August
August 25–September 20
Ronald Gonzalez: Decompositions
Opening Reception: Date and time TBA
Binghamton, N.Y., artist Ronald Gonzalez’s Decompositions
will feature a recent grouping of life size and small sculptures made from a variety of natural resources such as bones, bee hives, leaves and animals that explore themes of vulnerability, pathos, mortality and transformation in the context of an ephemeral human condition.
Goodyear Gallery, Goodyear Building. Free
Gallery Hours are Tuesday through Friday, 3 to 5 p.m., and Saturday, 2 to 5 p.m.
Friday, August 29, 4:30 p.m.
Dedication — Toshiko Takaezu: Autumn II
To celebrate The Trout Gallery’s 25th anniversary, the museum acquired Autumn II, one of Toshiko Takaezu’s largest and most beautiful bronze bells. Inspired by large ceremonial bells used in ancient Japan, this stunning work commemorates the opening of The Trout Gallery in 1983 and its first exhibition, Toshiko Takaezu: Ceramics, Textiles, and Bronzes. The autumnal patina of Takaezu’s bell calls to mind the rich colors that inaugurate each academic season while its placement opposite the historic belfry of Old West reminds one of the central role that ringing of the bells has always played in marking the hours, days and events in the life of Dickinson College. Autumn II was purchased through funds provided by George ’61 and Ann Hoffer, Lawrence and Carol Zicklin, by exchange, and Friends of The Trout Gallery.
Entrance Courtyard, Weiss Center for the Arts. Free
August 29–October 11
Recent Gifts to the Collection: Toshiko Takaezu
Opening Reception: Friday, August 29, 5-7 p.m.
Toshiko Takaezu is among the most important ceramists of the 20th century. Her long and highly
productive career began in the post-war era and continues up through the present. Her signature work in clay and cast bronze is based on elemental forms including cylinders, spheres and disks. Many of her works feature colored glazes or patina that are applied loosely and spontaneously across a neutral ground and suggest broad, expressive calligraphic brush strokes. The works range in size from tiny vessels that nestle in one’s hand to monumental spherical “moons” and bells that shape and define a natural landscape. All of her works are at once organic and universal, born of nature yet refined in shape and design. Born in Hawaii, Takaezu studied at the Honolulu Academy of Arts, the University of Hawaii and the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan. She has worked in ceramics for more than four decades holding positions at Cranbrook, the University of Wisconsin, the Cleveland Institute of Art and Princeton University.
In 1983, Takaezu was presented with the Dickinson College Arts Award and honored with the first exhibition at The Trout Gallery. Twenty-five years later, The Trout Gallery is pleased to recognize Takaezu’s enduring artistry with an exhibition that celebrates her long association with Dickinson College and highlights her recent gifts to the gallery’s collection.
The Trout Gallery, Weiss Center for the Arts. Free
Gallery Hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Closed November 27 through December 1, and December 24 through January 5, 2009
August 29–October 18
Gordon Parks: Crossroads
Opening Reception: Friday, August 29, 5-7 p.m.
The Trout Gallery will host a retrospective exhibition of the photographs of Gordon Parks (1912–2006), one of the nation’s most important chroniclers of the 20th century. Parks, a photographer, poet, novelist, composer, musician and filmmaker, spent a lifetime shattering barriers in the pursuit of truth, beauty, social justice and artistic expression.
Parks became the first black photographer to join the Farm Security Administration, shortly after which he made his signature image, American Gothic. In 1949, he became the first black staff photographer at Life magazine, where he continued to work on assignment for the next quarter of the century. He documented the gang wars of Harlem and the nascent Black Muslim movement, worked in fashion and commercial as well as fine art photography. He helped found Essence magazine and directed the film Shaft. He received numerous awards including the Jackie Robinson Lifetime Achievement Award, the NAACP Hall of Fame Award, the National Medal of the Arts, as well as an honorary doctorate from Dickinson College. All photographs courtesy of the Gordon Parks Foundation and the Howard Greenberg Gallery. Organized by art2art Circulating Exhibitions.
The Trout Gallery, Weiss Center for the Arts. Free
Gallery Hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Closed November 27 through December 1, and December 24 through January 5, 2009Tuesday, September 23, 7 p.m.
Film Screening: Shaft (1971), directed by Gordon ParksThe film is based on a novel by Ernest Tidyman and is regarded as one of the first and most characteristic of the blaxploitation genre. It is Park’s best-known film and features the award-winning soundtrack by Isaac Hayes. The film will be introduced by Associate Professor of American Studies Cotten Seiler.
Room 235, Weiss Center for the Arts. Free
Sunday, August 31, 8 p.m.
In My Case An Exception Should Be Made: An Audience With William Saroyan
Conceived, compiled and performed by Todd Wronski
This year marks the centenary of the birth of William Saroyan, a writer whose huge fame in the 1930s and 1940s, followed by an equally dramatic fall in popularity and recognition, makes his life and works a particularly fascinating study. To mark this centenary, Todd Wronski, professor of theatre, is reviving his one-man play—originally staged in 2001—which will be performed once in Carlisle prior to performances in San Francisco, Fresno and Los Angeles. In this piece, compiled almost entirely from the public and private writings of William Saroyan, we meet the novelist, playwright, screenwriter and short story writer in his home in Fresno, near the end of his long career as one of America’s most distinctive literary figures. Through the 75-minute audience with Saroyan, we learn of his birth, his experiences in the Fred Finch orphanage and his meteoric rise to the top of the worlds of literature, film and theatre. We also experience his challenges with the Army, gambling, marriage and the sometimes fleeting nature of fame. The reviews from the original European production commented that Wronski “captures Saroyan’s maverick spirit” in touching on the unique blend of laughter and pain, sorrow and joy that makes Saroyan’s writing so complex and satisfying.
The Cubiculo, Carlisle Theatre, 44 W. High St., 2nd Floor. Free
Reservations: call 717-245-1239.
September
Saturday, September 6, 7 p.m.
Florestan Recital Project, Musical Artists-in-Residence: Echoes of Pushkin and his People
Benjamin Britten’s dramatic cycle The Poet’s Echo sets texts by Russia’s premier poet and novelist during the Romantic Era, Aleksandr Pushkin. Pushkin inspired writers and composers
throughout the world with his passionate and sociopolitical portrayals of his homeland. In
this program, Florestan explores themes of Russia and its neighbors with lush settings of Pushkin and other evocative texts.
Rubendall Recital Hall, Weiss Center for the Arts. Free Music Department
Sunday, September 21, 4 p.m.
Faculty Chamber Recital: Jennifer Sacher Wiley (violin), Jeb Wallace (horn),
Eun Ae Baik-Kim (piano)
This chamber recital will feature the significant masterwork of Johannes Brahms written for horn, violin and piano. The Horn Trio in Eb Major, Op.40, which was composed immediately after the death of Brahms’s mother, carries the sentimental remembrances of his childhood. Along with short pieces for horn and piano, Jennifer Sacher Wiley and Eun Ae Baik-Kim will
perform the harmonically enchanting Fantasie in C Major for violin and piano by Franz Schubert.
Rubendall Recital Hall, Weiss Center for the Arts. Free Music Department
Wednesday, September 24, 6:30 p.m.
Bullard Music and Culture Series
Lecture: Vocal Promiscuity in Mozart’s Don Giovanni
Gretchen Wheelock, Eastman School of Music
Gretchen Wheelock, professor emeritus of musicology at the Eastman School of Music, presents current research on how text and music inform gender representation and the portrayal of sexual desire in Mozart’s seminal opera, Don Giovanni (1787). Wheelock, who earned her Ph.D. from Yale University and a bachelor’s degree from Wellesley, is an award-winning teacher and former vice president of the American Musicological Society. Her research on musical gesture and performance practice focuses primarily on Haydn’s string quartets and Mozart’s operas. She is the author of Haydn’s Ingenious Jesting with Art: Contexts of Musical Wit and Humor.
Room 235, Weiss Center for the Arts. Free Music Department
September 30–October 25
Master of Fine Arts Candidates Exhibition
The Goodyear Gallery at Dickinson College exhibits work by Master of Fine Arts
candidates attending programs of graduate study in Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland or the District of Columbia that addresses or utilizes computer technology. This exhibition is juried by Todd Arsenault and Anthony Cervino, assistant professors of studio art at Dickinson College.
Goodyear Gallery, Goodyear Building. Free
Gallery Hours are Tuesday through Friday, 3 to 5 p.m., and Saturday, 2 to 5 p.m.