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Prospective students enter the Van
Brunt
Visitors Center, the new headquarters for admissions staff
and
information for visitors to the university and those interested
in
attending UNL. This entrance hall features a welcome desk,
left,
and can be rented for events. Photos by
Richard
Wright.
Event to dedicate Visitors Center
The red carpet will be rolled out as the new "front door"
to UNL officially opens on April 17.
The UNL Van Brunt
Visitors Center, at 313 N. 13th St., will
be dedicated in an 11
a.m. ceremony hosted by Chancellor Harvey
Perlman. The event is
open to the public.
"The Visitors Center will serve
as the university's official
front door. It provides a welcoming
environment for all visitors
and will give us, for the first time,
a venue in which to tell
the story of this university, its
heritage, its accomplishments,
and most importantly, its
aspirations," said Annette Wetzel,
director of the Visitors
Center and special events.
Located in a prominent site on the south edge of City Campus,
construction of the building began in June 2001 and was completed
in January. Centerbrook Architects and Bahr Vermeer and Haecker
Architects designed the building. The Weitz Co. was the construction
manager. UNL's Facilities Planning and Construction managed the
programming, design and construction process for this project.
The April 17 dedication event is to publicly thank donors
Alice
and Robert Williamson of Omaha, and Beth and Harry Weigel
and Jane
and Steve Shugart, all of California, and their families.
They gave
a generous donation to honor the memory of Irene and
Winslow Van
Brunt, University of Nebraska alumni who graduated
in 1924.
The Visitors Center welcomes guests in the great hall atrium
with 45-foot-high ceilings and birch paneled walls. Soon to be
added to the great hall is a large video wall featuring campus
videos and welcome messages. The visitor resource room just south
of the great hall features computer terminals for guests and
brochures about the university and Lincoln.
The Visitors
Center is also the new home to Admissions, with
campus tour and
recruitment staff in the building.
"Our goal is to
create a one-stop visitor services center
for the campus
community," said Alan Cerveny, dean of admissions.
"The
university is a large, confusing place for many new
arrivals. We
want them to know there is one place on campus they
can always go
for answers to their questions."
The north end of the
building is home to the Mary Riepma Ross
Media Arts Center, which
opened in January.
 A retrospective
of
experimental film work by Wheeler Winston Dixon, UNL professor
of
English and chair of film studies, will be featured at the
Museum
of Modern Art. Photo by Richard Wright.
Below: Wheeler Winston Dixon in 1969. Photo
courtesy of Wheeler Winston Dixon.
Dixon's work
joins MoMA collection
By Kelly Bartling, University
Communications
An eclectic group of artists congregated in
New York City,
where apartments were then cheap, lifestyle choices
were mixed
and accepted and their art became anything they
imagined.
The perfect staging ground for experimental film
to thrive,
it was 1966 and Wheeler Winston Dixon, then 16, found
himself
among soon-to-be legendary artists like Andy Warhol. They
created
films for a couple hundred bucks worth of raw film stock,
pitched
in as one another's crew and cast, and often watched and
critiqued
the products of their work.
"It's an
era that if you didn't live through it, you
don't understand
it," said Dixon, James Ryan Professor of
English and chair of
film studies. "And it's an era that
also was so supportive of
artists, so kind to artists, that now,
when you look at the
landscape, it's a very different thing."
Dixon is one
of few remaining today who remembers that key
time for experimental
film, and as a historic figure in the genre,
it's fitting that New
York's Museum of Modern Art will honor
him in April with a
retrospective and will place Dixon's original
experimental film
works in its permanent collection.
"Retrospective:
Wheeler Winston Dixon" will be featured
April 11-12 at MoMA,
when three programs will feature some of
his films, like Caroline
Kennedy's Sinful Life in London, Tightrope,
Serial Metaphysics, and
his best-known, What Can I Do? After
that, the films will become
part of the museum's permanent collection.
The films may
appear strange to viewers unschooled in experimental
film, Dixon
admits, but they are serious works of art and a hallmark
of an
exciting era.
"Back in
the '60s we were making films not for an audience,"
Dixon
said. "We were making them entirely for ourselves.
Some people
don't understand that. They expect a narrative and
they expect
something different. What you hear from people who
don't understand
art is that art is communication. This is nonsense.
Art is anything
that you want it to be."
Dixon said his films aren't
designed to communicate, but to
explore and express his artistry.
He used the medium to examine
things like London in the Swinging
Sixties, television commercials,
Caroline Kennedy negotiating a
kitchen blender, a family coping
with loss and rejection. Touching,
humorous, tender and provocative,
many of the films, some only a
couple minutes in length, use
optical and editing effects to add
dimension.
Dixon began his career in film during his teen
years working
in New York City. He was born and raised in New
Brunswick, N.J.,
but found in the streets and underground of New
York kindred
minds and an exciting nexus of art and film, unique
personalities
and lifestyles.
"I was very young
when I was involved in this scene.
So, that gave me an edge on
everything else. But it was a great
time to be alive. And working.
It was a whole different atmosphere
than today. It was part of a
huge community in New York and everything
was desperately cheap.
You could get an apartment for 50 bucks
a month on the Lower East
Side and everybody helped everybody
else out. You could sleep at
other people's places, there were
communal breakfasts, lunches and
dinners, people loaned equipment,
and people would work on each
others' movies as crew. We had
no money; we shot any film we could
lay our hands on. Some of
our films were amazing."
Dixon said that back in the '60s, the entire cost of making
a
70-minute synch-sound feature film was as little as $200.
"When I went to make What Can I Do? in 1994, it cost
me
nearly $20,000 for a 80-minute movie. (Now, unfortunately)
the film
medium is no longer as democratic as it once was."
While the early '60s were a "huge explosion of artistic
ferment," according to Dixon, that scene began to change
when
in 1968, a film called Wavelength was made by Michael Snow
and
marked the beginning of what's called structuralist cinema,
a style
interested in values of light, color and sound and duration.
Dixon's style, which is more romantic, became marginalized by
film
critics and movements like "The Essential Cinema."
"Michael Snow's structuralist films became a model that
everyone else had to follow. If you didn't follow that model,
you
were suddenly marginalized. This happened to me, this happened
to a
lot of interesting filmmakers. Between 1968 and about 1990,
structuralism ruled at the expense of everything else. I became
more interested in writing books."
In 1994, he made
What Can I Do? as sort of a rediscovery.
The 80-minute 16-mm color
film featured an elderly woman (soap
opera favorite Anna Lee) who
hosts a dinner at her New York apartment
one evening and describes
her life and relationships. It earned
critical acclaim and reopened
Dixon's past. That's when a voice
from the past, Larry Kardish,
head of the film section at MoMA,
called and said he wanted to show
Dixon's work there.
"We ran What Can I Do? at MoMA,
ran it four or five times
and it was a big success, so that was the
beginning of our re-relationship,"
Dixon said. "Then when
my book Exploding Eye came out, they
asked me to curate the retro
of experimental films from their
collection and so I did, in
conjunction with the book. I approached
them two years ago and said
I really wanted a home for my originals,
so they came up with the
idea of doing it as a celebration, that
I would run all my films at
MoMA and then donate all the originals."
Dixon is
perhaps more excited about having his films in the
permanent
collection than having the retrospective, since he
has wanted to
find a permanent home for his works.
"Film is such a
fragile medium. And basically I'm holding
on to the originals right
now. What Can I Do? is sitting right
here in this cabinet," he
said, pointing to a corner in
his office. "What happens is
that when somebody makes their
films for a studio, the studio holds
onto them. But what happens
to independent filmmakers is that their
originals become orphan
films, because nobody owns them. By taking
all of my films into
their collection, this means they'll be
preserved as long as
the museum is in existence, and the MoMA is
probably the top
museum for film in the world, so it's quite an
honor."
"The main thing is a lot of people will
get to see the
films who haven't seen them, and I'm curious to see
who might
show up at screenings," he said. "You just
never know.
The main thing is that they're going to put them in the
archives.
That assures that they'll be taken care of."s
J.D. Edwards'
first class to graduate
By Mary Jane Bruce, University
Communications
Fourteen UNL seniors will make history in
May when the J.D
Edwards Honors Program in Computer Science and
Management graduates
its first group of students with bachelor's
degrees. They are
the trailblazers, the students who jumped on
board when the program
was in its infancy.
They are
students like Gerard Gjonej from Albania, who speaks
four languages
and spent his summers as an intern at Microsoft.
"It
took courage to enter the program because we didn't
know where we
were headed. But we believed in the J.D. Edwards
program. It looked
challenging and like it had a future,"
Gjonej said.
The J.D. Edwards program grew out of a $32.2 million gift
from
UNL alumni Edward and Carole McVaney, announced by the University
of Nebraska Foundation in 1998. Ed McVaney, president and chairman
of the Denver-based J.D. Edwards software company, wanted to
fund a
project that reflected his interest in technology and
computer
science. Part of the gift was used to build the $14.7
million
Esther L. Kauffman Academic Residential Center, named
for Carole
McVaney's mother. The Kauffman Center combines student
living
quarters and academic space for the J.D. Edwards program.
This spring, as new graduates collect their diplomas, it appears
J.D. Edwards is successful in reaching its goals.
"We've achieved success and recognition as measured by
the
placement of our graduates, the quality of projects in our
Software
Design Studio, the involvement of business executives,
the
development of our curriculum and our ability to recruit
top
students," said David Keck, executive director of the
J.D.
Edwards program.
Keck said the program is designed to
produce a new type of
graduate who enters the business world ready
to take on the demands
of a society that is increasingly driven by
technology. In order
to accomplish that goal, the curriculum
seamlessly weaves business
education with computer science to
create what Keck calls "a
balanced respect" between the
two areas.
The jewel in the J.D. Edwards crown is the
Software Design
Studio, where juniors, seniors and graduate
students become consultants
and contractors, creating software
engineering products that
solve business problems faced by real
clients. For example, a
team of students tackled an antiquated and
inefficient method
of ordering equipment used by the Lincoln
Electric System. The
students replaced a 2-inch thick catalog with
a software tool
that streamlines the ordering process and is
expected to save
the utility $1 million over 20 years.
Business leaders who are drawn into the experience become
valuable resources as speakers for an ongoing leadership seminar
for J.D. Edwards students. Last year, the speaker series drew
representatives from businesses and organizations including Microsoft,
Union Pacific Railroad, the United Nations, Gallup, Oxford University,
the U.S. Navy and a host of regional and national technology
and
software companies.
One of the speakers was Mike
Lechtenberger, first vice-president
of information services for
Mutual of Omaha, who helped set up
a partnership with J.D. Edwards
that included a studio design
project. Lechtenberger said it's
exciting and gratifying to work
with J.D. Edwards students and it
gives Mutual of Omaha an early
look at potential employees.
"The mission of J.D. Edwards to produce graduates versed
in
technology and business is a good match for the type of people
we
like to hire," Lechtenberger said.
Graduation will be
bittersweet for the seniors as they prepare
to move on to jobs or
graduate school. Gjonej, who has been hired
as a program manager
for Microsoft, said the students from the
first class have grown
close during their years at Nebraska.
"We are
in the same building, we take some of the same
classes and we do so
many things together. We're a team,"
Gjonej said.
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