We invite you to browse panels about the scripts of ancient Egypt, indigenous languages of Central and South America, languages of Southeast Asia, and more – including the English language and language used in graffiti and comics.

This exhibit highlights the possibilities for exploration and discovery within the library’s collections, which are impressive on many levels. The sheer number of materials, including more than 8.5 million volumes in locations all over campus, and access to millions of digital books, journals and images, makes it one of the largest university library systems in the United States. The collection encompasses ancient documents written on papyrus, electronic journals reporting on the latest advances in science and medicine, and materials from nearly every period, culture, and way of thought in between.

Preeminent American sculptor Mark di Suvero (b. 1933) is best known for his dynamic and monumental works made of industrial steel and salvaged materials that populate museum grounds, landscapes, and urban environments around the world. In addition to countless exhibitions and awards, in March 2011 di Suvero was honored with the National Medal of the Arts by President Obama in a White House ceremony. This exhibition, organized by UMMA and on view exclusively in Ann Arbor, features approximately 15 of di Suvero's rarely exhibited smaller scale pieces, or tabletops, from the 1950s to the present. The tabletops are not maquettes of larger-scale works but an expressionistic and engaging genre all their own, an outlet for exploring ideas relating to the calligraphic nature of form, balance, proportion, and movement. Drawing from numerous private collections as well as the artist's studio, the exhibition offers the opportunity to experience this intimate work in the Museum's ground level, glass-walled Irving Stenn, Jr, Family Project Gallery, adjacent to the two di Suvero outdoor steel sculptures on the Museum's grounds–Orion (2006) and Shang (1984–85).

This exhibition is made possible in part by the Office of the President of the University of Michigan, the University of Michigan Health System, and Laura Lynch and Hugh McPherson.

This is the first part of a two-part exhibition introducing exciting, recently acquired works from UMMA's collections gifted to the museum during the past five years. Recent Acquisitions: Curator's Choice, Part I presents a first look at artworks, mostly prints, drawings, and photographs by artists as diverse as Annie Leibovitz, Edward Steichen, and Rembrandt van Rijn. Carole McNamara, Senior Curator of Western Art, chose works that focus on some of the enduring and compelling themes that have occupied artists in Europe and America. One is the preoccupation with the human form as an expression of ideas, feelings, and sensations. This selection begins with the tradition of the academic nude study and progresses to embrace different genres, from both secular and religious contexts. Another selection-landscapes and cityscapes-are each opportunities for artists to speak to our relationship to the natural world-both in how we experience landscape as well as how we construct our own urban environments.

This exhibition is made possible in part by the University of Michigan Office of the Provost.

The tiny dramas that comprise Robert Wilson's Video 50 contain aspects of his hallmark aesthetic: surreal or dream-like imagery, the absence of a linear narrative, the conflation of seemingly unrelated characters and micro-stories, and a mesmerizingly slow pace. Video 50 consists of a randomly arranged set of 30-second "episodes," a few of which feature notable French personalities of the 1970s-perfumier Hélène Rochas stares down a mugger, culture minister Michel Guy struggles to open a dresser drawer-and Wilson thought of these as miniature portraits or character studies. The creator and director of aggressively experimental theater, Wilson first came to prominence with works from the mid-1970s such as The Life and Times of Joseph Stalin (1973) and Einstein on the Beach (1976). These lavish, unusually long productions broke and then redefined every convention of theater. In Video 50 his shorter time-based portraits explore the intersection of narrative and still-life, seductively dissolving the distance between viewer and subject.