The Baltimore Museum of Art is seeking curious, warm, empathetic, and articulate individuals to act as hosts in the Center for People + Art, slated to open in October of 2015. The 6,000 square foot space includes a cross-collection Project Space featuring a 3-year thematic exhibition; a Community Commons featuring a community table and artwork by a regional artist engaged in participatory practice; and a Studio Space for creative production. Interpreters will play a central role in ensuring that each visitor feels cared for, engaged, and respected in the Center.

On behalf of our students, faculty, staff, and alumni, we’d like to say thank you to all those who supported us in throughout the last fiscal year! Your contribution goes a long way in funding the #1 up-and-coming national university in the United States.

Last year’s contributions made a big difference in funding some new and exciting developments on campus, including the grand opening of the Performing Arts and Humanities Building and the men’s soccer team’s journey to the NCAA tournament. Your gifts also provided support for student scholarship funds, new equipment and curricula to academic departments, grants for undergraduate research…the list goes on.

We are very lucky to have a network of donors so committed to UMBC’s message of innovation and engagement. Thank you again for your continued support!

Just hours after the U.S. Supreme Court announced a nationwide right to same-sex marriage on Friday, June 26, Manil Suri was interviewed by Public Radio International (PRI) for his reaction to the ruling. Suri, a professor of mathematics and award-winning author, has written extensively about his experience as a gay Indian American. He has also written in the Washington Post and New York Times about Indian government policies and during the interview discussed Section 377 of the Indian penal code, reinstated by the Indian Supreme Court in 2013, which criminalizes homosexual conduct.

Suri shared his thoughts on PRI about what the implications of the U.S. ruling could mean for other nations around the world, including India. “They are bound to really look at what the US is doing,” Suri says. “It’s one of the largest countries in the world and it’s really putting its seal on this, saying marriage equality is here to stay.”

He added the American milestone is an important one as the worldwide conversations surrounding same-sex marriage continue. “There’s back and forth. And I think we’re going to see that in other parts of the world as well.” To listen to the complete interview that aired on PRI, click here.

In the latest essay for his Race Stories column in The New York Times, Maurice Berger, research professor at the Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture, examines the shifting attitudes toward the Confederate battle flag. “The image was at once mundane and historic. In Alabama last Wednesday, on the order of Gov. Robert Bentley, workers took down the Confederate battle flag on the grounds of the state Capitol and were photographed as they did. The camera, whose role it was to record a reality — and thus to make visible its compelling details of the world — now documented a symbol’s imminent invisibility,” notes Berger, but adds, “In the end, retiring an icon is not the same as dealing with the underlying institutional, emotional, economic and historic complications that it represents.”

Read “Making a Confederate Flag Invisible” and view the photographs at The New York Times Lens blog.

Berger’s Race Stories column, which appears monthly on The New York Times website, is “a continuing exploration of the relationship of race to photographic portrayals of race.”

On behalf of our students, faculty, staff, and alumni, we’d like to say thank you to all those who supported us in throughout the last fiscal year! Your contribution goes a long way in funding the #1 up-and-coming national university in the United States.

Last year’s contributions made a big difference in funding some new and exciting developments on campus, including the grand opening of the Performing Arts and Humanities Building and the men’s soccer team’s journey to the NCAA tournament. Your gifts also provided support for student scholarship funds, new equipment and curricula to academic departments, grants for undergraduate research…the list goes on.

We are very lucky to have a network of donors so committed to UMBC’s message of innovation and engagement. Thank you again for your continued support!