Many of the installations are true “pop-up” style, with the spaces being utilized by busy students. The exhibition, curated by Guna Nadarajan, dean of the Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design at the University of Michigan, includes work by University students, faculty, and staff. The work can be viewed in three places: Hatcher Graduate Library, Art, Architecture & Engineering Library, and Shapiro Undergraduate Library.

The Bookmarks exhibition addresses two questions. First, many works engage with the shift from printed books to digital formats, the displacement of the book as a form, and shifting functions and perceptions of functions of the library.  Second, artists question what these shifts in form mean for the institutions housing information. The exhibition asks: “What is the future of the library? What is the future of the book?” Each performance piece, artwork, or installation comment on speculative futures for books, libraries, or shifting technologies in unique ways.

In all, there are 14 site-specific installations and exhibits. Two of these require a cell phone or electronic device in order to experience the entire work.

Below, each work is listed under the library it is shown in, with specific instructions to find it.

I went to the Martha Graham Dance Company's April 26 performance at the Power Center and was blown away. (The troupe also performed April 27.)

I’ve seen the Martha Graham Dance Company (MGDC) on several occasions before, as well as many of the endless companies the group's namesake has inspired, but never before have I loved them so much. The dancers performed four pieces: Secular Games (Martha Graham), Deo (Maxine Doyle & Bobbi Jene Smith), Lamentation Variations (Aszure Barton/Nicolas Paul/Larry Keigwin), and Chronicle (Graham). Each piece was emotional, wholly different, and an example of ferocious physical ability.

MGDC is in its 93rd season, which makes it the oldest dance company in the United States; they first appeared in Ann Arbor in 1932. Watching on Friday night, I was struck by how fresh Graham's choreography feels, even almost a century later. Graham is credited with the creation of a new American art form in modern dance. Her movements use sharp angles and the pull of gravity, both of which set her apart from ballet. Her work is also unbelievably difficult. There are moments in her choreography where I couldn’t believe what I was seeing: for example, one dancer did a series of split leaps into the air from a standing position across the length of the entire stage. Even the onstage pauses in movement, which are usually put into a piece to give the audience a moment of stillness and the dancers a moment to breathe, are angular and uncomfortable.

There is no rest for a Martha Graham dancer. 

If I had been paying as much attention to national politics in 2009 as I do now, maybe I would have been more familiar with Valerie Jarrett, senior advisor to President Barack Obama. But her visit to the Michigan Theater on Monday, April 22, gave me the chance to learn more about her story.

I am so glad that I took that chance.

“You never know what can happen with a Michigan Law degree.” --Broderick Johnson

As part of her book took for Finding My Voice: My Journey to the West Wing and the Path Forward, Jarrett was in conversation with Broderick Johnson, an adjunct professor at the University of Michigan Law School. Maybe Johnson and Jarrett appeared to be so comfortable on stage because of their work together as advisors in the Obama administration. Maybe it was because their friendship was palpable. Maybe it was because they’re both University of Michigan Law School alumni and this felt like a homecoming of sorts. In any case, it was a pleasure to behold.

The ManosBuckius Cooperative (The MBC) says the aim of its performance pieces is to “embrace purposelessness!”

Artists Melanie Manos and Sarah Buckius say this half-facetiously since their absurd performative art explores humanity’s relationship with technology: “Our aim is to energize a space with our activities, and suggest new interpretations for existing structures both in the social/political and environmental/architectural sense.”

The MBC's most recent collaboration, TheMBC@TheLibrary, took on the future of libraries and explored gender politics by disrupting the space in University of Michigan’s Art, Architecture & Engineering Library on Friday, April 12. The performance resulted in an installation that will remain on view until May 26 as part of the Bookmarks: Speculating the Futures of the Book and Library, a “multi-venue exhibition” curated by Guna Nadarajan of University of Michigan’s Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design.

The performance will also be made available in the form of a final, edited video that compiles footage from the multiple cameras that recorded the bi-level performance piece. In general, the artists work in various media as part of The MBC, including “photography, mediated performances (live-feed to video monitor or projector), live performance with projections, videos, video installation with projections, and video installation with sculpture.” 

The Encore Musical Theatre has taken on a new look for its production of Lerner and Loewe’s Brigadoon. Seating has been arranged to create a theater-in-the round with a literal circle in the middle.

Director Matthew Brennan in his program notes writes that he was taken with the idea of a circle of community, love, commitment, and, since the play’s action occurs on the day of a wedding, the symbolic wedding band. So this classic, romantic musical comedy lends itself well to a center stage with action playing along all aisles, making the audience residents for a night in the close-knit community of Brigadoon.

We feel the magic of this town and its people in this near-perfect production.

In the year-long exhibition Abstraction, Color, and Politics in the Early 1970s, the University of Michigan Museum of Art asks, “Can abstract art be about politics?”

The exhibition asks audiences to consider the once hotly debated status of abstract art almost 50 years later. Despite the gallery exhibiting only four pieces, the exhibition proves the abstract art of the 1970s has an ability to engage with major political themes then and now.

The move toward abstraction in art accelerated in the 1970s, and many artists turned to it in lieu of representational art. As UMMA points out, some were criticized for turning away from traditional means of representation. Critics suggested that abstract art could not be political, therefore believing artists to be intentionally disengaging with politics. At the same time, minority artists were challenging tenets of art history and institutions that promoted a specific set of standards in determining what “great art” was. Though some argued that abstraction was unable to convey political messages, the movement itself became political by deconstructing the status quo.

Since its inception in April 2008, fans of vinyl LPs have flocked to their favorite independent shops for the event known as Record Store Day. Created to promote patronage among local music sellers, Record Store Day has grown immensely over the last decade. 

In 2017, AADL got in on the action and began hosting a pop-up record fair at the downtown library. Located in walking distance from Ann Arbor’s three record shops -- Wazoo Records, Encore Records, and Underground Sounds -- AADL aimed to provide vinyl enthusiasts another place to dig through crates, mingle with other music fans, and take a look at the growing collection of LPs available for checkout at the library. 

If you missed us this year, be sure to keep an eye out for our 2020 Record Store Day next April. And if you’re clamoring for more music, be sure to check out AADL's collection of vinyl and CDs, as well as the Ann Arbor Music & Performance Server (AAMPS), where you can download local music offerings.

This year’s event at AADL saw 16 independent vendors cover more than 700 square feet of table space with their sonic wares and the volume and variety did not disappoint any enthusiastic attendees. Local DJ Aaron Batzdorfer spun tunes all afternoon, minus a brief respite where his son Porter stepped in on the wheels of steel. In the library’s Secret Lab, patrons exercised their imaginations and created their own LP album art -- many of which are posted below.

Written and taking place in 1947, Arthur Miller’s All My Sons is steeped in the emotional fallout of World War II. One might question the relevance of mounting a new production of the show today: What remains to be gleaned from this 70-plus-year-old work? However, Miller’s observations on the nature of generational sin remain as shattering and relevant as ever -- particularly when staged with the intelligence and sensitivity of The Purple Rose Theatre Company’s new production, running through June 1.

All My Sons takes place on the Keller family’s front lawn in Kokomo, Indiana, lovingly recreated with an artificial lawn, antique furniture, and a rope swing hanging from the rafters of The Purple Rose’s intimate space. Kate (Michelle Mountain) has spent three years in denial since her son Larry, a pilot, went missing in action during World War II. Her husband Joe (Richard McWilliams) and son Chris (Ryan Black) have long accepted Larry’s death and grudgingly tolerated Kate’s insistence on his survival. But their tenuous existence is upended by the arrival of Larry’s ex-girlfriend Ann (Caitlin Cavannaugh), whom Chris has secretly planned to marry after carrying on a romantic correspondence with her.

The plot thickens as details arise about Joe’s business partnership with Ann’s father, Steve, who went to prison for knowingly selling defective aircraft to the Air Force. Joe has maintained his innocence in that situation in the intervening years and has gotten off scot-free. But as damning new information comes to light, the fragile assumptions on which all the characters have built their lives threaten to crumble.

The influx of Inuit art in Ann Arbor began with Ann Arbor’s Eugene Power and Canadian artist James Houston. Power, a friend of Houston, became interested in the art and culture of Inuit peoples following his friend Houston’s research there, beginning in 1948. A decade later, Eugene Power and his son Philip founded a non-profit organization called Eskimo Art Inc. in Ann Arbor that operated as a wholesale distribution center for artworks imported from Kinngait (known then as Cape Dorset) Hudson Bay and Baffin Island. The organization sent profits to artists, funded art supplies, and organized artist training, including Japanese printmaking techniques. Inuit art continued to remain popular in the area, with Eskimo Art Inc. remaining open through 1994.

The Power Family Program for Inuit Art: Tillirnanngittuq exhibition includes many works that date to the beginning of the Power Family’s involvement with Inuit art and the subsequent creation of Eskimo Art Inc. Currently being shown at the University of Michigan Museum of Arts, the exhibition “celebrat[es] the exceptional gift of 20th-century Inuit art to the Museum by the Power family.” The exhibit features 58 works from the collection, which were promised as a gift to the museum in 2018. The title of the exhibition, Tillirnanngittuq, is the Inuktitut word for “unexpected,” referencing the tremendously positive public response to Canadian Inuit Art in Ann Arbor, and globally, beginning in the mid-20th century. 

Why is a raven like a writing desk?

Whether we’ve read Lewis Carroll's books or not, most of us are familiar with the character Alice and her adventures in Wonderland. One of the more iconic figures is the Mad Hatter with his tea party and nonsense riddles. Alice was based on a real person, Alice Liddell, but what about the Mad Hatter? Playwright Michael Alan Herman has proposed that he was, one Theophilus Carter, a well-known (at the time) furniture salesman and inventor who, according to Herman and others, bears a striking resemblance to Sir John Tenniel’s original illustrations of the Mad Hatter. 

Roustabout Theatre Troupe’s Mad As a Hatter -- directed by Joey Albright -- imagines Carter (Russ Schwartz) and Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll was a pseudonym) as school friends who grew up together then grew apart after Dodgson published his less than flattering portrayal of his good friend in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. In the play, Carter is haunted by his literary alter-ego the Mad Hatter, who not only comes to life but also bears a striking resemblance to Dodgson (both Dodgson and the Mad Hatter are played by Jeffrey Miller).