Exhibitions and Performances

On August 4, 2022 (Japan Time), the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan announced the recipients of the Foreign Minister’s Commendations for FY 2022. Mrs. Okamoto Kyoko is among this year’s foreign recipients. She receives the commendation in recognition of her contributions to the promotion of Japanese culture in the United States of America.

Mrs. Okamoto founded the Washington Toho Koto Society in 1971, and since that time, has played and taught Koto as President for more than 50 years. She has also taught at the University of Maryland, Musicology and Ethnomusicology as part-time faculty for about 50 years. Mrs. Okamoto has contributed greatly to the promotion of Japanese music and culture in the United States and worked to promote friendly relations between the two countries.

Every year, the Foreign Minister’s Commendations are awarded to individuals and groups with outstanding achievements in international fields, in order to acknowledge their contributions to the promotion of friendship between Japan and other countries and areas. The Commendations also aim to promote the understanding and support of the Japanese public for the activities of the recipients.

By Jessica Weiss ’05

As New York Times journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones prepared to publish “The 1619 Project” in August 2019, she expected it to ignite controversy. An exploration of the legacy of slavery timed to the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the first enslaved Africans to Virginia, it offers a new American origin story—one that doesn’t begin with the Pilgrims or the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

But Hannah-Jones never imagined that The New York Times Magazine project—now transformed into a book—would draw such ferocious opposition that it would be outlawed in schools in a number of states, and even used in former President Donald Trump’s impeachment trials and the confirmation hearings of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the U.S. Supreme Court. Intended as a work of journalism “that uses history to explain the way slavery is shaping our society today,” critics have accused Hannah-Jones of rewriting history itself.

On Tuesday evening, Hannah-Jones, the inaugural Knight Chair in Race and Journalism at Howard University and winner of a Pulitzer Prize in commentary for her essay on the project, took the stage at the Kay Theatre in The Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center to discuss the project’s goals and impact and the incredible backlash it generated.

“Of course we’ve all largely only learned one story: that we were the freest, greatest country in the history of the world, the only country founded on an idea, the only country founded with a constitution that professes to imbue us all with inalienable rights,” she told the animated crowd. “If you read the project, you can’t see your country the same way. And that’s a powerful thing.”

Hannah-Jones’ visit was the latest installment of the College of Arts and Humanities’ Dean’s Lecture Series, co-presented by the Colvin Institute of Real Estate Development at the School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, and HAND, the Housing Association of Nonprofit Developers. She was in conversation with ARHU Dean Bonnie Thornton Dill, a pioneering scholar of intersectionality. It was Thornton Dill’s final Dean’s Lecture Series event; she will step down next month after 11 years at the helm and over 30 years at UMD.

Here are some of the takeaways from the discussion:

The United States has more than one story: “We [called the project] a new origin story, not the new origin story for a reason. There could never be one, there should never be one, especially in a multiracial society like we live in. You could certainly tell the story of America through Indigenous people, and it would tell you a very different side and give you a different depth. You could tell it through women, through the LGBTQ+ community. We have to question the histories we’ve been taught: Who do they serve and who do they leave out?”

Black contributions have been systematically excluded: “So much of my desire to bring ‘The 1619 Project’ into the world began as my quest as a child to see myself in the story. I kind of believed we weren’t being taught anything about Black people because we must not have done much. They talk about slavery because they have to discuss the Civil War and then we disappear for 100 years and show up in the March on Washington, and there’s nothing in between. As a 16-year old, when I took my first Black studies class as a high school elective … I became empowered by the knowledge that there was history, there was literature, there was art, but also really angry that people had made the decision not to teach it to us.”

Inequities in housing and education are part of the legacy of slavery: “Housing and schools are the two areas of civil rights we’ve made the least progress on because they’re the two areas that are the most intimate. And they’re tied together, they feed each other. And this is where white progressive support for equality falls off. If you want to see how many progressives actually live their values, talk about building some affordable housing in their neighborhood. And schools are even more segregated than housing. Black Americans are the most segregated group in housing and schools to this day, and that is because we descend from slavery. And we don’t talk about it that way.”

So-called “critical race theory” (CRT) laws are part of a larger push for power: “I call these anti-history laws, anti-memory laws, anti-Black laws, but not anti-CRT laws because that’s not what they are. These laws are about driving a wedge, about stoking white resentment to justify other regressive policies. The same states that are passing these anti-history laws are also passing laws to overturn Roe, they’re also passing laws against trans children, the LGBT community, targeting disfavored groups to pave the way for power.”

The Supreme Court may be headed down a dark path: “We are in a scary period. And if we sit still… you think they’re done? There’s already talk about challenges to gay marriage. The Supreme Court is seeing the case that will overturn affirmative action. So, we’re going to have to decide what kind of country we’re going to accept.”

Hannah-Jones doesn’t plan to stop doing this work: “I spend a lot of time thinking about my grandma, born in 1926 on a cotton plantation in Mississippi. She had a fourth-grade education. When my father was 2 years old, she packed him and his older brother up and got on a train, determined that her children were never gonna pick cotton. She ended up in Iowa [and] she wasn’t to have that American dream, but she planted seeds. She wasn’t able to see the future she wanted, but she produced it. It’s easy for me to do what I do, because every day I feel so incredibly blessed. On my worst day, I know an iota of what she went through, or what most of our ancestors went through. But instead I get to read, I get to think and I get to write things that I hope will move people to build a better country. And I can’t imagine a better life.”

By Jessica Weiss ’05

As the COVID-19 pandemic worsened in early 2020, Lecturer in the Department of Art Mollye Bendell felt a growing anxiety that the last time she would see her loved ones might be on a video call. 

Bendell, who works with electronic media to explore themes of vulnerability, visibility and longing, began to attempt to preserve her friends and family through her work using images of their faces from video chats. 

In her video project “Sketch for Sleepers,” Bendell projects those images in 3D onto stock digital silhouettes of human bodies that float across a screen. 

The work is on display now until Dec. 3 at the University of Maryland Art Gallery as part of a triennial exhibition of professional work by Department of Art faculty and adjunct faculty. Part of the campuswide Arts for All initiative, which seeks to spark new ways of thinking through collaborations across the arts, sciences and other disciplines, Faculty Exhibition 2021 showcases works from 20 faculty members in a range of mediums. It is the first in-person art exhibition held at the Art Gallery since it closed in March 2020. 

“The exhibition honors faculty work while emphasizing that their scholarship and teaching is grounded first and foremost in an art-making practice,” said Art Gallery Associate Director Taras W. Matla. “Having been closed for 18 months due to the pandemic, this is a terrific way to reintroduce the Art Gallery and art department faculty to the campus community.” 

Professor of Art Foon Sham’s “Covid 19, 2020” wood and acrylic wall sculpture emerged from elements related to his state of mind during lockdown. It’s made of wooden sticks that represent the many people affected by the virus. 

“There are various colors of wood sticks and some are stained with red and blue, implying all the damage this virus could do,” he said. 

Many of the works also address socio-political issues and social justice. For instance, Lecturer Julia Kwon’s “Dissent” is inspired by the fight for abortion rights, via the format of traditional Korean object-wrapping cloth with embedded patterns. And Assistant Professor Jessica Gatlin’s “Work Related” is a series of wearable canvas “paintings” that comment on themes of sustainability, labor, consumption and capitalism.   

Assistant Professor Cy Keener, whose work blends art, science and technology, is exhibiting “Terminal Front,” a virtual reality experience that allows people to visit a remote and uninhabitable landscape in Greenland. Using scientific data gathered from the site—via custom laser scanners built by the Army Corps of Engineers Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory—paired with detailed drone photography, the VR user can immerse in a massive and detailed landscape of a glacier’s surface. 

Keener and Bendell are among faculty instructors in the new immersive media design major, co-taught by faculty from the Department of Art and the College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences. The program prepares students to use digital tools and technologies including virtual and augmented reality, digital art, projected imagery, computer graphics, 3D modeling and user interfaces spanning audio, visual and tactile platforms.

Additional participating faculty artists include: Emily Conover, Patrick Craig, Pete Cullen, Brandon Donahue, Wendy Jacobs, Richard Klank, Matthew McLaughlin, Brandon Morse, Irene Pantelis, Narendra Ratnapala, John Ruppert, Justin Strom, Athena Tacha, Jowita Wyszomirska and Rex Weil. 

In addition, an In Memoriam section recognizes the vast contributions to the Department of Art made by longtime faculty members David C. Driskell (1931-2020) and James Thorpe (1951-2021). 

Visit the Faculty Exhibition 2021 at the University of Maryland Art Gallery in the Parren J. Mitchell Art-Sociology Building until Dec. 3, 2021. Free and open to the public, Monday-Friday, 11 a.m.-4 p.m. 

Photos from top to bottom of page: Visitors at Faculty Exhibition 2021; Mollye Bendell's video project “Sketch for Sleepers;" Foon Sham’s “Covid 19, 2020; " A visitor experiences Cy Keener’s “Terminal Front.” Photos by Thai Q. Nguyen.

By Jessica Weiss ’05

In late 2009, violinist Vijay Gupta got a call from L.A. Times journalist Steve Lopez. Gupta, then 21, had two years earlier become the youngest ever member of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, one of the world’s preeminent orchestras. Now a friend of Lopez’s named Nathaniel Ayers wanted a lesson. 

Ayers, a talented musician in his own right, had been diagnosed with a severe mental illness and ended up homeless on the streets of Los Angeles. He was the subject of Lopez's bestselling book “The Soloist” as well as a subsequent movie starring Robert Downey Jr. as Lopez and Jamie Foxx as Ayers. 

Gupta had never taught before, but he didn’t hesitate. He began visiting Ayers in Skid Row, the largest community of unhoused people in the United States, where the two Juilliard-trained musicians bonded over Beethoven, scales and technique.

Gupta also wondered how many others in Los Angeles’ homeless population were like Ayers—brilliant and talented but disenfranchised due to mental illness, addiction or simple bad luck. Gupta didn’t know how, but he knew he wanted to offer music to Skid Row.

A year later, Gupta founded Street Symphony, a nonprofit that brings music to homeless and incarcerated communities in Los Angeles through workshops, events and educational opportunities. He is also a co-founder of the Skid Row Arts Alliance, a consortium of arts organizations made up of people living and working in Skid Row. For his work “bringing beauty, respite and purpose to those all too often ignored by society,” Gupta was the recipient of a 2018 MacArthur Fellowship. 

Ten years since its founding, Street Symphony’s roster of artists—made up of professionals and community musicians—now numbers 90. They’ve presented some 1,200 events, reaching well over 10,000 people. Gupta, who left The Los Angeles Philharmonic in 2018 to devote himself to Street Symphony, seeks to share widely his message that art is an offering of love, justice and connection that has the power to heal entire communities. To date, his TED Talk, “Music is Medicine, Music is Sanity,” has garnered millions of views. 

Under the banner of Arts for All, a campuswide initiative leveraging the combined power of the arts, technology and social justice to address the grand challenges of our time, Gupta will speak Thursday at The Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center as part of the 2021–22 Arts and Humanities Dean’s Lecture Series. But before that, he talked to us about his journey to activism, learning from those he serves and the responsibility of the artist to work for justice. 

You’ve performed as an international recitalist, soloist, chamber musician and orchestral musician for over 20 years. But you also studied biology in college, and are now a nonprofit leader. How do you manage being so multidisciplinary? 

I feel like my role as an artist, as a citizen, as a nonprofit leader, as a spouse, all comes back to finding the truth. And the iterative process of applying oneself to a question to find the truth, and trying something and failing at that something, is both scientific and artistic and a deeply spiritual pursuit. I would love for us to throw away externally imposed certificates of expertise and rather think about multidisciplinary connections of gifts, because that places us into the framework of curiosity. Whether it’s an artistic pursuit, a scientific pursuit, a relationship, an act of civic engagement—I think we always need to stay curious. 

You started Street Symphony at the age of 22 while a musician in the Los Angeles Philharmonic. How did you do that? 

After I met Nathaniel I knew there was a possibility there could be other people like him out there, but I didn’t know how to reach them. So, I just started cold calling people. And there was a lot of failure. I called hospice workers who thought I was a prank caller. I called a lot of people who didn’t take me seriously. Eventually I started calling social workers working for Skid Row and they said “Yes, we’ll set aside our lunch hour and get an audience together and have a concert.” And my colleagues in the Philharmonic really rose to the occasion and they went with me. I didn’t start Street Symphony alone, I was never alone in this work. I had colleagues who gave their hearts, talents and gifts continuously with very little expectation of anything in return. And there was never an idea to create a nonprofit. Somebody handed me a check at a TED conference. I didn’t know what to do with the money so that’s when I thought to start a nonprofit at least to have the money in a bank account. 

How would you recommend people begin to make a difference in their own communities?  

The first thing you need to do is to take inventory of your gifts—what feels good and what you love. Basically, what makes you come alive? The second step is to find a way to apply that in the world—any way. If you like it when someone laughs, then make a daily practice of making somebody laugh. Find a way to give and receive what makes you come alive. Third, create a lab. Find your peers, find your tribe, who are willing to ask questions and apply them in the world in a similar way. Fourth, offer it to the world. Show up with curiosity and not with judgement, and serve. When we take these four steps, we’re identifying our values. If you start with your values—your why—the how and the what will come next. 

What do you feel like you and your fellow professional musicians have learned through this decade-long interchange of ideas? 

That there is more that is similar about us than is different. The conversation around service and engagement and outreach often has this pernicious myth around the redemption story, that we can save people. And I feel like that’s a perfectly fine place to start but it becomes hubristic if that’s our only motivation, because it maintains a separation of us and them. Even if we’re showing up out of charity it could still be in the mode of judgment and not in the mode of curiosity. It could still be in the mode of expertise and not experience. So, I feel like I have thrown every bit of dogma or rule or some judgments I’ve had about “those people” out. I’ve also learned from my colleagues in Skid Row that we don’t have to let the worst thing that’s happened to us define us. Forgiveness is choosing to take our identity from something more than the wound. We really do get to choose our lives. We really do get to choose our perception and the way we go about paying attention to the world. 

Do you believe artists have a unique responsibility to engage in social justice work? 

I see justice as an artistic practice. There is no end to justice. The same way there is no end to reconciliation and there is no end to love and there is no end to learning. These are all practices. And the truth is, what artists know more than anything is how to practice. We already have what we need to change the world. So, yes. I think we actually have an obligation to be engaged—to heal and inspire through our artistry but also to provoke change.

Gupta will be at The Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center October 21, 2021 from 5:30-7 p.m. Reserve tickets here. He will also sell and sign copies of his recent album “When the Violin” in the lobby after the event. This event is co-sponsored by the School of Music.

BY SALA LEVIN ’10

Even as many stages remain dark, adventurous new forms of theater are emerging from the pandemic—and Jared Mezzocchi is at the center of it.

The associate professor of multimedia design for dance and theater has helmed 20 virtual productions since COVID-19 struck, including the School of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies’ groundbreaking online version of Qui Nguyen’s fantasy “She Kills Monsters” and Diversionary Theatre’s take on the musical “Cancelled,” about a high school’s online scandal.

The New York Times recently named Mezzocchi one of five people or entities agitating contemporary theater, and his digital work “Russian Troll Farm,” featuring memes, animation and virtual backgrounds, was honored as a Times Critic’s Pick. He talked with Terp about the thrilling state of theater—and how TikTok musicals might represent one new frontier.

How do you approach all-virtual productions?
My philosophy has been to do as much as possible live. Even if it’s a little messier, our craft as theater-makers is about being live in front of an audience. For “She Kills Monsters,” we rehearsed start to finish; the actors knew what filters to turn on and off, when to turn on and off their cameras. Everything the audience witnessed that night was live. Everyone was very emotional that we achieved that.

What makes a virtual production successful?
Right now, (success) means being fearless, taking risks. I’d love to see monumental falling on one’s face because even then, at least we’re trying to do something live (rather) than not try at all. Working through something is really exhilarating to me; when you commit to risk-taking, unexpected outcomes occur. That has deep impact for an audience member.

How would you describe this period of reshaping performing arts?
Accessibility is a huge part of it. By being online, “She Kills Monsters” had 5,000 viewers in one night from multiple countries. The families of our international students were able to see their performance live for the first time. We’re only scratching at the top of that surface.

How does the lack of live audience affect performance?
What makes live performance so evocative is the give and take of energy between viewer and maker. That’s just not as present (with digital performances) in the way that we were used to, but engagement can still occur—just differently. I think about TikTok’s viral “Ratatouille” musical—that is an audience and a maker exchanging energy in a really exciting way. That’s engagement with the younger generation that theater needs.

What about the future of theater most excites you?
Theater-making always forces new ways of looking at what we’re doing. I’m excited to not just depend on physical stages, but think outside the box of how and where theater can exist.