Arts and Humanities

October arts guide at the U

Interested in the arts? Check out this comprehensive wrap-up for all arts-related events happening on campus this month.
University of Miami, Art, Exhibition
Faculty member Amy Schissel works on her artwork inside her studio. Photo: TJ Lievonen/University of Miami

The University of Miami Wynwood Gallery is using the month of October to feature talented faculty members from the Department of Art and Art History.

“It’s interesting to see what academics are doing in terms of research for the arts,” said Amy Schissel, assistant professor of painting.

Schissel’s artwork will be one of the many unique artworks from faculty members on display. She explained that her installation merges old world mapping with new world internet maps.

“I’ve taken the schemata from internet maps and overlaid that with traditional maps, creating a sense of two worlds colliding,” Schissel said. “The representation questions our sense of identity in a world where the internet allows us to be everywhere but nowhere at once.”

Her childhood memories of living on a farm in Alberta, Canada, inspired her to create the artwork. Schissel hopes the exhibition will be a learning opportunity for students who are aspiring artists.

“Opportunities like these allow students to examine works of art and allows them to ask professors about certain skills they are working on in class,” she said. “Students can also open their eyes to possibilities for their own work and future careers.”

Schissel sees the opportunity of attending the exhibition as an experience to learn more about what other faculty members are working on.

“I think everyone is doing such unique work. If you are able to go to the show, you will see a lot of unique mediums from different professionals from all kinds of background in the art field. There is something for everyone who goes,” she said.

In celebration of the exhibition's opening, there will be a reception for the artists on Oct. 12 from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m.

The 2019 Faculty Exhibition will be on view from Oct. 4 – Nov. 8 at the University of Miami Gallery located inside the Wynwood Building, 2750 NW 3rd Ave., Suite 4, Miami, FL 33127. A full schedule of exhibitions can be viewed at www.as.miami.edu/art.

Jerry Herman Ring Theatre

Sept. 26 through Oct. 5
“Little Shop of Horrors”

This production opens the Ring Theatre’s 2019-20 season. Just in time to inspire you for Halloween, this gem of an American musical comedy marked one of the first collaborations between composer Alan Menken and lyricist/book writer Howard Ashman. Together they went on to write the equally successful “The Little Mermaid,” and the wildly successful “Beauty and the Beast.” Inspired by the 1960 dark comedy horror film of the same name, it tells the story of a down-on-his-luck resident of Skid Row, who is offered the girl of his dreams, fame, and success from an all-powerful carnivorous plant... but at what cost?

For more information, visit: https://ring-theatre.as.miami.edu/index.html

Lowe Art Museum

Through March 2020

ArtLab at the Lowe: Russia Unframed

Russia Unframed seeks to highlight the impact of Russia's immense cultural, ethnic, racial, and religious diversity on the arts, both within its borders and throughout the diaspora. Now in its tenth year, ArtLab @ the Lowe is an annual student-curated exhibition that provides University of Miami students with hands-on experience in the curatorial and museum fields.

Oct. 24 through Jan. 19

Diago: The Pasts of this Afro-Cuban Present

A leading member of the new Afro-Cuban cultural movement, visual artist Juan Roberto Diago has produced a body of work that offers a revisionist history of the Cuban nation. His “history,” a term that he frequently inserts in his works using the visual language of graffiti, contradicts the official narrative of a racially harmonious nation created through the selfless efforts of generous white patriots. Diago’s Cuba is a nation built on pain, rape, greed, and the enslavement of millions of displaced Africans, a nation still grappling with the long-term effects of slavery and colonialism. To him, slavery is not the past, but a daily experience of racism and discrimination. Africa is not a root, but a wellspring of cultural and personal affirmation, the ancestors that sustain him in his journey. This exhibit examines Diago’s creative work over the course of his entire career. It traces his singular efforts to construct new pasts, the pasts required to explain the racial tensions of contemporary Cuba, the pasts of this Afro-Cuban present. Guest curated by Dr. Alejandro de la Fuente, Robert Woods Bliss Professor of Latin American History and Economics, professor of African and African American Studies, director of the Afro-Latin American Research Institute at the Hutchins Center for Africa and African American Research, and chair of the Cuba Studies Program at Harvard University.

Oct. 24 through May 3

Carlos Estévez: Cities of the Mind

The most recent project of renowned Cuban-American artist Carlos Estévez, Walled Cities features nine large-format circular paintings that reference the artist’s fascination with city plans. Inspired by the Havana of his youth, the Medieval European cities to which he has traveled extensively as an adult, and his abiding interest in symbolic cosmology and origin stories, Estévez has created in this body of new work personal maps of the human mind influenced by ancient cartography. Guest curated by Dr. Carol Damian, professor of Art History, Florida International University.

Thursday, Oct. 3, 7 to 9 p.m.

Lowe After Hours

Enjoy all of the Lowe’s galleries and exhibitions together with food, fun, and entertainment. Free and open to the public.

For more information, visit: https://www.lowe.miami.edu/exhibitions/index.html

Maurice Gusman Concert Hall

Saturday, Oct. 12, 7:30 p.m.

Mysterious Mountain - Frost Symphony Orchestra

Gerard Schwarz, conductor, Charles Catleman, violin, Ross Harbaugh, cello

Alan Hovhaness was one of the most prolific and spiritual 20th century American composers. His Symphony No.2, “Mysterious Mountain,” anticipated the work of “Holy Minimalists,” such as Arvo Part and John Taverner. Frost faculty artists Charles Castleman and Ross Harbaugh join the orchestra for Brahms’s Double Concerto in A Minor. The closing piece is Dmitri Shostakovich’s powerful symphony No. 10 in E Minor, often described as his depiction of Joseph Stalin and the Stalin years.

For more information, visit: https://ci.ovationtix.com/1811/performance/10445944

Cosford Cinema

Showings this month include “After the Wedding,” “Aladdin,” “New Town Utopia – Moad,” “Toy Story 4,” “Scott Pilgrim vs The World,” “Spider-Man: Far From Home,” “Us,” and “Everyday.”

For showtimes and tickets, visit http://www.cosfordcinema.com/

Cuban Heritage Collection

Located on the second floor of the Otto G. Richter Library on the Coral Gables campus.

Through February 2020

Havana500: Five Centuries of Evolving Urban Form and Urban Codes

“Havana500: Five Centuries of Evolving Urban Form and Urban Codes” features maps, engravings, oral histories, and historical photographs and documents that trace the evolution of Havana's urban form, which led to its design over the past 500 years; evidencing the formal and informal physical prescriptions, which have resulted in its legible, cohesive, and well-defined urban character.

Havana's 500 years of urban history remain evident, and its urban design lessons unique, making increased preservation efforts to protect its delicate fabric an urgency. The city's extensive urban fabric manifests its longstanding, valuable, and essential physical essence: walkable, sustainable, and resilient neighborhoods. Today, Havana seems disheveled, but urbanistically it remains integral, paradoxically in part to a lack of development and infrastructure interventions over the past five decades.

For full calendar of arts and culture events, visit: https://news.miami.edu/events/arts.html