Release date: March 22, 2004
Contact: Sally Corbett, Director of Public Relations, Arts,
at 404-727-6678 or sacorbe@emory.edu

Emory Inaugural Arts Festival April 1

The theme for the inauguration of Emory University President James W. Wagner, "Celebrate Emory," provided the inspiration for planners to incorporate all major facets of the university into a festive week. Artists and collections from Emory University and Oxford College will be highlighted in the free, public festival on Thursday, April 1 from noon until midnight in five campus locations. The campus will be enlivened with theater, dance, textile art, painting, sculpture, poetry, jazz and vocal music.

The one ticketed event is a free concert, "Barenaked Voices: Emory Student A Cappella Celebration." Tickets can be ordered beginning Monday, March 29 by calling 404-727-5050 (limit 2; $3.50 fee for phone orders) or by visiting the Schwartz Center Box Office (one per student i.d.) on March 31 from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. and April 1 from 10 a.m. to 8:30 p.m.

"The visual and performing arts components in the inaugural activities will be strong, since the arts have always been an important part of Emory and even more so in the last 10 years, culminating with the opening of the Schwartz Center for Performing Arts," says Gary Hauk, vice president and secretary of the university. "The arrival of a leader can invigorate an entire academic community, but especially artists at Emory who are continually looking for new ways to develop, express and create."

Members of the Steering Committee for the Arts at Emory developed the festival plan and coordinated participation by arts departments and organizations. "The festival provides an opportunity to bring the entire community together for an exploration of the artistic process, a celebration of creativity, and fresh dialogue. In addition to Thursday's events, some exciting commissions and surprises are planned," says Rosemary Magee, executive director of the steering committee and senior associate dean of Emory College.

A highlight of the all-day arts festival is "Barenaked Voices: Emory Student A Cappella Celebration." The Schwartz Center staff, eight choral and a cappella groups, and Director of Choral Studies Eric Nelson have organized the concert. Schwartz Center Managing Director Robert McKay says, "Groups of students, who are together representative of the Emory student body as a whole, are collaborating because of their love of music. We hope the event becomes a new Emory tradition."

Another arts festival highlight will be a visual arts exhibition in the Schwartz Center organized by Katherine Mitchell, director of the visual arts program. Mitchell says the "Creative Process" exhibition "is exciting because it will be the first time that Emory faculty and students have exhibited together. We hope that this collaboration will be an expression of the richness of the creative process and will fully communicate the educational experience that is Emory by involving faculty, administration and students."

The day of cultural activities includes:

Noon-2 p.m. Cox Hall, Clock Tower
Poetry Matters
This open-mic reading by Emory students, faculty and administration is sponsored by the Poetry Council and Stipe Society.

2:15-2:30 p.m. Schatten Gallery, Woodruff Library
"Boundless: A Collection of Photographs and Memorabilia Tracing the History of the Emory Dance Program" Exhibition tour
The tour led by a member of the dance program faculty features selections from the Emory Dance Program's collection of photographs, documents, costumes, posters and other ephemera.

2:30-3:45 p.m. Dance Studio, Schwartz Center
"Dance in the Making: Dance Open Classroom" Emory's advanced choreography students taught by assistant professor George Staib

6-8 p.m. Theater Open Rehearsals
Guests may drop in on one or more open rehearsals. Theater docents will be on hand in both locations to provide orientation and to usher guests to their seats.

• Theater Lab, Schwartz Center, Lenaia Festival of Student Play Readings, Emory and Oxford students and guests preparing for the weekend's staged and semi-staged readings
• Mary Gray Munroe Theater, Dobbs Center, rehearsal for the upcoming Theater Emory world premiere production of "Life Goes On: A Silent Play in Black and White" with Emory faculty, guest, and student actors. Playwright, actor and director John Ammerman, member of Theater Emory and associate professor of theater studies, developed this play in the style of a black and white silent film, including live musical accompaniment, inspired by the dramatic and comic qualities of silent films of the 1920s.

7-8 p.m., Reception Hall, Michael C. Carlos Museum
Love, Sex and Transformation: An Evening of Ovid in Music, Art and Verse
The program includes Emory alumnus Kim Lorch performing Benjamin Britten's "Six Metamorphoses after Ovid" for solo oboe; The Metamorphosen Quartet performing movements from Gyorgy Legiti's "String Quartet No. 1 - The Metamorphoses Nocturnes"; and classics faculty Garth Tissol and Peter Bing, and White Professor of English Ronald Schuchard reading original texts and modern translations of the Roman poet's work. Contemporary poets whose translations of Ovid will be featured are Seamus Heaney, Ted Hughes and Michael Longley, whose archives are held in Woodruff Library's Special Collections. Selections from the manuscripts of these poets' translations and works from the Carlos Collection of Greek Art that feature images of transformation will be on view in the Reception Hall for the evening.

8:30 p.m.-10:30 p.m., doors open at 7:45 p.m., reception and art exhibition opening follows, Schwartz Center, Emerson Concert Hall
"Barenaked Voices: Emory Student A Cappella Celebration"
Emory's eight student a cappella and choral groups and faculty-directed chorus and choir will appear together for the first time in a celebration of voice. Featured are Emory's newest co-ed a cappella group, AHANA A Cappella; oldest co-ed group, Aural Pleasure; Emory Concert Choir; Emory University Chorus; Jewish a cappella group Kol HaNesher; the all-male No Strings Attached; the all-female group, The Gathering; and the gospel choir Voices of Inner Strength. Artistic Director Eric Nelson.

10:30-midnight, Schwartz Center, Upper Level and Ginden Arts Commons
"Creative Process--Selected Works by Faculty and Students of the Visual Arts"
More than 20 new and recent works of sculpture, photography, painting and more by Oxford and Emory artists. The reception features an array of chocolate gourmet desserts.

Additional weekend arts activities:
Saturday, April 3, 8 p.m. Schwartz Center, Emerson Concert Hall
Wayne Shorter Quartet: Flora Glenn Candler Concert Series Concert. The acclaimed jazz quartet led by the eight-time Grammy-winning saxophonist. For tickets ($45 general public; $36 faculty, staff, /alumni; $10 Emory students), call 404-727-5050.

Ongoing exhibitions, Michael C. Carlos Museum, free for all during inauguration weekend
"Spirited Vessels: Ritual and Creation in African Ceramics" pays tribute to the multivalent quality of African ceramics as aesthetic, utilitarian, prestige and ritual ware. The exhibition features late 19th- and 20th-century pottery and clay figurative sculptures from Mali, BurkinaFaso, Ghana, Nigeria, Cameroon, Democratic Republic of Congo, Malawi, Uganda, Mozambique and South Africa. The artworks are drawn from the Michael C. Carlos Museum's permanent collection of African art, as well as several other Southeastern art museums and prominent private collections. The vast majority of pottery in the exhibition was made by the skilled hands of women and without the benefit of the mechanical potter's wheel.

"Anne Truitt: Early Drawings and Sculpture, 1959-1963"
Anne Truitt, a leading figure of American abstract art, has been the subject of retrospective exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Corcoran Gallery of Art and the Baltimore Museum of Art. The present show is the first museum exhibition devoted specifically to Truitt's early work and her drawings in particular. Co-curated by Margaret Shufeldt, associate curator of works on paper, and James Meyer, professor of art history at Emory, the exhibition examines the role that drawing played in Truitt's development of a new kind of three dimensional, geometric sculpture by 1962--a sculpture that established Truitt's reputation as an innovator of so-called Minimal Art. The show is comprised of more than 20 drawings, many of which have never been exhibited.

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