Year of Arts & Culture | 2007-08

Among the many projects to come out of the Great Depression and President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal government programs to combat massive unemployment are those that dealt with the arts, architecture and crafts of American workers. Michigan State University Museum presents an exhibition of pieces from public work projects in Michigan and on the Michigan State College campus during the 1930s and early '40s. More than 8,500,000 Americans were hired through the Works Progress Administration (WPA) mostly to build roads, public buildings and parks. Unemployed artists and writers were also given work through branches of the WPA known as the Federal Art Project and the Federal Writers' Project. Their lasting legacy can still be seen and enjoyed throughout the state and the nation. Michigan State University and MSU Museum collections are rich with examples of a WPA legacy of art and craft.

On July 10, 2008, the Michigan Humanities Council will host a Michigan Author Homecoming with critically acclaimed authors Richard Ford, Jim Harrison, and Thomas McGuane at the Wharton Center at Michigan State University (MSU). The three authors, icons of contemporary American literature, are also MSU alumni and will meet together in public for the first time. The event will be a moderated discussion among the literary giants. It will commemorate the conclusion of the 2007-08 Great Michigan Read. It is free and open to the public. The discussion will begin at 7:30 p.m., followed by a book signing. Doors will open at 6:45 p.m. Schuler Books&Music will provide on-site book sales.

This is an award-winning 1991 Chinese-Hong Kong-Taiwan film, directed by Zhang Yimou and starring Gong Li. An adaptation of the 1990 novel Wives and Concubines by Su Tong, it is noted for its opulent visuals and sumptuous use of colors, the fi lm tells the story of a young woman who becomes a concubine of a wealthy man during the Warlord Era.

Hands on Japanese calligraphy with Kitty Douglass, Program Assistant, Asian Studies Center, MSU. After a brief overview of the history of calligraphy, join us for a lesson in the way of writing. All materials provided, FREE, ages 6 years and up, MUST pre-register, call for availability. Funded by the Dart Foundation.

The roots, the rhythms and the richness of music, dance, arts and culture from across America and around the world come to downtown East Lansing for the Michigan State University Museum's annual Great Lakes Folk Festival, Aug. 8-10. Five music and dance stages sponsored by the City of East Lansing let visitors swing, fling, jig, reel and revel, including: Acadian (Prince Edward Island, Canada), bluegrass, Chinese erhu, Malian kora (West Africa), Ottawa Valley fiddle (Canada), Piedmont blues, Western swing, Wisconsin polka, Zydeco and more. This award-winning event has emerged as one of the region's premiere arts programs and a summer-time high note -- and is expected to draw more than 90,000 visitors throughout the weekend to celebrate culture, tradition and community. Learn more at http://www.greatlakesfolkfest.net .

In this feisty election season, the Michigan State University Museum presents a new exhibition with a political theme: No Holds Barred: Political Cartoons of the Gilded Age. Among the most important developments in the popularization of the Gilded Age press (the late 19th Century) was the increasingly sophisticated use of visual ridicule -- political cartoons that informed, aroused, and pronounced on myriad contemporary issues, explains Samuel J. Thomas, MSU professor of history and the exhibition's curator. Favorite targets included graft and fraud that then, as now, too often characterized political life, most often at the local and state levels, but also at times at the national level.

A new, eye-opening image of Africa will be on display at the Michigan State University Museum, featuring the photos of a group of sixth grade Malian students from two small villages 500 miles southwest of Timbuktu. "Visual Griots," a project of the Academy for Educational Development, Washington, D.C., sent a team of Malian and U.S. photographers into the villages of Damy and Kouara to put cameras in the hand of youth, empower them to document their lives, and help them better connect with their communities and the world.

"Our Journeys/Our Stories" presents 25 portraits and narratives of well known Latino individuals - a Noble Prize-winning chemist, an astronaut, an athlete, an artist, a labor leader, to name a few -- and their personal stories, photos, oral history interviews and dichos (traditional sayings) to illustrate and celebrate this contemporary anthology of Latino accomplishments.