Student for a day
THIS EVENT HAS BEEN CANCELED, BUT WE WILL OFFER SOMETHING SIMILAR THIS FALL...
Have you wondered what it would be like to sit in on one of our classes?...To hear first hand the amazing breadth and depth of subject matter which our students experience?...To participate in stimulating and thought provoking discussion with our faculty?
Find out by coming back to college for a day this spring! This brand new program under development from the Special Programs department of KCAI comes with a yummy box lunch, but without homework, tests or an admissions portfolio.
When: Friday, April 4, 2008, 10:00 a.m. - 4:30 p.m.
Who: KCAI supporters and four of KCAI’s finest faculty
What: Four 60-minute faculty lectures as you’ve never experienced before
Where: “The Studio” at H&R Block Artspace
How: Advanced registration and payment is required.
Call Ruth Kartman at 816-802-3505 or e-mail her at rkartman@kcai.edu.
Cost: $79 for half day; $149 for full day.
Enrollment is limited to 35
Schedule
9:30 a.m. - Check in for morning only or full day lectures
10 a.m. - Welcome and Introductions
10:15 a.m. - Milton Katz “Breaking Through: John B. McLendon, Basketball Legend and Civil Rights Pioneer”
11:15 a.m. - Discussion
11:30 a.m. - Break
11:45 a.m. - Michele Fricke “The Birth of the Art Pottery Movement in the US”
12:45 p.m. - Discussion
1 p.m. - Box lunch
1 p.m. - Check in for afternoon only lectures
1:45 p.m. - Maria Buszek “Rrose is Rrose is Rrose: Gender Performance in Dada and Surrealism”
2:45 - Discussion
3 p.m. - Break
3:15 p.m. - Brett Reif “Get Real: Why does Modern Art Look so Funny?”
4:15 p.m. - Discussion
4:30 p.m. - End
The Lectures
Breaking Through: John B. McLendon, Basketball Legend and
Civil Rights Pioneer
Presented by Dr. Milton Katz
Professor, KCAI liberal arts department
Milton Katz will speak about his latest book that is consistent with the author’s long interest in civil rights and social justice. For almost a century, sports has been perceived as one path toward social advancement and racial reconciliation. Although most people recognize the pioneering role of Jackie Robinson in the integration of American sports, a diminutive, dignified African-American coach named John B. McLendon Jr. played an equally important part. A legendary basketball coach, McLendon broke down barriers of racial segregation in college and professional athletics, while remaining a consummate gentleman and role model for his players. John McLendon was an individual whose remarkable courage, unswerving determination and moral strength in the pursuit of human rights and social justice brought democracy in America a step closer to reality.
The Birth of the Art Pottery Movement in the US
Presented by Michele Fricke
Professor, KCAI liberal arts department
During the late 19th and early 20th century, ceramics underwent a remarkable revitalization in the United States. Spurred in part by the Centennial Exhibition of 1876, the well established craft of pottery and the brick making industry provided the foundation for an astonishing flowering of the medium of clay. In this hour, we will discuss the Centennial Exhibition, how that invigorated the United States’ clay artists and the resulting birth of art pottery on this side of the Atlantic. We will discuss artists such as Adelaide Alsop Robineau, George Ohr, Mary Louise McLaughlin and Maria Longworth Nichols (the founder of Rookwood Pottery) as well as Charles Fergus Binns, the founder of the influential ceramics program at Alfred University. We will close with a look at the artists who benefited from the pioneers who started this art pottery movement.
Rrose is Rrose is Rrose: Gender Performance in Dada and Surrealism
Presented by Dr. Maria Elena Buszek
Assistant Professor, KCAI liberal arts department
In the early 21st century, both the Dada and Surrealist movements are looked upon as key predecessors for Postmodern art - ideas of appropriation, irony, and identity were explored beyond the accepted norms of Modernist criticism, unwittingly setting the stage for the era that followed. Another of these movements’ important precedents was their obsession with sexuality and gender. Not only were these among the earliest art-historical movements in which women figured prominently, and immediately in their development, but the questions these women asked about the so-called “New Woman” led many of their male counterparts to explore the possibilities of a “New Man” at her side - and many varied gender identities in between.
In this lecture, Dr. Buszek will address experiments by Dada and Surrealist artists - from Marcel Duchamp to Frida Kahlo - with what postmodern theorists have since addressed as “gender performance” in their lives and art, and bring these artists’ influence up to the present by discussing their impact on the contemporary art world.
Get Real: Why does Modern Art Look so Funny?
Presented by Brett Reif
Assistant Professor, KCAI foundation department
This is a lecture that I have given every freshman in their first week of class for the past 10 years. It is essential, regardless of aesthetics or taste or expressive preference, that each art student has some grounding with the intentions of their contemporary peers. This lecture simplifies all art to one unified premise…make something REAL. The lecture then traverses from the Renaissance to Andy Warhol giving some notion of how each artist or movement was making something “more real” than their creative predecessors.
Faculty Bios
Milton S. Katz (Ph.D, St. Louis University, 1973) is professor of humanities and former chair of the liberal arts department at KCAI where he has taught for 34 years. He is the author of three books "Ban the Bomb: A History of SANE: the Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy", "The History of the Kansas City Art Institute" and "Breaking Through: John B. McLendon, Basketball Legend and Civil Rights Pioneer," as well as many book chapters, articles, and reviews on peace and justice movements in contemporary American history. The recipient of numerous awards, in l996 Professor Katz spent five weeks in Poland and the Czech Republic on a Fulbright Fellowship researching art of the Holocaust. In 1997, Dr. Katz received the KCAI Special Projects Award which enabled him to continue his research in Europe, Israel, and the United States. He was awarded a 1998 Missouri Humanities Council grant to direct a teachers seminar on Teaching the Holocaust at KCAI, and is currently serving on the speakers bureau of the Kansas Humanities Council. Professor Katz has lectured at colleges and universities, public and private schools, and religious and community institutions throughout the United States and abroad. He also served as vice - president of education at the Midwest Center for Holocaust Education in Overland Park, Kansas. In 2002, he received the Excellence in Teaching Award at the Art Institute, and in 2007 the college honored him with the Distingished Achievement Award.
Michele Fricke, professor and program head of art history, teaches ancient and renaissance art and the history of textiles and ceramics at KCAI. A practicing artist, Fricke creates fiber work that has been shown in exhibitions across the country and which is represented in many private collections. She serves on the board of the Midwest Art History Society and is currently the faculty representative on the KCAI Board of Trustees. Fricke received KCAI's "Excellence in Teaching Award" in 1993. She has spoken at numerous venues including the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, the National Association of Colleges of Art and Design, a lecture series on the history of ceramics at the Red Star Studio in Kansas City and recently at Baylor University on "Fiber Art: The New Dynamism." She is dedicated to animal rights and works with Pueblo Collie Sheltie Rescue. Before coming to KCAI in 1988, she taught at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, Ill., St. Mary's College in Notre Dame, Ind. and the University of Nevada in Las Vegas. At the last two schools, she also served as the director of exhibitions. Fricke earned a B.S. degree in education, an M.A. degree in art history and an M.F.A. degree in fiber from Northern Illinois University.
Maria Buszek, Ph.D., assistant professor in the School of Liberal Arts, teaches modern and contemporary art. She joined the KCAI faculty in 2002. Her publications include the book Pin-Up Grrrls: Feminism, Sexuality, Popular Culture (Duke University Press, 2006); contributions to the anthologies Blaze: Discourse on Art, Women, and Feminism (Cambridge Scholar' Press, 2007) and Contemporary Artists, 5 ed. (St. James Press, 2001); catalogue essays for Gagosian Gallery, Migros Museum of Contemporary Art, and Grand Arts; and articles in Art in America, Photography Quarterly, Woman's Art Journal, and TDR: The Journal of Performance Studies. She is also a regular contributor to the popular journal BUST and Kansas City's Review. ?Dr. Buszek's scholarship has won and been nominated for awards from the Popular Culture Association and American Culture Association (Emily Toth Book Award), the College Art Association (Charles Rufus Morey Book Award), American Society for Theater Research (Gerald Kahan Scholars's Prize), and New York University and the MIT Press (TDR Student Writing Award).??She curated the 2006 Charlotte Street Awards, and the exhibitions Raised in Craftivity at the Greenlease Gallery, Handymen and Girly Boys: Masculinity, Craft, and Culture at Sherry Leedy Contemporary Art, and Extra/ordinary: Fiber Artists Rethinking Art and Everyday Life at The Cube,and is currently at work on an anthology relating to the explosion of and meanings behind craft media in the contemporary art world. Dr. Buszek earned a bachelor's degree from Creighton University and master's and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Kansas.
Web site: http://www.mariabuszek.com
Brett Reif is an assistant professor in KCAI’s foundation department. Non-traditional media, sculpture and installation are major areas of interest for Reif, whose work has been exhibited at Spaces Gallery, Hallwalls Contemporary Art Center, Buffalo Artist Studio, the North Carolina Museum of Art, the Ackland Museum in North Carolina and the Leedy-Voulkos Art Center, to name a few. Reiff typically works in non-traditional media such as automobile grease, Post-It notes, test tubes and plastic wrap. Recent work involves deep-frying objects and materials (from Barbie Dolls to phone books) to create installations. He was offered a residency through Hallwalls Contemporary Art Center and was awarded an Outstanding Student Achievement Award in Contemporary Sculpture by Sculpture magazine. Originally from New Orleans, Reif received his B.F.A. degree from Loyola University in New Orleans and his M.F.A. degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He has instructed foundation and sculpture at Canisius College and SUNY at Buffalo in New York and Loyola University in New Orleans.