Exhibition:Orality and Literacy in Greek and Roman Egypt
2012-06-17 08:30 - 18:00 (America/Detroit) | Hatcher Graduate Library - Gallery
This exhibit shows the different levels of literacy that existed in the ancient world, from people barely able to write to professional scribes able to produce the most beautiful books. It also demonstrates the role of writing in a society where not many people were literate. Orality and Literacy in Greek and Roman Egypt brings together original documents from the University of Michigan Papyrus Collection that illustrate how written documents can help us reconstruct a spoken world.

One of the ways we can learn about the ancient world is to read the texts left behind. These texts give first-hand insight into what these ancient peoples did, planned, and thought, and we are lucky that the dry sands of Egypt have preserved for us thousands of them, written on papyri and other perishable writing materials, allowing us an unparalleled look into day-to-day life. Papyri preserve the written world of ancient Egypt but also provide glimpses of what the spoken world was like.

This exhibit coincides with the conference “Orality and Literacy in the Ancient World X: Tradition, Transmission, and Adaptation” hosted by the Department of Classical Studies, June 27-30, 2012.

Exhibition:Flip Your Field: Abstract Art From the Collection
2012-06-17 10:00 - 17:00 | Museum of Art
This is the inaugural exhibition of a new series of exhibitions to be curated by UM faculty. Entitled Flip Your Field, this series asks these guest curators to consider artwork outside their field of specialization from UMMA's renowned collections to challenge their own thinking as well as that of UMMA's audiences. Celeste Brusati, Professor of History of Art, Women's Studies, and Art and Design, an expert in the visual art and culture of the Netherlands from the fifteenth through the seventeenth centuries, has gathered a compelling group of images by such titans of twentieth-century abstraction as Lee Bontecou, Helen Frankenthaler, Wassily Kandinsky, Joan MirÃ³, Robert Motherwell, and Antonio TÃ pies, as well as works by many other unexpected artists.

This exhibition is made possible in part by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Exhibition:Judith Turner: The Flatness of Ambiguity
2012-06-17 10:00 - 17:00 | Museum of Art
Judith Turner is a noted American photographer whose subject matter is mostly architecture. Turner's training as a designer allows her to visually understand an architect's intention and to reveal it in compositions that she constructs and edits through her camera work. Her photography can be seen as a metalanguage of architectural intention and as an artistic expression that is inseparable from the representation of the built work. Turner's signature style consists of highly abstract black-and-white compositions that play with the ambiguity of light, shadow, and tonality to heighten the aesthetic character of her subject matter and reveal visual relationships not readily apparent. This exhibition will present approximately forty photographs spanning Turner's three-decade career.

This exhibition is made possible in part by Macy's and the University of Michigan Office of the Provost.

Exhibition:Peter Campus: Kiva
2012-06-17 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.

Performance:Puccini's La Bohème
2012-06-17 14:00 | Lydia Mendelssohn Theatre

Presentation:Recent Acquisitions: Curator's Choice, Part II
2012-06-17 14:00 | Museum of Art
Asian art, both historic and modern in ceramics, woodwork and basketry representing Hindu and Buddhist practices will be on view in this selection of exciting recent acquisitions. Docents will engage visitors in conversation on artists as diverse as Japanese ceramic artist KÃ´yama Kiyoko, local favorite Larry Cressman, and the acclaimed Michele Oka Doner–all included in this exhibition.

Performance:Tish Hinojosa
2012-06-17 19:30 | Off Campus Location - The Ark, 316 S Main, Ann Arbor, MI
