March 14, 1997



Small Creatures Stand Tall

Opening at the Mary Riepma Ross Film Theater on March 20, Microcosmos is guaranteed to leave you with not only a better understanding of the insect, but of something bigger, life. Critic Larry Worth of the New York Post. calls Microcosmos "a film fan's dream."

Also showing is a short feature, Picasso Would Have Made a Wonderful Waiter by Jonathan Schell, a riveting yet poetic look at the artistry, struggles and humor of the waiter-artists who are the cogs in the wheel of New York City's preeminent catering company.

Microcosmos and Picasso Would Have Made a Wonderful Waiter will show on March 20 through 23 and March 27 through 30. Screenings are at 7 and 9 p.m. on Thursdays and Fridays; at 1, 3, 7, and 9 p.m. on Saturdays; and at 3, 5, 7, and 9 p.m. on Sundays. Admission is $6; $5 for students; and $4 for senior citizens, children, and members of the Friends of the Mary Riepma Ross Film Theater.

The movie opens with the camera sweeping down over the countryside and burrowing down into the grass (a deliberate echo of Blue Velvet). For the next 75 minutes, this French documentary offers a miraculous you-are-there close-up of the insect kingdom, a world of such teeming beauty and sophistication it suggests a sci-fi zooscape designed by Dr. Seuss.

Illustrator-Artists in New Exhibit

"Illustrator-Artists of the American West" will receive some much needed attention in a new exhibition of paintings and drawings of subjects from literature of the American West at the Great Plains Art Collection, 215 Love Library.

The exhibit, which will run March 17 to May 2, features 40 pieces by seven artists including Thomas Hart Benton, Douglas Duer, Harvey T. Dunn, Paul Goble, Grant T. Reynard, Norman Rockwell and Harold Von Schmidt. The show will also include some of the published texts in which the original illustrations are reproduced. This exhibition has been planned specifically in conjunction with the Center for Great Plains Studies' symposium "Literatures of the Great Plains," which will take place April 3-5. The Friends of the Center for Great Plains Studies sponsor this special show which has been organized and produced by the gallery.

This special exhibit is free and open to the public. Note that although the exhibit opens on March 17, the gallery will not be open on any weekends in March (due to campus spring break and Easter, it will be closed March 22-23, and 29-30), but will resume normal hours during the rest of the exhibit's run. Normal hours are Monday-Friday, 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Saturday, 10 a.m.to 5 p.m.; Sunday 1:30 to 5 p.m.

Pictured at right is Norman Rockwell's 1915 illustration for Chained Lightning, A Story of a Mexican Adventure.





Pictured above, Harold Edgerton's .30 Bullet Piercing an Apple, 1964, dye transfer photograph.

Sheldon Acquires Landmark Bowden, Edgerton Photographs

The Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery has received two major donations of photography collections that will augment the Sheldon's collection of 19th and 20th century photography. Consisting of nearly 2,000 works and 61 works respectively, the diverse collections of Harry Bowden and Harold Edgerton will contribute significantly to the Sheldon's collection of photographs.

The Bowden collection is a comprehensive overview of the photographic activity of a significant participant in the mid-century artworld on both the East and West Coasts. Although he made his reputation as an abstract painter in New York, Bowden began increasingly to commit more of his energy to photography later in his career. Both his painting and photography reveal an interest in and engagement with the important aesthetic issues of modernism at mid-century, especially the relationship between representation and abstraction.

Shown at right, Harry Bowden's Goldfield, Nevada, 1954, silver print.

While in New York, Bowden became involved with a group of artists who would later become known as the New York School, among them, George McNeil, Willem de Kooning and Ad Reinhardt. In 1936 Bowden worked on a W.P.A. project with McNeil and de Kooning under the direction of well-known French modernist Ferdinand Leger. In addition, Bowden became a founding member of the important American Abstract Artists' Group in 1936 and exhibited his vibrant abstract paintings with them on several occasions.

Bowden abruptly left New York in 1942 and ultimately settled in the San Francisco Bay area, where he would spend the rest of his life.

In California Bowden began to devote more of his time to photography and by 1950 he had achieved enough of a reputation as a photographer for the Museum of Modern Art in New York to purchase five of his prints. Bowden's work echoes the avant-garde's interest in exploring the close relationships between painting and photography, particularly in exploiting the tension between representation and abstraction.

In contrast to the Bowden collection's focus on the most compelling aesthetic issues at mid-century, the Edgerton collection, donated by the George Eastman House in Rochester, N.Y., offers a body of work produced through the very different lens of science. Born in 1903 in Fremont, Edgerton is a graduate of the University of Nebraska. He went on to advanced study in electrical engineering at MIT in 1926 and remained there as a teacher and scientist until his retirement in 1968, achieving MIT's highest academic rank of Institute Professor Emeritus. A member of the prestigious National Academy of Sciences and National Academy of Engineers, it was in the laboratories at MIT that Edgerton became involved in photography.

Initially a means by which he could document and record scientific experiments, photography became a powerful aesthetic tool in Edgerton's investigations. Through his invention of the "stroboscope," Edgerton achieved an international reputation in both the scientific and artistic communities. The stroboscope enabled Edgerton to freeze movement by using an exposure of less than one-millionth of a second, which produced photographs of amazing, almost surreal, clarity.

Despite the fact that his photographs evolved inseparably from his scientific inquiry into the mechanics of motion, Edgerton's work hangs in both art as well as science museums worldwide. Moreover, Edgerton began increasingly to pay more attention to the aesthetics of his photographic documents, often reshooting a movement, such as the milk drop, in order to achieve a higher aesthetic quality.

Avant-Garde Chamber Ensembles Melt Music Barriers

The Lied Center for Performing Arts is bringing to its Kimball Recital Hall two of the top chamber ensembles touring today, String Trio of New York and Bang On A Can All-Stars, at 8 p.m. March 20.

This season of performing marks the String Trio of New York's 19th year of music. They have chosen this year to work in special collaboration with Bang On A Can All-Stars. The ensembles mirror each other's history and vision for performing and recording cutting-edge music.

The String Trio of New York has concentrated primarily on jazz and Bang On A Can All-Stars specializes in contemporary classical music. With that in mind, each group seeks to melt down the barriers that categorize music by offering a program that embraces influences from the entire spectrum of music without direct stylistic concerns.

Bang On A Can All-Stars celebrates 10 years of music with a core group of musicians who are equally at home performing music spanning several music genres.

This is the first collaborative project by these two groups. The program will feature new works as well as a number of staples from both ensembles' performing repertoires, using a combination of aggregated instrumentation. The evening will include performances by each of the ensembles as well as a combination of the two groups.

Tickets are $24 and $20. Students at UNL, Wesleyan and Doane Colleges with valid identification and youth under 18 pay half price. The Lied Center box office is open for walk-in sales weekdays from 11 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. and 60 minutes before the performance. Phone orders may be placed by calling 472-4747.

For up-to-the-minute information on Lied events contact the Lied webpage at http://www.unl.edu/lied.

Broadway's 'Having Our Say' Coming to Lied

Broadway's Having Our Say, The Delany Sisters' First 100 Years, will be presented at 3 and 8 p.m. March 22 at the Lied Center for Performing Arts. The show has been called delightful, funny, touching and provocative.

Before this story was brought to the Broadway stage, it was a best-selling book by author Amy Hill Hearth. The story takes audiences through the lifetimes of two courageous black women, Miss Sadie Delany and Dr. Bessie Delany. The play, written and directed by Emily Mann, tells the story of two Americans demonstrating how vision, tenacity and courage can help strong people prevail over seemingly insurmountable odds. It uses pointed commentary about prejudice, discrimination and social injustices.

James McShane, associate professor of English, will give an educational pre-performance talk in the Lied Center's Steinhart Room 55 minutes and 35 minutes before the performances.

Tickets for Having Our Say are $30, $26 and $22. Students at UNL, Wesleyan and Doane with valid identification and youth under 18 pay half price. The Lied Center box office is open for walk-in sales weekdays from 11 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. and 90 minutes before the performance. Phone orders may be placed by calling 472-4747.

Sheldon Exhibit to Offer Rare Look at Rothko

The Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery will offer a rare look at the early work of a major 20th century American artist when it presents Mark Rothko: The Spirit of Myth, Early Paintings from the 1930s and 1940s from April 1 to June 8.

A loan exhibition from the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.,The Spirit of Myth includes 26 paintings which have rarely before been exhibited to the public. Unlike the artist's mature abstract style which is renowned for its atmospheric fields of color, Rothko's early works of the 1930s and 1940s are characterized by conventional themes such as landscapes, still-lifes, figure studies, and portraits, painted in an expressionist style.

Rothko was born in 1903 in Dvinsk, Russia. In 1913 his family emigrated to the United States. He spent his youth in Portland, Ore., and after a brief period of study at Yale University, moved to New York permanently in 1923. During the 1920s Rothko attended classes at the Art Student's League and supported himself by teaching art to children, taking odd jobs, and drawing book illustrations. He was interested in aspects of contemporary city life, and his depictions of solitary figures in New York subway stations epitomize the loneliness and alienation of the individual in modern Western society.
Around 1938, inspired by Surrealism and Friedrich Nietzsche's Birth of Tragedy, Rothko began to explore the spirit of Greco-Roman myths. Most of Rothko's mythological paintings portray hybrid figures, combinations of decorative and architectural elements and human and animal body parts, arranged in stratified compositions reminiscent of Roman sarcophagi.

In the early to mid 1940s, Rothko was influenced by studies in natural science and the automatism of the Surrealists a drawing and painting technique that allowed for the expression of the subconscious mind. This influence is manifest in the calligraphic style and biomorphic figures found in works such as Untitled Memory (1945/46). Backgrounds of works such as Untitled (1945/46) are similar to geological diagrams or submarine worlds. In 1945 Rothko exhibited his work at Peggy Guggenheim's gallery in New York, the meeting piece of many Surrealist and Abstract Expressionist artists.

Rothko's innovative paintings of the 1930s and 1940s provide an important key to understanding his later and more familiar paintings of atmospheric color-fields. The early works revise the conventional image of the artist's work and document his search and evolution towards the direct and poignant mode of expression of the mature paintings. The exhibition provides an opportunity for the public to view Rothko's lesser known early paintings that will enhance the interpretive context for the Sheldon's major Rothko abstract painting, Yellow Band (1956).

Works included in this exhibition were selected from among the 195 paintings and 770 drawings donated to the National Gallery in 1986 by The Mark Rothko Foundation. The Foundation's gift represents the artist's early and transitional work in depth and, in conjunction with the Gallery's other Rothko holdings, has established the National Gallery of Art as a major repository and study center of the artist's work.

Mark Rothko: The Spirit of Myth, Early Paintings from the 1930s and 1940s was selected by Jack Cowart, former curator of 20th century art at the National Gallery of Art and current deputy director/chief curator at the Corcoran Gallery of Art ; and Jeremy Strick, former associate curator of 20th century art at the National Gallery of Art and current curator of modern art at the St. Louis Art Museum. The Gallery's National Lending Service, a program designed to make the National Gallery of Art's collections accessible to museums through the nation, organized the exhibition.

Local funding for the exhibition was provided in part by the Nebraska Art Association, a nonprofit membership organization dedicated to the advancement of the visual arts in Nebraska through educational and enrichment opportunities. Additional funding has been provided by the Nebraska Arts Council, a state agency, through a Basic Support Grant, which has supported all the year's programs of the Nebraska Art Association.

Artist Anfuso Returns for Residency Program

Mohawk artist Linda Anfuso has overcome every obstacle in her way to become a successful entrepreneur and respected community leader. She will be at the university March 23 to April 4 as part of the Artists Diversity Residency Program, sponsored by the College of Fine and Performing Arts' The Artists Diversity Residency Program brings to campus artists from diverse backgrounds to address broad themes of general academic interest.

Anfuso owns a successful jewelry manufacturing company that wholesales to more than 120 stores and has grossed more than $3 million. She also owns a retail store that averages $120,000 a year in sales. She designs all of her own jewelry.

Anfuso lives in Wilton, N.H., where she has a studio at the Riverview Mill, a renovated mill building which is home to a community of 25 artists. As a visual artist and papermaker, Anfuso's work ranges from smaller pieces that are 6" x 9" to larger pieces that are 10' x 20'. Also a successful writer, Anfuso's collections of poems include "Stolen Daughter" and "Red Coat and Other Poems." Anfuso has just finished her latest book on the canals of England, which she toured over three months earlier this year. This new book will be published this fall.

She is active in Native American cultural and political issues and is a member of the New Hampshire State Indian Affairs Advisory Council, the New Hampshire First Native People's Council and the Southern New Hampshire Indian Council. In her desire to eliminate racism and to bring about cross-cultural understanding, she presents a program entitled "Native Americans, The Way We See Ourselves" to elementary and secondary schools across New England. She has also lectured at higher institutions such as New York University, Columbia University and Dartmouth.

In addition to her company, Anfuso has started two homeless shelters in New Hampshire and a halfway house for substance abusers. Her substance abuse program incorporates Native American values.

Sandhill Cranes Inspire Poetry Book

The annual sandhill crane migration through Nebraska has inspired a book of poetry by Tom Franti, a surface water management specialist in Biological Systems Engineering.

On the Edge of Winter combines scientific accuracy, keen observation, philosophical reflection and poetic cadence. His poems about cranes were inspired by his first experience of the sandhill crane migration in February 1995.

Five pen and ink drawings, also by Franti, illustrate the book, which is published by Black Star Press in Lincoln. The book is available at gift shops and bookstores across the state.

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