Weather, With Methods Old and New.”

Maryland Traditions, the folklife program of the Maryland State Arts Council, which is a partner with UMBC, recently honored the Almanack with its annual “Achievement in Living Traditions and Arts” Award. Maryland Traditions partnered with the New Media Studio to produce a short film for the awards ceremony, which was featured in the New York Times story.

The video can be seen here:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BfA1OOhaCY&w=560&h=315]

On November 28, Jessica Berman, professor of English, gave a talk to Georgetown University’s Modernities Working Group. Her talk was entitled “Is the Trans in Transnational the Trans in Transgender?”

Berman co-edits, with Paul Saint-Amour, the Modernist Latitudes Series at Columbia University Press, and serves on the boards of the American Comparative Literature Association and the Modernist Studies Association. Her most recent book is Modernist Commitments: Ethics, Politics, and Transnational Modernism.

In the latest post on Governing magazine’s blog “Better Faster Cheaper,” John M. Kamensky, senior fellow with the IBM Center for the Business of Government, reports on compelling new findings from a study by UMBC’s Eric Zeemering, assistant professor of public policy, and co-researcher Daryl Delabbi.

Zeemering and Delabbi have found that more than half of county officials across the country are either participating in or delivering shared services or are in active discussions to do so. Why counties? Kemensky writes, “Typically, small local governments jealously guard their independence. County government is a natural place to turn to coordinate or deliver common services, whether they are police investigative services, road paving or group-purchasing contracts.” To learn more, read “The Accelerating Movement to Share Services” or see the full study, “A County Manager’s Guide to Shared Services in Local Government” (pdf).

Jessica Berman, professor of English, will spend the spring semester as a fellow at the Institute of Arts and Humanities (IAH) and a visiting Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. The fellowship is funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Berman’s fellowship is in conjunction with a yearlong celebration of the 100th anniversary of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, which has been organized by the IAH and Carolina Performing Arts. During her fellowship, Berman will teach a course on “Modernism, Media and Performance” and conduct research on her most recent book project, “Media Migrations: Modernism, Exile and Twentieth-Century Media.”