Category Archives: guest speakers

Conversation with Andrew Yang

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Conversation with Andrew Yang April 4, 2019 3:30-4:30pm
CVPA Star Store campus, 715 Purchase Street New Bedford, MA 02740

Artist Andrew Yang works across the visual arts, the sciences, and history to explore the naturalcultural. Yang’s work has been exhibited from Oklahoma to Yokohama, including commissions for the 14th Istanbul Biennial (2015), Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, (2016) and the Spencer Museum of Art (2019). Yang’s writing and research can be found in Art Journal, Leonardo, Biological Theory, and Antennae. He is an Associate Professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a research associate at the Field Museum of Natural History. This conversation is part of the 2018-2020 initiative Local Ecologies, a multimodal series of programs organized between UMass Boston, UMass Dartmouth, and UMass Lowell.

Andrew Yang, A Beach (for Carl Sagan), 2016. Photo by Nathan Keay (c) MCA Chicago.
partial view of IO-OX: A Dialogue Concerning Two World Systems, 2015. Photograph by Ugur Eren.

Roundtable on Community Engagement

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Roundtable on Community Engagement March 27, 2019, noon-1:30pm
CVPA Star Store campus, 715 Purchase Street New Bedford, MA 02740

Join artists Matthew Mazzotta, whose design work is focused on art, activism, and urbanism, and Dan Borelli, whose large-scale public art focuses on ecology and communities, to discuss various approaches and ethics for community-engaged cultural production. Matthew Mazzotta works at the intersection of art, activism, and urbanism, focusing on the power of the built environment to shape our relationships and experiences. His community-specific public projects integrate new forms of civic participation and reveal how spaces have the potential to become distinct sites for intimate, radical, and meaningful exchanges.
His Storefront Theater was recently awarded “Architecture Project of the Year” by Dezeen Awards in London. Dan Borelli is an artist, curator, and producer whose practice intersects identity, ecology, and publics. His recent projects include We The Publics with Emmanuel Pratt, recently featured as part of HubWeek, Boston, and the Ashland Nyanza Project, currently featured in the CVPA Campus Gallery exhibition Chasing Color. This event is part of the 2018-2020 initiative Local Ecologies, a multimodal series of programs organized between UMass Boston, UMass Dartmouth, and Umass Lowell, and is also associated with the exhibition Chasing Color, on view at CVPA Campus gallery from February 21-April 2, 2019

Matthew Mazzotta, THE STOREFRONT THEATER Lyons, Nebraska, 2016

Conversation with Jane Marsching

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Conversation with Jane Marsching March 21, 2019. 3:30-4:30pm
College of Visual and Performing Arts, CVPA 306
University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth/285 Old Westport Rd., Dartmouth MA 02747

Interdisciplinary artist Jane D. Marsching explores our past, present and future human impact on the environment through collaborative research-based practices. Her projects have been sited in museums and galleries as well as weather observatories, public parks, city streets, radio waves, and the internet. She has worked with scientists, educators, kite builders, meteorologists, architects, and musicians, among others. She is a co-founder and member of Platform2: Art and Activism (2009-2012), an experimental forum about creative practices at the intersection of social issues.This conversation is part of the 2018-2020 initiative Local Ecologies, a multimodal series of programs focused on place-based practice in Eastern Massachusetts organized between UMass Boston, UMass Dartmouth, and UMass Lowell.


Jane Marsching, Carbon Farm version 2.0 at Boston University, spring 2018

Local Ecologies initiative and related programs

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Local Ecologies is an inter-campus initiative focused on place-based practice shared between three UMass campuses. The interrelated programming, which will include public talks, course offerings, and new project development, emphasizes contemporary artistic perspectives on ecological sites, from the postindustrial Merrimack River and New Bedford regions to the evolving urban ecologies of Boston and environs. These will be featured in a touring exhibition to be presented in Boston, Lowell, and New Bedford Massachusetts throughout fall 2019 and spring 2020.

The goals of this inter-campus collaboration between UMass Boston (Sam Toabe, Gallery Director), UMass Dartmouth (Rebecca Uchill, Art Education, Art History, and Media Studies), and UMass Lowell (Kirsten Swenson, Art History) is to spark transdisciplinary and cross-institutional exchange that centers on artists’ engagement with environmental, ecological, and land use issues. The ecologies of Eastern Massachusetts will come into focus through the lens of artistic projects on each campus, as well as related courses (“Art + Environment” at UMass Lowell; “Processing Place” at UMass Dartmouth). Confirmed participants include Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons, Duy Hoàng, Sarah Kanouse+Nick Brown, Jane Marsching, Matthew Mazzotta, and Andrew Yang, with others to be announced.

Andrew Yang, “Two Vehicles,” detail from Flying Gardens of Maybe, 2012-2014. Photograph by the artist.

Social Justice and Fashion

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A Panel Discussion March 6, 2019, noon-1:30pm
CVPA Star Store campus, 715 Purchase Street New Bedford, MA 02740
This panel will consider the relationship between fashion production/design and issues in environmental and social justice. Featuring: Dr. Nikolay Anguelov, author of The Dirty Side of the Garment Industry: Fast Fashion and its Negative Impact on Environment and Society (CRC Press, 2015); Dan Borelli, artist featured in Chasing Color (on view in CVPA Campus gallery Feb 21-April 1, 2019), and Ranger Andrew Schnetzer, a National Park Service (NPS) Servicewide Uniform Committee member and former technical adviser to the NPS uniform program manager. Moderated by Petra Slinkard, Nancy B. Putnam Curator of Fashion and Textiles, Peabody Essex Museum. This program is associated with the exhibition Chasing Color, and is supported by the CVPA Dean’s office.

Dan Borelli, The Ashland-Nyanza Project: Illuminating Futures, 2016.

Dr. John Stauffer talk “Picturing Frederick Douglass” was well received by campus community.

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Havard University professor, Dr. John Stauffer, presentation entitled “Picturing Frederick Douglass” was well received on Wednesday, September 21, 2016 in the Grand Reading Room at Claire T. Carney Library UMass Dartmouth. The event was made possible through 2016 UMass President Creative Economy Initiatives Fund and organized in conjunction with the New Bedford Historical Society.  For more information contact Professor of Art History Pamela Karimi at pamela.karimi@umassd.edu.

john-stauffer_lecture1

 

Black Spaces Matter Grant Project

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Congratulations Professor Karimi for receiving a Creative Economy Grant of $25,650 for a project entitled
Black Spaces Matter: Exploring the Architectonics of an Abolitionist Neighborhood.

President Marty Meehan today announced $1,090,500 in grants for UMass science and technology research projects and arts and humanities/social sciences projects all aimed at improving the quality of live in Massachusetts and beyond. “With these grants, we are investing in the vision, expertise and commitment of faculty members from all five UMass campuses,” President Meehan said. “We are supporting distinguished scholars who enrich us through their diligent pursuits.” “These awards demonstrate President Meehan’s commitment to UMass Dartmouth’s research agenda and the value of this work to the economic and social development of the region and the Commonwealth. The longer I am here, the more I appreciate the historic importance of this university and its talented faculty to our collective quality of life.”

The Creative Economy Initiatives Fund provided $256,500 to 11 projects across the UMass system, including a grant received by UMassD Professor Pamela Karimi (Art History Department) and Professor Michael Swartz (Visual Design Department )and in collaboration with the community experts Lee Blake (director of New Bedford Historical Society), Don Burton (filmmaker), Jennifer McGrory (architect) for a project entitled, Black Spaces Matter: Exploring the Architectonics of an Abolitionist Neighborhood.

The seaport city of New Bedford, the home of many pre-Civil War fugitive slaves and abolitionists, provides a lens through which to explore the history of interracial urban zones in the US. This project will highlight the significance of city neighborhoods that were home to fugitives from the South, including the renowned abolitionist Frederick Douglass. The program will include a lecture series, an architecture exhibition and a documentary film.