The Johnny Carson Center for Emerging Media Arts will be dedicated during the weekend of Nov. 15-17.
“The Dedication of the Johnny Carson Center for Emerging Media Arts is a milestone for the university more than five years in the making,” said Founding Director Megan Elliott. “It’s a chance for us to pause and say thank you to the people who helped envision the Center and bring it to life—from the Carson Foundation board members to the visionary leaders of our administration, faculty and staff; the members of our Advisory Council and other industry leaders; the architects; and the many community members who cheered us on along the way. They all supported our dream to build the premier destination for transformative creative leaders and made this weekend possible.”
The Center opened its doors this fall. Preparations for the center were launched in 2015 with a $20 million gift from the foundation of iconic talk show host Johnny Carson, who hailed from Nebraska.
The Center earned a Hewlett Packard/Educause Campus of the Future designation earlier this fall, the first program in the Big Ten to do so. It’s a partnership with a Fortune 100, global corporation that will give Nebraska access to the latest high-tech equipment — and put Nebraska in the company of MIT, Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education, Yale University and Dartmouth College in investigating ways augmented reality, virtual reality and 3D scanning and printing technologies can benefit teaching, learning and research.
Dedication events will begin on Friday, Nov. 15 with Carson Center Conversations, featuring members of the Carson Center’s Advisory Council, from 9 a.m.-12:30 p.m. at the Center, which is located at 13th and Q streets. The event is free and open to the public. Registration is requested at https://go.unl.edu/conversations.
The schedule is as follows:
9 a.m. Welcome
9:15 a.m. Robert Tercek (Innovation expert, creative strategist and author of Vaporized, the 2016 International Book Award Winner at the Frankfurt Book Fair)
9:45 a.m. Megan Elliott with Maureen Fan (Chief Executive Officer of Baobab Studios) and Ashley Baccus-Clark (Multidisciplinary artist, VR Producer of NeuroSpeculative AfroFeminism)
10:15 a.m. Susan Bonds (Co-founder and CEO of 42 Entertainment and a pioneer in experiential storytelling)
10:45 a.m. Break
11:15 a.m. Alex McDowell, RDI (Production Designer Minority Report, Fight Club and Man of Steel)
11:45 a.m. The New Economy Panel with Preeta Bansal (Senior executive and lawyer who formerly served as General Counsel and Senior Policy Advisor in the Obama White House), Erica Larsen-Dockray (Media artist, educator, activist and co-founder of Calibraska Arts Initiative), Kyle Murphy (Vice President of People and Corporate Communication at Hudl and founder of Nebraska VX), Jeff Nicholas (Vice President of Creative and Innovation at Live Nation), Clint! Runge (Co-Founder and Managing Director of Archrival), and Ross Warren (Founder-in-Residence at Google’s experimental Area 120 and tech advisor for HRH Princess Eugenie of York’s The Anti-Slavery Collective).
The formal dedication of the Center will take place on Sunday, Nov. 17 at 1 p.m. Members of the Johnny Carson Foundation board are scheduled to attend. This event is also free and open to the public. Registration is requested at https://go.unl.edu/carsondedication.
For more information about the Carson Center or the dedication weekend events, please visit carsoncenter.unl.edu or follow them on social media @carsoncenterunl.