November 15, 1996

Gallery Concert Features Brentano Quartet

Since its inception in 1992, the Brentano Quartet has been singled out for technical brilliance, musical insight, and stylistic elegance. Violist Misha Amory and violinists Serena Canin and Mark Steinberg met while students at Juilliard and soon joined forces with cellist Michael Kannen. The ensemble is named after Antonie Brentano, whom many scholars believe to have been Beethoven's mysterious "Immortal Beloved." Along with their mastery of classical and romantic works, the Brentano Quartet maintains a strong interest in the music of our time. Several works have been written for them, including the Sixth String Quartet of Milton Babbitt and two quartets by Bruce Adolphe.

The program for Nov. 23 opens with Schubert's Quartet in G Minor, and continues with a contemporary piece, Clouds, by Chou Wen-chung. The concert concludes with Brahms' String Quartet in B-flat Major, Op. 67. Clark Potter of the UNL School of Music will give a talk at 7:30 p.m. The doors of the Sheldon open at 7 p.m. and a reception for the artists and audience follows the concert. Parking for patrons with special needs is available in the lot north of the gallery.

Tickets for the Brentano Quartet can be purchased from the Lincoln Friends of Chamber Music. Individual concert tickets are $25, with a special student price of $5. Reservations are requested. The remaining concerts of the 1996-97 season offer music that spans the 17th through the 20th centuries. For the third concert, on Jan. 18, the Arcadian Academy will perform masterworks of the Baroque repertoire on period instruments. March 7, marks the return of the Peabody Piano Trio. The final concert, on May 17, presents the New York Philomusica and includes a performance of Schubert's Trout Quintet. For ticket information, call 435-5454.

Textile Artist Barbara Layne to Lecture Nov. 21

The lecture will feature the work of Canadians and Canadian immigrants who use textile arts to discuss their experiences and observations in the crossing of cultural boundaries. Layne will include a few examples of her own work. Immediately following the lecture will be a reception called "May I Take Your Hat," in the Textiles, Clothing and Design Department Gallery.

Layne is on sabbatical leave from Concordia University in Montreal, where she is graduate director of the master of fine arts studio arts programme. In her current creative work she examines cyberspace as a place to conduct research and collect information through the Internet. In her installations, she uses a combination of electronic and conventional textile art material and processes and explores issues surrounding new technologies, gender and cultural boundaries.

She is working with Wendy Weiss, associate professor, textiles, clothing and design, to direct a graduate seminar in TCD. The class format combines readings and a creative production experience examining the idea of "collecting culture." For more information contact Weiss at 472-6370.

Experimental Cinema Featured at the Ross

Barbara Hammer, who visited Lincoln in 1992 to participate in the Mary Riepma Ross Film Theater's Film/Video Showcase program, began making short films in the early 1970's. She is known for work that is both stridently lesbian and boldly experimental. Some of her films are short portraits of lesbian life, documenting a growing lesbian community in San Francisco in the 1970's. Others are humorous stories which play with mythological images of women and critique the patriarchal world.

Nitrate Kisses explores eroded emulsions and images for lost vestiges of lesbian and gay culture. This first feature by Barbara Hammer, a practicing pioneer of lesbian cinema, weaves striking images of the sexual activities of four gay and lesbian couples with footage that unearths the forbidden and invisible history of a marginalized people. Nitrate Kisses encourages the viewer to save scraps, letters, books, records and snapshots in order to preserve our ordinary lives as history. Archival footage from the first gay film in the U.S., Lot in Sodom (1933), and footage from German documentary and narrative films of the `30s are interwoven with current images of desire in this documentary.

With Tender Fictions, Barbara Hammer constructs an autobiography before someone does it for her in this post-post-modem sequel to her 1992 award-winning documentary, Nitrate Kisses. Childhood stories of the artist as a young lesbian and intimate tales of the lesbian as a young artist underscore the filmmaker's life of performances.

Nitrate Kisses and Tender Fictions are showing on Nov. 21, 22 and 24. Screenings are at 7 and 9:15 p.m. on Thursday and Friday and at 2:30, 4:45, 7 and 9:15 p.m. on Sunday. There are no screenings on Nov. 23. Admission is $5.50; $4.50 for students; and $3.50 for senior citizens, children, and members of the Friends of the Mary Riepma Ross Film Theater.

Mamet Comedy Featured at the Temple

The play, by the author of American Buffalo, Oleanna and Glengarry Glen Ross, pits Art against Commerce within the context of the motion picture industry. It follows the story of Bobby Gould (Michael A. Rothmayer). a studio executive who receives a promising movie script from producer Charlie Fox (Jason Richards). As they make their deal, the two men place a small wager concerning Gould's new temporary secretary, Karen (Lisa Mercer), a bet which ends up affecting both men more than either could realize. Centering on the choice between what is meaningful versus what is profitable in the "sinkhole of slime and depravity" that is modern-day Hollywood, Mamet's searing wit and trademark hyper-realistic dialogue combine to form a dark comedy which will make you laugh, but more important, will make you think.

All three actors have extensive UNL credentials. Michael A. Rothmayer, a Ph.D. student who directed MacBeth in Theatrix in 1996, most recently appeared as Eddie Kurnitz in Nebraska Rep's production of Neil Simon's Lost in Yonkers last summer. Jason Richards starred as Eddie in the 1995 mainstage presentation of Sam Shepard's Fool for Love, following his powerful Theatrix performance in Oleanna. Lisa Mercer, an adjunct faculty member at both UNL and Doane College in Crete, delighted Howell audiences last spring as Gwendolyn in The Importance of Being Earnest, and earned rave reviews as director/choreographer for The Night We Moved in Theatrix during 1995-96.

Sheldon Jewelry Exhibit to Open Nov. 26

The Sheldon's permanent holdings include a number of rare and unique examples of historical and artist-designed jewelry that is rarely seen by the public. Featured in the exhibition will be a collection of pieces recently donated from the collection of Saul and Carol Rosenzweig of Beverly Hills. Among this important collection are pieces designed by well-known American artists not widely known as jewelers. Artists such as William Wiley, Red Grooms, Fletcher Benton, Joan Brown, and Lynda Benglis are represented by strikingly original works in which their own diverse aesthetic vocabularies are adapted to and translated through the medium of small-scale jewelry. Also featured in this special holiday exhibition will be the work of local artists, including the work of Judith Andre, Ray and Ila Kunc, Sydney Lynch, and Tom Wright.

The full range of the aesthetic diversity of contemporary jewelry will be on display as well, with the Native American Hispanic tradition represented by a silver buckle and belt, and pieces derived from the modern age, from jewelry made from found material and plastic to a computerized battery-operated kinetic piece.

Evening of Music, Emily Dickinson Nov. 24

Introduced by Chancellor James Moeser, the gala concert will feature solo songs on texts by Dickinson and a premier work for soprano and chamber ensemble by UNL composer Randall Snyder entitled A Route of Evanescence. Snyder has set letters and poems by Dickinson as texts for this work. Finally, the gala concert will end with choral works for women's chorus on Dickinson texts. The UNL Chorale, under the direction of Carolee Curtright, will present these works.

The gala concert will be supplemented by the screening of Magic Prison, a short art film about Dickinson incorporating an original musical score by composer Ezra Laderman, at 6:45 p.m. in 119 Westbrook Music Building.

Following the film their will be an opportunity to view articles from the Lowenberg Collection in the Music Library, located in the basement of Westbrook. Additionally, five sets of sketches by UNL artist David Routon will be displayed in the basement of Kimball Recital Hall. These sketches are based upon existing photos of Emily Dickinson and her intimate circle of family and friends.

This event is jointly sponsored by the UNL School of Music and Friends of Love Library in commemoration of The Lowenberg Collection of Emily Dickinson Materials, which was donated to the UNL Libraries by Cliffs Charitable Foundation.

Sheldon Collection Highlights European Sculptors

Although it has often received less attention than painting in histories of l9th-and 20th-century art, sculpture has served as the medium for many of the most revolutionary aesthetic explorations in the history of modern art. Such aesthetic questions as the object-status of the work of art, the distinctions and similarities between two-and three-dimensional representation, and the relationship between figuration and abstraction were addressed in unique and often radical ways by sculptors in the 20th century. The work of such artists as Auguste Rodin, Medardo Rosso, Constantin Brancusi, Marcel Duchamp, Barbara Hepworth, Henry Moore, Marino Marini, and Eduardo Chillida among others, are presented in this exhibition as impressive responses to these most important of aesthetic issues of the 20th century. Not only does this exhibition provide an opportunity to view the sculpture of influential European modernists, it also offers an important historical perspective for more fully appreciating the work of American sculptors represented in the Sheldon's collection. Known primarily for its strong collection of American painting and contemporary American art, including a nationally recognized sculpture garden, this exhibition, which is drawn exclusively from the Sheldon's permanent collection, reveals both the breadth and depth of the Sheldon's holdings and its commitment to collecting and documenting European and American modern art in all media, including painting, works on paper, photography, and sculpture.

Also included in the exhibition are approximately 12 examples of works on paper from a number of European sculptors that will reaffirm the close interrelationship between two- and three-dimensional work in the history of modern art, further underscoring the important - if underemphasized - influence exerted by European sculptors on American painting in the second half of this century. The exhibition European Master Sculptors was selected and curated by Daniel A. Siedell, curator of the Sheldon.

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