LECTURE/ART OPENING: Vincent Fremont, “Reel to Real: Andy Warhol's World" 
5:30pm
“People are Beautiful: Photographs, Prints, and Films by Andy Warhol,” at the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, opens with a lecture and reception. The exhibition explores shifting notions of beauty in Warhol’s portraits. The lecture, "Reel to Real: Andy Warhol's World," will be given by Vincent Fremont, who worked for Andy Warhol for nearly 20 years and was one of the founding directors of the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. He is currently writing a memoir about his experience working with Warhol. A reception follows in the Art Center Atrium.

Taylor Hall, Room 102

People are Beautiful: Prints, Photographs, and Films by Andy Warhol

People are Beautiful, a new exhibition of close to 100 rarely seen works

by Andy Warhol, explores shifting notions of beauty in the artist’s portraits

from 1964 to 1985. Read more

 

The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center

 

Marilyn, 1967

Andy Warhol (American, 1928–1987)

Screenprint on paper

Gift from the collection of Mr. and Mrs. 

Alexander E. Racolin, 1995.13.49

 

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Search for Vassar's Andy Warhol holdings in the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center e-museum collection.

 

 

Animals, Adapting

 

The mutability of nature is a constant. Connections are made and broken in an unrelenting cycle of evolution. As one species loses ground, others thrive. The stolid rhinoceros and the marvelous pink dolphin may not be able to coexist with a human world, any more than mastodons and dodos could, but what connections do we lose when they disappear?

 

Various locations across campus

 

A series of Ecological Projections by

Rick Jones and Henry Krusoe ‘17.

 

 

    Original images: Jones: https://vq.vassar.edu/issues/2016/01/images/0401-vq-artifacts-c.jpg; 

    Krusoe: https://info.vassar.edu/headline-assets/2015-2016/160808-caad-summer-projects-1.jpg

 

Read more: at http://creativearts.vassar.edu

Hello, Dear Enemy! Picture Books for Peace and Humanity

 

This exhibition presents an international selection of striking and original picture books that illuminate the motives and consequences of war, especially its impact on the lives of children.  Often in quiet and gentle ways, these books speak of everyday life in regions of conflict, of oppression, persecution and traumatic escape, as well as of forbidding borders, threats and injuries. Still, many of them conclude by pointing out paths to a better future, and by cultivating openness, curiosity and empathy. Read more

 

 

The Old Bookstore, College Center

Curated by the International Youth Library (Munich, Germany). Mounted by Monica Church. Read more

 

                                                                                                   

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The First Comes Love Project*

 

*Opening Reception on Thursday, February 1, 2018 5-7 pm

 

 

 

The Palmer Gallery, College Center

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Traveling Exhibition

"The goal of “First Comes Love” is to provide a glimpse into the “everyday” lives of LGBTQ couples who have been in their relationships for 10, 20, 30, 40 and even 50 years!" Read more

   

 

 

 

 

Music, Words, and Images

Music, Words, and Images has been a Modfest tradition since 2010. Performed for the first time in Skinner Hall, this concert will explore the theme of “adapting” with exciting and diverse collaborations featuring students, faculty, campus organizations, and guest artists.  Featuring works by Richard Wilson, Susan Botti, and Zachary Wadsworth, with performances and readings by Courtenay Budd, James Fitzwilliam, Logan Pitts ‘17, Barbara Proud, Richard Wilson, and others.

 

Skinner Hall of Music

 

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Composers:

Richard Wilson is an American composer of orchestral, operatic, instrumental,

and chamber music... more

 

James Fitzwilliam is frequently seen throughout the Hudson Valley area as a pianist, organist and composer.  Read more 

 

Barbara Proud, commercial photographer for the past 20 years.. Read more.

Thanks to Christine Howlett for providing the following transcript:

Commentary on “Cristalli” by Susan Botti, which was commissioned by environmental artist/photographer Alice F. Weston for her multimedia project, Crystal Clues to the Sublime

Jeff Walker

February 2, 2018

 What is it about crystals that fascinates us so?  Enter a room full of crystals, like our museum in Ely Hall, and you are immediately struck by the variety of colors, sizes, and shapes.  Some are metallic, some are glassy, some are opaque, some transparent.  But if you stand in front of a cabinet of quartz crystals and look closely, you will begin to see that the forms, that is, the way the crystal faces grow in relation to each other, are actually very much the same.

Nearly 350 years ago the Danish scientist Nicolas Stenson (also known as Steno), building on work by Kepler a half a century earlier, proved that the angles between faces of crystals of the same mineral were the same regardless of how deformed the crystal looks, implying that order is part of what defines a mineral.  Nearly a century later, René Just Haüy developed the concept of the unit cell – the smallest piece that still contains all of the symmetry of the larger crystal.  Since that time, crystallographers have thoughts of crystal structures as three-dimensional arrangements of unit cells.

The discovery of X-rays in 1895, and development during the first decades of the twentieth century of our ability to deduce the symmetry of the unit cell using X-rays, did little to diminish the mystery of the beauty of a crystal.  Even the knowledge that there are only 230 unique ways to arrange atoms symmetrically in space only increases our wonder at the beauty that is produced from such order.  X-rays may have confirmed the existence of atoms, and even told us how big they are, but the wonders of order in the natural world still fascinate us, and as is typical in all scientific work, each answer from an X-ray study only increases the number of questions we can ask.

It is amazing to consider, for instance, how crystals grow in a liquid in response to a changing environment, which is how most minerals form.  Whether the liquid is evaporating water on the Bonneville Salt Flats crystallizing halite and gypsum, or mixed warm hydrothermal waters deep in the earth crystallizing veins of quartz or calcite, or even gold or silver, or the hot liquid rock we call magma cooling and crystallizing pyroxene and plagioclase in lava flow, the nascent mineral nucleus must attract just the right atoms, in just the right order, to create the correct structure to produce a crystal.  Sure, there are mistakes, and in many cases the mistakes give the crystal the beautiful colors we see, but the mistakes are almost insignificant when compared to the millions of other atoms in correct positions forming the crystal we see.

The fact that crystals bring order to the physical sensible world makes it easy to believe that they can also order features of the world beyond our senses.  Einstein proved what magicians from time immemorial have long felt: that matter is a form of energy, so everything, in essence, is energy.   It makes some kind of sense, then, that an object like a crystal that can order matter, might also direct the ordering of energy, and could be used to bring healing and balance, to make magic, to create myths, and to promote positive change.

Crystals, then, are one example of the beauty that comes with order in the natural world.  The beauty of natural things in found everywhere, from soil to trees to animals to landscapes.  Of course, there certainly is beauty in modified landscapes.  We have all experienced a beautiful garden, but I think deep down we know that constructed beauty orders only a few aspects of nature, and is limited by the imagination, knowledge, and ability of the designer.  Unmodified, wild nature has a deeper beauty that we call sublime, which comes from the ordering of an almost infinitely complex world.  To me, the beauty of “Cristalli”, and the images that accompany it, is in how they represent the immense complexity of an ordered universe, and bring us closer to the sublime.

 

Creative Career Panel

 

Join us for a professional development workshop that will explore how "adapting" translates to the professional world in creative ways. Learn from local artists and Vassar alumnae about how they use the arts in their careers. Get first hand information from individuals working in fields that help people learn, heal, grow, and change using different creative methods.

 

Multi-Purpose Room, College Center

Source: https://alums.vassar.edu/homepage-highlights/2014/2014-01-27/20140129-modfest-wilson-BODY2.jpg. Accessed 12/20/17. 

 

Second Honorary Adene and Richard Wilson Concert

The Music Department at Vassar College is honored to host its second annual “Adene and Richard Wilson Concert.”  This year we feature faculty members Frank Cassara, Danielle Farina, Ashley Jackson, Thomas Sauer, and faculty emeritus, Richard Wilson with music by Elliott Carter, Hans Werner Henze, Sally Beamish, and Wilson.

A brief history of Modfest. 

Skinner Hall of Music

 

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Performers:

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A proponent of new and classic, western and world percussion music, Frank Cassara has premiered many works with as many diverse groups. Read More.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"Violist Danielle Farina enjoys a varied career as a soloist, chamber musician, orchestral musician, teacher, and recording artist in both the classical and pop genres.  Read more

 

 

"Pianist Thomas Sauer is highly sought after as soloist, chamber musician, and teacher.   Read more 

 

 

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Composers:

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Elliott Carter "(b New York, NY, Dec 11, 1908; d New York, NY, Nov 5, 2012). American composer. One of the most respected composers of the second half of the 20th century, he blended the achievements of European modernism and American “ultra-modernism” into a unique style of surging rhythmic vitality, intense dramatic contrast, and innovative facture."  

Schiff, David, and Mark D. Porcaro. "Carter, Elliott." Grove Music Online. 14 Dec. 2017. http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-1002257467. Photo: Meredith Heuer

Hans Werner Henze (b Gütersloh, July 1, 1926 d Dresden, Oct 27, 2012).German composer. His formidably numerous operas, ballets, symphonies and concertos have gained an established place in the international repertory. His personal and compositional development has been documented in numerous interviews, articles, autobiographical essays and books. Striving for a communicative, ‘impure’ music concerned with feelings, ideas, history, people and politics, he has drawn inspiration for his vocal and instrumental works from a broad spectrum of renowned poets, writers and librettists. 

Palmer-Füchsel, Virginia. "Henze, Hans Werner." Grove Music Online. 14 Dec. 2017. http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000012820. Photo: http://www.badische-zeitung.de/klassik-2/komponist-hans-werner-henze-ist-tot-x1x--65065360.html

Sally Beamish "(b London, Aug 26, 1956). English composer and viola player, active in Scotland...Her distinctive music draws on many different sources. Motherhood has been an important inspiration, reflected in works such as Tuscan Lullaby (1989) or Magnificat (1992), in which the traditional Latin text is interspersed with poems by Elizabeth Jennings. A particularly Scottish influence can be heard in her use of pibroch in the piano trio Piobaireachd (1991) and her First Symphony (1992), commissioned by the City of Reykjavik." Works such as All Quiet on the Western Front, based upon E.M. Remarque’s novel, have found their inspiration in literature. 

Fuller, Sophie. "Beamish, Sally." Grove Music Online. 14 Dec. 2017. http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000045630. Photo: Ashley Coombes. http://www.sallybeamish.com/cid/137-1/Sally_Beamish_gallery.html. Accessed 12/14/17.

 

"Richard Wilson (b Cleveland, May 15, 1941). American composer and pianist...Wilson has composed for a wide variety of vocal and instrumental combinations and is concerned as much with exploring the sonic idiom of the particular force at hand as with the communication of an abstract musical concept. His musical style incorporates some aspects of traditional tonality within a highly chromatic, though sensuous, language. Avoiding serialism, he favours evolving motivic interplay, often set against a quasi-Impressionistic background."

Wierzbicki, James, and Mary L. Frantz. "Wilson, Richard." Grove Music Online. 21 Dec. 2017. http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000043065.

West Side Story:  The Mind and Music of Leonard Bernstein

Richard Kogan

 

Dr. Richard Kogan, distinguished Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College and Artistic Director of the Weill Cornell Music and Medicine Program, combines his expertise as a medical professional and a brilliant pianist in a lecture-recital that explores the influence of psychological factors and medical conditions on the creative work of Leonard Bernstein.  

 

Skinner Hall of Music

 

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For Richard Kogan, Artistic Director of the Weill Cornell Music and Medicine Program, "exploring the psyches of composers makes him a better interpreter of their scores, and...understanding the role of music in our lives makes him a better psychiatrist"  more

 

Richard Kogan has a distinguished career both as a concert pianist and as a psychiatrist. Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College and Artistic Director of the Weill Cornell Music and Medicine Program, he has been praised for his "eloquent, compelling, and exquisite playing" by the New York Times, and the Boston Globe wrote that "Kogan has somehow managed to excel at the world's two most demanding professions."

Dr. Kogan has gained renown for his lecture/recitals that explore the role of music in healing and the influence of psychological factors and psychiatric and medical illness on the creative output of composers such as Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Schumann, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, Gershwin, and Bernstein. He has given these presentations at music festivals, concert series, medical conferences, and scholarly symposia throughout the world. He has recorded the highly acclaimed DVD "Music and the Mind : The Life and Works of Robert Schumann" for Yamaha. Dr. Kogan has won numerous honors including the Concert Artists Guild Award, the Chopin Competition of the Kosciuszko Foundation, the Liebert Award for Applied Psychoanalysis, and the McGovern Award for the Art and Science of Medicine

Dr. Kogan is a graduate of the Juilliard School of Music Pre-college, Harvard College, and Harvard Medical School. He completed a psychiatry residency and an academic fellowship at NYU. He is Co-Director of the Human Sexuality Program at the Weill Cornell Medical College and has a private practice of psychiatry in New York City.

Source: http://weill.cornell.edu/music/richard_kogan.html. Accessed 12/12/17

Dr. Richard Kogan on YouTube: