Exhibition:The More Things Change...The Labadie Collection's 100th Anniversary
2012-05-17 08:30 - 19:00 (America/Detroit) | Hatcher Graduate Library - Audubon Room
View selected items from the world’s foremost archive of international radical social protest movements. "Social protest movements often involve intense passion, so expect to see some edgy and offensive items on display," says Labadie Collection curator Julie Herrada.

The Labadie Collection is the world’s largest publicly accessible research collection covering just about every 19th, 20th, and 21st century protest movement that can be documented on paper, from the French Revolution to Occupy Wall Street. It has served as a resource for thousands of people the world over, from high school students to seasoned researchers, from young activists in search of their roots to documentary filmmakers unearthing eye-catching images. Books, serials, manuscripts, pamphlets, photographs, audio recordings, posters, and political buttons are all part of this eclectic group of materials.

View the exhibit during Audubon Room hours: Mon-Thurs 8:30am-7pm, Fri 8:30am-6pm, Sat 10am-6pm, Sun 1pm-7pm

Exhibition:Fluxus and the Essential Questions of Life
2012-05-17 10:00 - 17:00 | Museum of Art
Fluxus emerged in the early 1960s as a loose, international network of artists, composers, and designers-"led" by Lithuanian-born American artist George Maciunas (1931-1978)- that was noted for blurring the boundaries between art and life. Fluxus artists like Maciunas, Nam June Paik, George Brecht, and Yoko Ono, among many others, challenged the notion of high art by creating unassuming, often humorous objects and performances that redefined the terms of artistic production by demonstrating the idea that "anything can be art and anyone can do it." Because of their disregard for traditional artistic media, many of the objects in the exhibition are-often by design-acutely resistant to conventional forms of museum display. Variously conceived as carriers of ideas, absurdist send-ups of consumer products, and invitations to direct, playful participation by the viewer, these works attempt to undermine the idea that art is separate from the activity of living one's life. Through 116 works, Fluxus and the Essential Questions of Life will introduce visitors to the study and appreciation of art as an exciting and intellectually rewarding experience, and to the notion that art is something that can play an active role in their own approaches to life's essential questions.

This exhibition was organized by the Hood Museum of Art and was generously supported by Constance and Walter Burke, Dartmouth College Class of 1944, the Marie-Louise and Samuel R. Rosenthal Fund, and the Ray Winfield Smith 1918 Fund. UMMA's installation is made possible in part by the University of Michigan Health System, the University of Michigan Office of the Provost, Arts at Michigan, and the CEW Frances and Sydney Lewis Visiting Leaders Fund.

Exhibition:Orson Welles: New Acquisitions
2012-05-17 10:00 - 20:00 | Hatcher Graduate Library - Special Collections Library, 7th Floor
Two new archival collections focusing on acclaimed filmmaker and actor Orson Welles (1915-1985) were recently added to the U-M Special Collections Library’s already substantial Welles holdings. Selections from the new materials, including correspondence relating to Welles’s never-completed film Don Quixote and several costume designs credited to Welles for The Chimes at Midnight, are on display in the Special Collections Library (7th floor, Hatcher Graduate Library, University of Michigan) now through June 2012.

Special Collections Hours: Mon-Fri 10am-5pm

Exhibition:Peter Campus: Kiva
2012-05-17 10:00 - 17:00 | Museum of Art
Peter Campus is a pioneer of video art who experimented with the medium in the 1970s alongside other notable artists Bill Viola, Bruce Nauman, and Joan Jonas. Video represented a new frontier, one that allowed artists to expand upon common artistic concerns of the era, including minimalism, performance, and conceptual art Campus pursued many directions, and created both large-scale projections and a series of little-seen installation works that employ live video feeds, of which Kiva (1971) is one. Campus experimented with closed circuit cameras not with an interest in surveillance and control, but rather because they were the ideal tools for producing situations of interactive engagement between viewer and image.

Kiva–the title refers to a kind of ceremonial room used by Native Americans of the Southwest for ritual and spiritual ceremonies–comprises a monitor with a closed circuit camera mounted on top; the lens is pointed directly at the viewer of the monitor, but the camera's view is restricted and manipulated by the placement of suspended mirrors. The camera shoots through a hole in one mirror to the surface of the other, both constantly shifting in relation to each other as they turn like a mobile. The mirrors fragment and multiply the image, allowing the camera to take in aspects of the room, the viewer, and the eye of the camera itself.

This project is made possible by the UMMA Director's Discretionary Fund.

Lecture / Discussion:Leroy B. Townsend Seventh Annual Symposium
2012-05-17 10:30 - 11:30 | 1100 North University Building - 2548
Speaker Jane V. Aldrich, PhD, (University of Michigan, 1983) Professor of Medicinal Chemistry, University of Kansas

Other:Free Guided Peony Garden Tours
2012-05-17 12:15 | Nichols Arboretum
All invited for a series of twice-daily, free staff-led tours of the U-M Nichols Arboretum Peony Garden, May 15-20 during the 2012 peony bloom season. All tours take place in the Arboretum, 1610 Washington Hts., at 12:15 & 7 pm. Due to unseasonably warm weather last winter and this spring we've moved the bloom time up. Today’s tours: 12:15 pm: What’s in a Name? - Peony names of the past–the who, what, when, and why; 7:00 pm: Best in Show - Top-ranked peonies and why they were considered champions in their time.

Lecture / Discussion:The Haymarket Conspiracy: Transnational Anarchism in the Gilded Age
2012-05-17 17:30 - 19:00 | Hatcher Graduate Library - Gallery
Author Timothy Messer-Kruse will give a lecture on his new book The Trial of the Haymarket Anarchists: Terrorism and Justice in the Gilded Age and a reception will follow.

In this controversial and groundbreaking new history, Timothy Messer-Kruse rewrites the standard narrative of the most iconic event in American labor history: the Haymarket Bombing and Trial of 1886. Using thousands of pages of previously unexamined materials, Messer-Kruse demonstrates that, contrary to longstanding historical opinion, the trial was not the “travesty of justice” it has commonly been depicted as. Prosecutors in the trial successfully brought to light a daunting amount of evidence revealing the inner workings of an anarchist conspiracy to spark insurrection by attacking police, and connected their plans to the bomber through a solid chain of evidence. Rather than being an example of “judicial murder,” the Haymarket trial was a tragic case of judicial suicide, as the defense chose to use the trial as a grandstand for anarchism rather than deploy a sound legal defense. Though bumblers in the courtroom, the anarchist lawyers proved adept in the court of public opinion and succeeded in influencing the way historians and activists would remember this event for the next 125 years. Exhaustively researched and forcefully argued, this is a vital new contribution to our understanding of labor history and the world of Gilded Age America.

This program is offered in conjunction with the exhibit in the Audubon Room – The More Things Change”¦The Labadie Collection’s 100th Anniversary March 16-May 31, 2012

Lecture / Discussion:Author - Michael Duffy – The Presidents Club: Inside the World’s Most Exclusive Fraternity
2012-05-17 19:30 - 21:00 | Gerald Ford Library
Michael Duffy, Executive Editor and the Washington bureau chief of Time discusses his new book, The Presidents Club. The book reveals the secret history of the private relationships among the last 13 presidents, exploring the backroom deals, rescue missions, secret alliances and bitter rivalries of the men who served as commander in chief.

Journalist and presidential historian, Duffy unravels the secret compacts, the shared scars, and the private cease-fires from Hoover to Obama. The Presidents Club will change the way we think about the presidency, for the club itself is an instrument of presidential power.

Open Seating; Free Admission; Reception follows program

Performance:Jonathan Edwards
2012-05-17 20:00 | Off Campus Location - The Ark, 316 S. Main, Ann Arbor
