Associate Professor Charles O. Anderson has been awarded a 2018-2019 Research & Creative Grant from the Office of the Vice President for Research for his project (Re)current Unrest. The evening-length piece is an immersive performance installation ‘ritual’ investigating legacy, authorship and the history of black art and protest through the lens of the erasure of the Africanist presence inside of Steve Reich’s compositions.
Associate Professor Kirk Lynn, one of the five artistic directors of the Rude Mechs theatre collective, will perform in his own one-man show The Cold Record as part of the Public Theater's Under the Radar Festival in January 2019.
Assistant Professor Quetta Carpenter has been announced as the director the Illinois Shakespeare Festival's 2019 production of Julius Caesar. Her adaptation will offer a media-saturated, modern take on Shakespeare’s classic tragedy, set on the battlefields of social media and the 24-hour news cycle.
Studio Art Professor Jeff Williams has completed a massive installation, 17,000 ft² of Shade at Recycled Artist in Residency (RAIR), an artist residency program building awareness about sustainability through art in Philadelphia. During his time as a former resident artist for RAIR in 2016, Williams’ utilized RAIR’s heavy equipment and waste materials creating various sculptures made out of car hoods and concrete barrier blocks.
Dr. Andrea Giunta, CLAVIS founding director and Fellow of the Chair in Latin American Art History and Criticism at UT Austin, has been named the chief curator of the 12th edition of the Mercosur Biennial on October 10, 2018. The contemporary art exhibition will take place in Porto Alegre, Brazil, from April 9 to July 5, 2020, at the Museu de Arte do Rio Grande do Sul, the Memorial do Rio Grande do Sul and the Santander Cultural.
Kim Perlak (D.M.A., Music, 2008) has been named chair of Berklee's Guitar department. Perlak joined Berklee in 2013 as assistant chair of guitar. She becomes the first woman to chair the department, and only the fourth person to hold the position since the college added guitar as a principal instrument in 1962. Perlak now leads the college's second largest instrument group with nearly 1,000 students.
Music Education Major Jessica Martinez is the fourth female and second woman of color drum major to lead the Longhorn Band since it was founded in 1900. Women were not allowed to join the band until 1956 and could not serve as section leaders until the early 1970’s, which helps explain the absence of women in that role, band director Scott Hanna said.
A research team that includes two faculty members from the School of Design and Creative Technologies has been selected as one of seven recipients for the President’s Award for Global Learning at The University of Texas at Austin. The team, led by Assistant Professor of Design Jiwon Park and Michael Baker, assistant professor of practice in Arts and Entertainment Technologies, will explore whether culturally grounded intervention programs, through the use of a mobile app and in-person workshops, can have an impact on people’s opinions on mental illness and suicide in South Korea. The team also includes faculty advisor and UT Professor Soyoung Park and a team of four undergraduate students: Andrew Chen (biochemistry), Patience Ojionuka (psychology), Elena Ordonez (sociology/government) and Shaina Owens (neuroscience).
The College of Fine Arts at The University of Texas at Austin has appointed Patti Burke to the newly created position of Head of Industry Relations, to support the school’s national brand awareness in search of industry partners and collaborators. Most recently, Burke developed and led a global strategic talent initiative at Walt Disney Imagineering, aimed at professional development of students and professionals.
The University of Texas Office of Sustainability has granted Theatre and Dance student Imam Corbani and the Longhorn Band Student Association with Green Fund grants under the "waste reduction" category.