Wed, Nov 22, 2006
November 22-26, 2006
Campus Takes a Holiday
UNL's Thanksgiving Break starts Wednesday, November 22 for students (UNL offices are open). All offices will then be closed November 23-26 for the holiday. Regular classes and office hours are set to resume November 27.
ACADEMIC CALENDAR
SHELDON MEMORIAL ART GALLERY
'Collage Aesthetic' Continues at Sheldon
One of the most important and influential stylistic inventions in 20th-century art, collage allows artists to collect and transform bits and pieces from the material world into an entirely new composition or configuration.
"Collage Aesthetic" presents a small but important selection of art from Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery's collection at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. The exhibition opens Sept. 29 and continues through Feb. 4. Works by Bruce Conner, Joseph Cornell, Weldon Kees, Irwin Kremen and others reveal the creative power of this modern artistic method.
SHELDON MEMORIAL ART GALLERY
SHELDON MEMORIAL ART GALLERY
Sheldon Photo Exhibit Examines Harlem Renaissance
Eighteen prints, representing a cross-section of photographer James VanDerZee's work in the 1920s and 1930s, are on exhibit at the Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery through Dec. 17. A superlative studio photographer, VanDerZee (1886-1983) captured the spirit and energy of life in Harlem during the early 20th century. With his second wife, Gaynella, he opened a photo studio in 1916 and quickly established himself as Harlem's preeminent photographer. He photographed successful African-American families and celebrities in carefully staged portraits, using costumes, furniture and painted backdrops to achieve an aura of glamour. He also photographed landmarks, parades, funerals and social clubs.
VanDerZee's business declined as did Harlem after World War II. He was nearly destitute before his collection was discovered and shown in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1969. His work won widespread attention during the 1970s and has been the subject of numerous exhibitions and scholarship. The James VanDerZee Photographic Collections are at The Studio Museum in Harlem. This exhibition of prints held in the Sheldon's collection is presented in conjunction with professor Patrick Jones' course, "Americans in the Jazz Age," at UNL this fall.
SHELDON MEMORIAL ART GALLERY
MARY RIEPMA ROSS MEDIA ARTS CENTER
Tales Of The Rat Fink, Shortbus, Fast Food Nation Show at the Ross
UNL's Mary Riepma Ross Media Arts Center presents Tales Of The Rat Fink, Shortbus, and Fast Food Nation. Tales Of The Rat Fink and Shortbus, will be showing through November 23, while Fast Food Nation will play through December 7.
From the award-winning director of Comic Book Confidential and Grass comes Tales Of The Rat Fink, Ron Mann's wildly inventive bio about Renaissance man Ed "Big Daddy" Roth, who engineered a shift in mid-twentieth century culture with his customized cars, "monster" T-shirts and America's alternative rodent - "Rat Fink." Hot Rodding grew from crude backyard engineering where performance was the bottom line into a refined art form where aesthetics were equally important. Mann's largely animated documentary features the voice talents of John Goodman, Ann-Margret, Jay Leno, Brian Wilson, Tom Wolfe, Matt Groening, Robert Williams, Stone Cold Steve Austin, Paul LeMat, Billy F Gibbons, and The Smothers Brothers.
John Cameron Mitchell's Shortbus explores the lives of several emotionally challenged characters as they navigate the comic and tragic intersections between love and sex in and around a modern-day underground salon. A sex therapist who has never had an orgasm, a dominatrix who is unable to connect, a gay couple who are deciding whether to open up their relationship, and the people who weave in and out of their lives, all converge on a weekly gathering called Shortbus: a mad nexus of art, music, politics and polysexual carnality. Set in a post-9/11, Bush-exhausted New York City, Shortbus tells its story with sexual frankness, suggesting new ways to reconcile questions of the mind, pleasures of the flesh and imperatives of the heart.
When it was published in 2001, Fast Food Nation quickly became a New York Times bestseller, with its no-holds-barred, non-fiction exploration of "the dark side of the All-American meal." The big screen version Fast Food Nation is a dramatic feature penned by Fast Food Nation author Eric Schlosser and Oscar® nominee Richard Linklater, who also serves as director. Explains Linklater: "The movie is not a documentary, but a character study of the lives behind the facts and figures. I'm more interested in fiction than non-fiction. You get to the point through human storytelling."
More information is available at the Ross website.
MRRMAC | TALES OF THE RAT FINK | SHORTBUS | FAST FOOD NATION
