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The Arts Endowment amplifies the UVA Arts experience for students and faculty, strives to attract major artists and scholars to the Grounds and develop robust, multi-disciplinary programs that engage students and faculty from all schools and units.

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2019-2020: Political Caricature in a Post-Newsprint World: A Symposium

Molly Schwartzburg, Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library

In conjunction with the upcoming exhibition Oliphant: Unpacking the Archive (September 2019-May 2020) The UVA Library will mount a symposium on the future of political caricature. As the most widely syndicated political cartoonist of the last half-century, Pat Oliphant has witnessed the genre change over decades. From Watergate to Pussy Riot, from Duoshade to digital delivery, Oliphant has not just adjusted to change as it comes, he has shaped the political aesthetic of our age. But even he could not anticipate the upheaval to news delivery that has dominated the last two decades, as newspaper publishers have consolidated, print publications have moved from page to screen, and, as Michael Cavna of the Washington Post reports, staff editorial cartoonists, who “numbered in the hundreds several decades ago…now have dwindled to dozens.”

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2018-2019: sometimes.we.cannot.be.with.our.bodies.

The Fralin Museum of Art | 02/22/2019 to 07/07/2019
Curated by Matthew McLendon, J. Sanford Miller Family Director

Vanessa German is a visual and performance artist based in the Pittsburgh neighborhood of Homewood. Homewood is the community that is the driving force behind German’s powerful performance work, and whose cast-off relics form the language of her copiously embellished sculptures. As a citizen artist, German explores the power of art and love as a transformative force in the dynamic cultural ecosystem of communities and neighborhoods. She is the founder of Love Front Porch and the ARThouse, a community arts initiative for the children of Homewood.

sometimes.we.cannot.be.with.our.bodies. is an immersive installation of sculpture and sound that originated at the Mattress Factory, Pittsburgh, in 2017, and is being reimagined in The Fralin. In the artist’s own words, “this work is a dimensional living reckoning. the living reckoning is bold, erruptive, disruptive work against systems & pathologies that oppress & subvert overt & covert violence onto & into the lives & humanity of marginalized people on this land.” German will be in residence in March, working with students and community members, creating art, poetry, and understanding. The work will travel to The Union for Contemporary Art, as part of the annual Wanda D. Ewing Commission in September 2019.

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2017-2018: Leonard Bernstein’s Mass, from Michael Slon, Associate Professor & Director of Choral Music; to be produced in the Fall 2018

The University of Virginia’s University Singers are getting ready to join in the national and international celebration of the Centennial of Leonard Bernstein’s birth by presenting one of the American cultural giant’s most ambitious and acclaimed works. On Saturday, October 13 at 8:00pm and Sunday, October 14 at 2:30pm at The Paramount Theater, University Singers Director Michael Slon will lead an extraordinary cast of more than 150 singers and musicians in the regional premiere of Leonard Bernstein’s Mass.

Leonard Bernstein’s Mass was commissioned by Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis to mark the occasion of the opening of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and it made its world premiere there on September 8, 1971.  The piece furthers Bernstein’s previous exploration of what he saw as a critical “crisis of faith” in the 20th century, and particularly in the aftermath of President Kennedy’s assassination and in the midst of the national unrest surrounding the Vietnam War. (This “crisis” is perhaps most simply explained as a crisis both personal and societal in which, to his view, human capacities and institutions for belief of any kind – Bernstein himself was Jewish – struggled to keep pace with the implications of modernity, and therefore, needed updating if they were to survive.) Mass follows his previous Symphony No. 3 Kaddish (1963) and Chichester Psalms (1965). This time around, Bernstein turns his sharp mind and all-encompassing musical vocabulary toward the ritual of the Roman Catholic Mass, questioning and challenging its tenets while taking audiences on an unforgettable and genre-spanning journey that goes from doubt and struggle to newfound and hard-won faith. More >

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2016-2017: Residency of Les Misérables Creators Claude-Michel Schönberg & Alain Boublil, from Marva Barnett, Professor Emeritus in French and Drama  Explore more at the UVA Arts Magazine >

2015-2016:  [ I ] n q u i r y, – inspired by 21st century perceptions, constructions and manifestations of Self within online and physical spaces. A multidisciplinary collaboration between Choreographer Kim Brook Mata, Digital Media Designer Mona Kasra, Composer Kristina Warren, and Costume Designer Debra Otte  (Montclair State University), this mixed-media performance integrates dance and media to explore notions of identity, self-representation, and self-presentation in our hyper-mediated networked existence. Read More >