By Kenneth Best for UConn Today

The “UConn Reads: Sacred Ground” exhibition at the William Benton Museum of Art is based on Eboo Patel’s 2012 book Sacred Ground: Pluralism, Prejudice, and the Promise of America, which outlines a vision of America where people of all faiths can make a country where diverse traditions can thrive side by side.

The exhibit opened just days before the executive order on immigration banning refugees and citizens from seven Muslim majority nations.

Patel, born in India to a Muslim family and raised in Chicago, is the founder and president of Interfaith Youth Core, which builds the interfaith movement on university campuses. In Sacred Ground, he writes that suspicion and animosity toward American Muslims has increased, rather than subsided, and alarmist rhetoric once relegated to the fringes of political discourse has become mainstream with pundits and politicians routinely invoking the specter of Islam as a menacing, deeply anti-American force.

“There are a million competing priorities on college campuses, and so our goal is to make interfaith work a higher priority,” Patel told the Religion & Politics websitewhen his book was published. “Our theory of change is that if you can inspire a critical mass of college students to do this … then the chances of them being interfaith leaders throughout their lives, whether they go into college chaplaincy or medicine, is much higher.”

In the Benton exhibit, organized by award-winning Massachusetts photographer Diana Barker Price, several international artists share their own visions of pluralism through their art, accompanied by excerpts from Patel’s book.

Click here to view the full article

By Julia Mancini for the Daily Campus

Yesterday was opening day for a new exhibit at the William Benton Museum of Art entitled, “UConn Reads: Sacred Ground,” a collaboration between the museum and The UConn Reads program, which annually chooses a book to engage community dialogue.

For the 2016-17 school year, the selection committee picked “Sacred Ground: Pluralism, Prejudice, and the Promise of America,” by Eboo Patel (http://www.beacon.org/Sacred-Ground-P930.aspx). The UConn Read’s theme for this year is “Religion in America,” making Patel’s book the perfect choice, as it centers around defending American values of inclusiveness and pluralism. Patel discusses issues American Muslims face as well as how our prejudices challenge the notion of America as an ideal.

The exhibit features multiple artists and mixed mediums of artwork, including photographs, oil paintings, prints and layered pieces. The Sacred Ground exhibit includes passages from the text to accompany the art in order to reinforce the themes of the book. Photographer Diana Barker Price coordinated the images with the specific quotes. As you walk through the exhibit, videos of Patel also play in the background, allowing you to not only read his words and view the artwork, but listen to him discuss his book.

The Benton’s Executive DirectorNancy Stula, says the exhibit and the book speak to” a kinder America where every religion is accepted.” Featuring mainly Muslim artists, the pieces include dual imagery and the merging of two traditions. Artist Shadi Ghadirian, who has five archival digital pigment prints in the exhibit, used her friends as models, photographing them against traditional Iranian and Persian backgrounds and adorning them with modern objects such as telephones and cameras. Artist Mehdi-Georges Lahlou has three pieces in the gallery, a series of Catholic Renaissance-style Madonnas over which he layers Muslim-inspired mosaic patterns. Artist Mahmood Sabzi also merges the American and Muslim cultures by combining iconic American images, such as Liz Taylor, Elvis, McDonald’s and a Batman comic, with Persian rug patterns. Hojat Amani, an Iranian artist, combines typical Persian still life paintings with American culture as well, incorporating Coca-Cola bottles in his art. All these artists draw from their backgrounds, religion, childhood, and familial relationships as inspiration.

Click here to view the full article

By Susan Dunne for the Hartford Courant

When he was a student at Yale, William Benton, founder of the William Benton Museum of Art in Storrs, was close friends with artist Reginald Marsh. They stayed friends for the rest of their lives.

As a result, the museum on the UConn campus has 1,040 pieces by Marsh in its permanent collection. Marsh is well-known for his pieces depicting crowds in gritty urban settings, but the new exhibit at the Benton showcases a lesser-known corner of his body of work: his watercolors and prints of steam locomotives.

“Steaming Ahead” was curated by Bob Leo and Rachel Zilinsky, with help from Audrey Conrad. Conrad, the vice president of Valley Railroad Co., which owns Essex Steam Train, is one of the country’s leading experts on the history of steam locomotion. The wall text panels Conrad wrote to accompany Marsh’s railroad visions do not explain Marsh’s artistic method but instead flesh out the specific of the locomotives depicted. They are little marvels of historical observation, with details such as “A pair of Erie Railroad 4-6-2 (Pacific) type, class K1 passenger locomotives built between 1905 and 1908,” facts that, if Marsh knew— he probably didn’t — he didn’t spell out.

The 23 exterior train views, all created by Marsh between 1927 and 1931, are capped off by one interior train view that represents more well-known Marsh compositional style: a crowd of people in a full-to-capacity train car. All the pieces are created in a gritty industrial palette: browns, grays, blacks.

Pieces on loan from Essex Steam Train sit around the gallery, and train-themed pop songs, such as Sister Rosetta Tharpe’s “This Train is Bound for Glory,” can be heard on an audio component to the exhibit.

The entire show is made up of works on paper, which are fragile, so it will run for a brief time, until Dec. 18. A new initiative at the Benton, to post walk-throughs of exhibits online, is being launched with this exhibit.

Click here to view the full article

By Diane Orson for Connecticut Public Radio

Three exhibitions at the University of Connecticut explore the social and political history of HIV/AIDS and mark 35 years since the first cases were diagnosed.

Associate professor-in-residence, Dr. Thomas Lawrence Long, said the idea came to him while teaching a course on AIDS and culture.

“One of the things that struck me,” he said, “was that most of our undergraduates have never lived in a world without AIDS. Many of them were completely unaware of the struggles that HIV-infected people and their families encountered in the 1980s.” Long was a recent guest on WNPR’s Where We Live.

The UConn exhibitions reflect changes over time, as a diagnosis of HIV/AIDS went from being a death sentence, to a chronic disease which could be managed. Visitors to the Dodd Research Center can see some of the first materials and publications on safe sex, as well as images created in response to HIV/AIDS by grassroots organizations.

“Early in the HIV epidemic, it was alternative presses and alternative publishers that published some of the first novels and plays related to HIV/AIDS,” Long said. “When they go to the Benton Museum, they’re going to see a very fine exhibit directly related to art, graphics, images during the HIV/AIDS epidemic’s worst years. Finally, in the School of Nursing — just opened this week — people will see the National Library of Medicine’s exhibit as well as an exhibit case I’ve prepared of artifacts related to nursing and nursing care.”

Click here to view the full article

By Kenneth Best for UConn Today

Earlier this year when a previously unknown first edition of the collected works of William Shakespeare was discovered in Scotland, the extensive media coverage demonstrated why the book known as “The First Folio” is so revered. With no known copies of Shakespeare’s plays written in his own hand, the Folio is the most direct link to the Bard of Avon, who continues to tower unchallenged above all writers in the English language.

The exhibition of one of the 233 remaining copies of the Folio, “First Folio! The Book That Gave Us Shakespeare,” will be on display at the William Benton Museum of Art at UConn from Sept. 1 to 25.

The traveling exhibition is stopping at just one institution in each of the 50 states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico, to mark the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death. The tour is a partnership between The Folger Shakespeare Library, Cincinnati Museum Center, and the American Library Association.

The First Folio is the first collected edition of 36 Shakespeare plays published by two of his fellow actors in 1623, seven years after the Bard’s death on April 23. The collection includes 18 plays that would otherwise have been lost, including “Macbeth,” Julius Caesar,” “Twelfth Night,” “The Tempest,” “Antony and Cleopatra,” “The Comedy of Errors,” and “As You Like It.”

Click here to view the full article

From Broadway World Connecticut

The widespread news coverage earlier this year of the discovery in Scotland of a previously unknown first edition of the collected works of William Shakespeare is bringing greater interest to the national traveling exhibition “First Folio! The Book That Gave Us Shakespeare” that will be on display at the William Benton Museum of Art at UConn from Sept. 1 to 25. More information on events can be found at www.shakespeare.uconn.edu.

The “First Folio” is the first collected edition of Shakespeare’s plays published by two of his fellow actors in 1623, seven years after the Bard’s death on April 23. The collection includes 18 plays that would otherwise have been lost, including “Macbeth,” Julius Caesar,” “Twelfth Night,” “The Tempest,” “Antony and Cleopatra,” “The Comedy of Errors” and “As You Like It.”

The national tour is being hosted by one institution in all 50 states, Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico to mark the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s passing this year. The tour is a partnership between The Folger Shakespeare Library, Cincinnati Museum Center and the American Library Association.

“As an institution with a strong history of championing the dramatic classics through our resident theater, Connecticut Repertory Theatre, we are very proud to have the opportunity to host this exhibition for our state,” says Anne D’Alleva, dean of UConn’s School of Fine Arts. “This is an important document in the life of the arts and our students and wider community to experience here on campus.”

Click here to view the full article

By Kenneth Best for UConn Today

UConn has been selected as a host site for a national traveling exhibition in 2016 for “First Folio! The Book That Gave Us Shakespeare.”

The “First Folio” is the first collected edition of William Shakespeare’s plays published in 1623 by two of his fellow actors, seven years after the Bard’s death. The collection includes 18 plays that would otherwise have been lost, including “Macbeth,” Julius Caesar,” “Twelfth Night,” “The Tempest,” “Antony and Cleopatra,” “The Comedy of Errors” and As You Like It.” The exhibition will take place in the Gilman Gallery at the William Benton Museum of Art in Storrs.

The tour is a partnership between The Folger Shakespeare Library, Cincinnati Museum Center and the American Library Association and will be hosted by one institution in all 50 states, Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico to mark the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s passing. Specific dates for the tour host sites will be announced in April.

“As an institution with a strong history of championing the dramatic classics through our resident theater, Connecticut Repertory Theatre, we are very proud to have the opportunity to host this exhibition for our state,” says Brid Grant, dean of UConn’s School of Fine Arts. “This is an important document in the life of the arts and our students and wider community to experience here on campus.”

Adds Vincent Cardinal, head of the Department of Dramatic Arts and artistic director of CRT: “Connecting the living and breathing work we do in our studios and on our stages to this first collected publication of Shakespeare’s plays will be an unforgettable opportunity for our students, faculty, staff and audiences.”

Click here to view the full article

By Susan Dunne for the Hartford Courant

Imagine a world without “Macbeth,” “The Taming of the Shrew,” “The Tempest” and “Twelfth Night.” Imagine a world without “All the world’s a stage,” “Beware the ides of March,” “We are such stuff as dreams are made on,” “Something wicked this way comes” and “If music be the food of love, play on.”

William Shakespeare wrote those plays, and those words. But without the First Folio, they would have been lost to history. The First Folio was published in 1623, seven years after Shakespeare’s death, by two of his friends, John Heminges and Henry Condell. It contained 36 of the Bard’s plays, including 18 that had never been published in book form before. “All’s Well That Ends Well,” “Antony and Cleopatra,” “As You Like It,” “Comedy of Errors,” “Coriolanus,” “Cymbeline,” “1 Henry VI,” “Henry VIII,” “Julius Caesar,” “King John,” “Macbeth,” “Measure for Measure,” “The Taming of the Shrew,” “The Tempest,” “Timon of Athens,” “Twelfth Night,” “Two Gentlemen of Verona” and “The Winter’s Tale.”

This year is the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death. In commemoration, the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., which owns 82 of the 235 surviving copies of the First Folio, is sending those folios on the road, one location for each of the 50 states. The closely guarded historical artifact will be on view to the public at the William Benton Museum of Art at University of Connecticut in Storrs from Sept. 1 to 25.

Some of those 18 plays had been published previously as quartos, which are little more than pamphlets. “They were like the paperbacks you pick up at the airport bookstore and then throw away when you’re done,” said Lindsay Cummings, an assistant professor of dramatic arts at UConn.

Click here to view the full article

By Kenneth Best for UConn Today

Marketing replicas bouncing in the air outside of shopping malls or car dealerships and giant balloons of cartoon characters floating along the route of the annual Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade are forms of inflatable art familiar to many.

But ever since pop artist Andy Warhol used metalized plastic film to seal in helium and oxygen for his work “Silver Clouds” in 1966, artists have explored ways to expand inflatables to a higher level of art, the kind of inflatable sculpture created by a range of artists currently on display in “Blow Up: Inflatable Contemporary Art” at the William Benton Museum of Art through July 31.

The traveling exhibition was developed with a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts by Carrie Lederer, curator of exhibitions at the Bedford Gallery at the Lesher Center for the Arts in Walnut Creek, Calif., who first saw Momoyo Torimitsu’s giant bunny rabbits, titled “Somehow I don’t Feel Comfortable,” in 2003 at a museum in West Palm Beach, Fla.

“My son at the time was quite young, and I remember him falling back on his heels as we entered the room with these two huge, inflatable bunnies,” Lederer says. “All of us stopped in our tracks when we saw these large, ominous bunnies. I thought, ‘There is a show in this piece.’”

Click here to view the full article

By Kenneth Best for UConn Today

Recent news coverage of the discovery in Scotland of a previously unknown first edition of William Shakespeare’s collected works has brought increased interest to the national traveling exhibition “First Folio! The Book That Gave Us Shakespeare.” That exhibition is coming to UConn in the fall, and will be on display at the William Benton Museum of Art from Sept. 2 to 25.

The “First Folio” is the first collected edition of Shakespeare’s plays published by two of his fellow actors in 1623, seven years after the Bard’s death on April 23. The collection includes 18 plays that would otherwise have been lost, including “Macbeth,” Julius Caesar,” “Twelfth Night,” “The Tempest,” “Antony and Cleopatra,” “The Comedy of Errors,” and “As You Like It.”

The national tour is being hosted by one institution in all 50 states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico to mark the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s passing this year. The tour is a partnership between The Folger Shakespeare Library, Cincinnati Museum Center, and the American Library Association.

“As an institution with a strong history of championing the dramatic classics through our resident theater, Connecticut Repertory Theatre, we are very proud to have the opportunity to host this exhibition for our state,” says Anne D’Alleva, dean of UConn’s School of Fine Arts. “This is an important document in the life of the arts, and for our students and wider community to experience here on campus.”

Click here to view the full article