Arts Briefs, 11/18/10

Mark Tullos Jr., director of the Hilliard University Art Museum at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, is among those warning curators about a suspected art forger posing as a Jesuit priest who may have been duping American museums for two decades. Tullos scrutinized a work allegedly by the American impressionist Charles Courtney Curran, and found under black light signs of bleach found in contemporary papers and linens. The Guardian reports that the forger may have duped as many as 30 museums with fake Picassos, Signacs, and Daumiers. In one guise, as a priest, the forger tells curators that the art gifts, for which he asks no payment, are in honor of his mother. In another guise, he tells museums the gifts are in honor of his late father, a high-ranking military officer. Tullos told the Guardian that the forger’s success might be in part because of museums’ embarrassment, and subsequent silence, at being conned. He said he has alerted federal authorities.

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George Washington University’s department of theater and dance will offer a new master’s-of-fine-arts degree for midcareer dancers and choreographers. The program will allow dancers to refine individual style, technique, and repertoire while developing professional relationships with the larger international dance community.

“As dancers and choreographers, we have limited time to build a career, and the process of receiving more education should not slow the process, it should enhance it,” said Dana Tai Soon Burgess, chair of the department, a respected Washington choreographer, and director of DTSB & Co., an Asian-American dance company. The master’s program is designed for skilled, practicing professionals with extensive dance experience and will incorporate individualized distance and on-site learning. With matriculation scheduled for June 2011, the 18-month program offers an initial eight-week residency at George Washington, two semesters of supervised distance learning for artists working full time domestically or internationally, and completion of a performance portfolio submitted via electronic media. Each student will work one-on-one with a faculty member to develop the performance portfolio. The department is encouraging applicants from outside the United States.

More info.

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Next month, the University of Idaho will award master’s of music-education degrees to the first two graduates of its hybrid program combining summer classes with online work during the remainder of the year.

Lorie Enloe, an assistant professor of music education, explained: “Enrollment in our ‘master of music in music education’ degree had been pretty low for a few years. For area music teachers to pursue a master’s, they had to quit their jobs to come to campus. So I saw a chance to provide better access to graduate course work by offering classes online, and live during the summer.”

Most of the program’s current eight students, Enloe said, teach in isolated, rural areas, seven in Idaho and one in Missouri. Summer courses focus on hands-on instruction, like wind ensemble, choir, conducting, and a summer camp that teaches the use of technology in the music classroom.

Admission to the program requires a minimum of three years’ experience teaching music in public or private schools.

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Last year, more than 130 students at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln’s Johnny Carson School of Theatre and Film worked with Hollywood professionals on a 25-minute crime drama called Vipers in the Grass. Now the school is shopping it around to competitions and festivals. Among the pros involved were screenwriter Jorge Zamacona (Oz, Homicide, Law & Order); film editor Mike Hill (Apollo 13), and actor Harley Jane Kozak (Parenthood, Arachnophobia, Necessary Roughness). Spearheading the project have been Paul Steger, director of the Carson School, and Sandy Veneziano, an assistant professor who previously worked as a director and set designer in L.A. Here’s a video about the project:

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With a $15,000 grant from Disabled American Veterans, a San Diego State University music professor, Marian Liebowitz, and her students are putting on 12 concerts and 37 music classes to aid in the treatment of traumatic brain injury, post-traumatic stress disorder, and addictions in the homeless-veteran population in recovery at Veterans Village San Diego.

Said Liebowitz: “Concussive blasts from IED’s and other explosions cause TBI [traumatic brain injury], and it has been called the signature injury of the Iraq war. It requires a more-diverse spectrum of treatments. Performing music, which involves so many aspects of brain function, is believed to recruit uninjured parts of the brain to compensate for parts that have been injured, and help those parts that are injured recover.”

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EXHIBITS:

“Between Picture and Viewer: The Image in Contemporary Painting”
Nov. 23 – Dec. 22, 2010
Reception: Thursday, December 2, 2010, 6 - 8 p.m.
School of the Visual Arts
Visual Arts Gallery

Panel discussion: Thursday, December 9, 2010, 7 p.m.
Moderated by Katy Siegel, with Josephine Halvorson, James Hyde and Dana Schutz
SVA Theatre, 333 West 23 Street, New York City

Recent work by 19 established and emerging New York artists examining the relationship between contemporary painting and the notion of “the image” in today’s increasingly hypervisual culture. Curated by Tom Huhn, chair of the BFA Visual and Critical Studies Department at SVA, and Isabel Taube, a faculty member, the exhibition is the result of a collaboration between Huhn, a philosopher, and Taube, an art historian. Says Taube: “These works further the modernist debate about whether painting should be considered predominantly an image or an object.”

More info.

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Vassar College’s Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center will present “150 Years Later: New Photography by Tina Barney, Tim Davis, and Katherine Newbegin,” from January 28 to March 27, 2011. As part of the college’s sesquicentennial anniversary, the center commissioned the three photographers to highlight different aspects of campus life. In the 40 new works, says curator Mary-Kay Lombino, the photographers avoided “the typical view of architectural and natural beauty for which the college is known,” focusing instead “on the idiosyncratic, the ironic, and the hidden aspects of campus life.”

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Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) will host “The Narcissism of Minor Differences,” an exhibition showcasing 17 acclaimed artists, including Francisco de Goya, Philip Guston and Sam Durant, that will explore the dark side of intolerance using art, historical artifact and documentation, December 9, 2010 to March 13, 2011. Through more than 40 objects and four installations, the exhibition, in the Fox Building’s Decker and Meyerhoff galleries, 1303 W. Mount Royal Ave., will examine different types of intolerance by various groups: from the most overt to the benign and sublimated, from the kind of intolerance that excludes to the type of intolerance that kills. Three solo shows of MICA alumni work will complement the exhibit: Joseph Lewis III ’89 (Mount Royal School of Art), Thursday, December 9, 2010 to Sunday, January 9, 2011; Marc Andre Robinson ’02 (Rinehart School of Sculpture), January 14 to February 13; and Valerie Piraino ’04 (general fine arts), February 18 to March 13. Additionally, from January 28 to March 13, Dennis Farber, a foundation faculty member, will present an accompanying solo show. More info.

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The George Washington University’s Luther W. Brady Art Gallery presents “South Africa Kicks,” an exhibition of former George Washington students’ photographs and video documenting travels within South Africa during the recent FIFA World Cup. Ryder Haske, Gabriel Seder and Tyler C. Perry chronicled stories of fellow travelers and locals from across South Africa. From Johannesburg to Cape Town to Durban, their material and written testimony weave a vivid perspective on the largest soccer tournament in the world.

November 17 to December 17, 2010
Gallery Hours: Tuesday - Friday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
The George Washington University
Luther W. Brady Art Gallery
Media and Public Affairs Building, 2nd Floor
805 21st St., NW, Washington, D.C.
Free and open to the public.
More info.: 202-994-1525

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“Lasting Impressions: Japanese Prints from the ASU Art Museum”
Through Nov 27, 2010
Arizona State University Art Museum

Features some 60 Japanese prints from the 18th century to contemporary artists. It also includes essays on the prints researched by the fall 2009 Japanese Art History Seminar taught by Claudia Brown, professor of Asian art history, School of Art, Herberger Institute of Design and the Arts. More info.

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Ohio Wesleyan University’s Richard M. Ross Art Museum is featuring one artist who uses the human body as art and another who creates wearable art to adorn it. Laura Young is displaying “Transfigures,” an exhibition of self-portraits in which the Nashville artist draws on her body as she explores the essence of her identity. Arthur Hash is displaying “Jewelry and wearable objects,” for which the New Paltz, N.Y., artist uses plastics, metals, and other materials to participate in the “contemporary exploration of what jewelry is and can be.”

Both exhibits will be on display through December 16 at the Ross Art Museum, 60 S. Sandusky St., Delaware, Ohio. Admission is free.

More info.

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CONCERT:

At 8 p.m., November 23, the University of North Texas One O’Clock Lab Band will be joined by saxophonist Tim Ries and vocalist Bernard Fowler in a performance of music from the Rolling Stones.

It will be at Murchison Performing Arts Center’s Winspear Performance Hall, located along the north side of Interstate 35E at North Texas Boulevard, Denton, Texas. Tickets are $10 to $15.

Arts & Academe’s arts briefs are compiled from news releases. Please e-mail alexander.kafka[at]chronicle.com.