Writing Now/Reading Now. Sindya Bhanoo, Tuesday, March 1. 5:30 P.M. Reception, 6:00 P.M. Fiction Reading. Ulrich Museum of Art

The Writing Now/Reading Now series is back on Tuesday with a fiction reading from Sindya Bhanoo at 6 p.m. today, March 1st at the Ulrich Museum of Art. Bhanoo is Wichita State’s 2022 Visiting Emerging Fiction Writer. She will read from her debut short story collection, “Seeking Fortune Elsewhere.” There will be a reception before at 5:30 P.M. The event is free and open to the public.

Writing Now/Reading Now is co-sponsored by the WSU Department of English, Fairmount College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Watermark Books and Café, and the Ulrich Museum of Art.

Bhanoo’s fiction has appeared in Granta, New England Review, and Glimmer Train. She is the recipient of an O. Henry Award and scholarships from the Bread Loaf and Sewanee writers conferences. A longtime newspaper reporter, she has worked for “The New York Times” and “The Washington Post,” and was most recently a Knight-Wallace Reporting Fellow at the University of Michigan and a visiting faculty member at the Michener Center for Writers.

Image of people with masks viewing art at the Ulrich. Featuring text 'Ulrich Museum of Art. Spring Exhibition Party. Friday, February 25th, 5-8 P.M. Free and open to all'

The Ulrich Museum of Art will host its spring 2022 exhibition party 5-8 P.M. this evening, Friday, Feb. 25. The party is free and open to the public. Masks will be required. This spring, the Ulrich has brought four shows to campus (three in the museum’s galleries and one at the Grace Memorial Chapel). They include the following:

  • Two immersive video installations by Finnish artist Eija-Liisa Ahtila, “The Annunciation” and “The Bridge.”
  • Highlights from the career of Wichita-based artist Ann Resnick in “Chapter & Verse.”
  • A sound installation in Grace Memorial Chapel titled “DECLARATION” by Lebanese American artist Annabel Daou.

The party will feature remarks from President Rick Muma, interim Ulrich director Rodney Miller, and curator Ksenya Gurshtein. It will also feature live music and food and drink from local vendors including Hungry Bunny, the Black Fig Bakery, Komugi, Argentina’s Empanadas, Mokko Cuisine, Viola’s Pantry, and Journey East.

Ulrich Virtual. Artist Lesley Dill. Voices from the Vault: The 1990s. Tuesday, February 15. 6 P.M. CDT. Free and open to all. Registration required: ulrich.wichita.edu/programs. Artist photo copyright, Ed Robbins. Humanities Kansas and Ulrich Museum of Art, Wichita State.

The Ulrich Museum of Art is hosting artist Lesley Dill at 6 p.m. tonight, Feb. 15 via Zoom. The talk is part of the Ulrich’s “Voices from the Vault: The 1990s” series. Registration is free and open to the public.

Dill will deliver a visual exploration of her artistic practice, and the American visionaries, writers, artists and abolitionists who inspired her current exhibition, “Wilderness: Light Sizzles Around Me.” The “Voices from the Vault: The 1990s” series is made possible by funding from Humanities Kansas, a nonprofit cultural organization that connects communities with history, traditions and ideas to strengthen civic life.

Ulrich Museum of Art presents Pass the Mic. Thursday, February 24th, 7-9 P.M. Are you a WSU student in search of an audience? Consider signing up for open mic night at the Ulrich Museum of Art! All WSU undergraduate and graduate students are invited to take the stage with performances in poetry, music, dance, stand-up, theatre, art, or more! Email Jana Erwin at jana.erwin@wichita.edu if you'd like to sign up for a spot.

Are you a Wichita State student in search of an audience? Consider signing up for Pass the Mic, a new open mic night at the Ulrich Museum of Art 7-9 p.m. Feb. 24. All WSU undergraduate and graduate students are invited to take the stage with performances in poetry, music, dance, stand-up, theatre and art.

For more information, contact Jana Erwin.

Ulrich Museum of Art. Spring 2022 Exhibitions. January 27-May 7, 2022. Free and open to all. Eija-Liisa, The Annunciation, video, 28 minutes, 25 seconds. Eija-Liisa, The Bridge, video, 8 minutes. Ann Resnick, Chapter & Verse. Annabel Dou, DECLARATION, sound installation at Grace Memorial Chapel at WSU. Ulrich Museum of Art. 1845 Fairmount. Wichita State University. 11 a.m. – 5 p.m., Monday through Saturday. Closed Sundays and University & Major Holidays.

The spring 2022 exhibitions are now available at the Ulrich Museum of Art. The exhibitions all share one thing in common — all showcase works from innovative women artists.

The four new shows will be available for view until May 7. Three of the exhibits will be on display at the Ulrich during regular gallery hours (11 a.m.-5 p.m., Monday-Saturday.) A special Ulrich Connections exhibition will be held off-site at the Grace Memorial Chapel, and will be on display 8 a.m.- 8 p.m., Monday-Friday. All exhibitions are free and open to the public.

Ulrich Director Leslie Brothers said she was excited to unveil the new exhibitions, which feature works from Finnish video artist Eija-Liisa Ahtila, Lebanese American artist Annabel Daou, and Wichita artist Ann Resnick.

“We have a wide range of exciting shows to share with you this spring,” Brothers said. “Everyone from acclaimed international artists to one of our most beloved local artists, and all of them examine deep subjects, from mental health to social justice to loss.”

Several programs related to these exhibitions are scheduled through the spring. The four shows on display include the following:

 The Annunciation and The Bridge: Eija-Liisa Ahtila — Since the 1990s, Ahtila has been a pioneer of immersive video installations that expand on the possibilities of cinema as an art form. Ahtila does this by making multiple perspectives visible at the same time and offering a new mode of meditative viewing of time-based works in gallery spaces. This will be the first presentation of work by Ahtila in Kansas and the Great Plains region. The Annunciation takes as its starting point one of the best-known Christian stories — the moment when the Archangel Gabriel visits the Virgin Mary to announce that she will give birth to the Son of God. The Bridge is about mental breakdown and the experience of psychosis. The work is based on interviews conducted by the artist with real women but the story and the dialogue in the video are fictional. A mother who is on her way to pick up her young daughter walks through the streets of Helsinki as she narrates her experience of dealing with resurfaced repressed memories of childhood abuse and the resulting mental breakdown. When she comes to a bridge and falls, she is unable to get back up. She is ultimately able to cross the bridge only by crawling on all fours. Metaphor and fact blur in the film, as do past and present. The film is a poignant depiction of psychosis triggered by trauma that allows viewers to empathize with the narrator’s embodied first-person experience.

Chapter & Verse: Ann ResnickResnick has been making conceptually complex and visually sumptuous art for more than forty years. She starts with the personal—her own family history, marriage, broad reading tastes and friendships. She then turns the raw materials of her life into deeply moving universal ruminations on loss and remembrance, the need to capture intangible emotional ties through tangible objects and the beauty that can be found in the awareness of the finitude of our time on earth. Resnick is also a pillar of contemporary art in Wichita who has worked for twenty-five years as a gallerist, activist and exhibiting artist. Though she has shown her work nationally and internationally, much of her work has never been seen in Wichita. This exhibition will present the highlights of her artistic career going back to the 1990s while showcasing her inventiveness in a variety of media.

DECLARATION: Annabel Daou Daou’s exhibit will be displayed at WSU’s Grace Memorial Chapel. In 2020, Daou created the sound piece DECLARATION in collaboration with the sound artist Miriam Schickler. The work features Daou’s voice reciting phrases from the scroll as first-person actions, interspersed with a mix of sounds, both of peaceful city life and chants from recent protests in Chile, Lebanon and other places around the world. The Ulrich acquired the piece for its permanent collection in 2021.

Dr. Rodney Miller, dean of the College of Fine Arts at Wichita State University, has been named the Ulrich Museum of Art’s interim director as the university begins a formal search to fill the position

“The Ulrich Museum is one of the most valuable and valued institutions at Wichita State University,” Miller said. “I am thrilled and privileged to play a small part in this transition to a new chapter.”

Current Ulrich director Leslie Brothers recently accepted a position as director of the Museum Campus in her hometown of Kenosha, Wisconsin.

As dean of WSU’s College of Fine Arts for the past 18 years, Miller has worked closely with the Ulrich Museum as well as the local arts community, making him an excellent choice to lead the museum during this transitionary period. He will continue in his role as Dean of the College of Fine Arts while also serving as the interim director.

“Dean Miller has been a tireless advocate for the arts in Wichita for many years now,” Dr. Shirley Lefever, WSU interim provost and executive vice president said. “He knows how important it is for the museum to communicate its value to our campus and to the greater community.”

Before serving as dean Wichita State, Miller was dean of the College of Fine Arts and Humanities at the University of Nebraska at Kearney for six years. Before that, he was the director of vocal studies at New York University. Miller earned his Ph.D. from Illinois State University, a master’s of music from Indiana University, and a bachelor’s of music from West Texas State University. His scholarly and creative endeavors include professional operatic performances and quantitative research analysis. He is a veteran of the professional operatic stage, and his career has taken him throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia.

Lefever indicated that Dr. Keith Pickus, professor of history at Wichita State, will lead the search process for a new director. She said the search will focus on bringing diversity to the role, and finding candidates who can effectively communicate the museum’s messages to its various constituents. More details on the search will be made available soon.

Image of gallery. Ulrich Museum of Art. Spring 2022 Exhibition Celebration. Moved to Friday, February 25th, 5-8 P.M. Free and open to all

Due to the recent spike in Omicron variant cases, the Ulrich Museum of Art is rescheduling its upcoming Spring 2022 Exhibition Celebration to 5-8 p.m. Feb. 25. The event was originally scheduled to take place Jan. 27. The event is free and open to the public. 

In addition to this schedule change, the museum will shift all in-person programming scheduled between now and late February to online-only. Registration is required for all virtual Ulrich programs.

For more information, visit the museum’s programs webpage.

Voices from the Vault: The 1990s. Hock E Aye Vi Edgar Heap of Birds. Ulrich Museum of Art. Tuesday, November 30th. 5:30 P.M. Reception. 6:00 P.M. Program. Free and open to all. Livestream available at: Ulrich.wichita.edu/programs

“The Voices from the Vault” series is back at 6 p.m. today, Nov. 30 at the Ulrich Museum of Art and via YouTube Livestream. There will be a reception before the event at 5:30 p.m. The event will feature Indigenous Artist Hock E Aye Vi Edgar Heap of Birds. His talk, titled “Spirit Citizen: Provocative Native American Public Art and Studio Practice,” will focus on his pieces in the  Ulrich’s permanent collection.

Heap of Birds is one of the leaders of the Tsistsistas (Cheyenne) traditional Elk Warrior Society and lives on the Cheyenne/ Arapaho Nation Reservation in Oklahoma. As an artist and an advocate for Indigenous communities worldwide, his work includes multidisciplinary forms of public art messages, large-scale drawings, Neuf Series acrylic paintings, prints, works in glass and monumental porcelain enamel on steel outdoor sculpture.

While representing Indigenous communities, his art focuses first on social justice and on the personal freedom to live within the tribal circle as an expressive individual.

Ulrich Museum Registrar Jo Cox sits within the new Hank Willis Thomas sculpture, "Ernest and Ruth," installed yesterday in front of the museum.

On Nov. 8 , the Ulrich Museum of Art  installed the newest sculpture in its world-class Martin H. Bush Outdoor Sculpture Collection.

The interactive sculpture, “Ernest and Ruth,” by artist Hank Willis Thomas, is the 82nd piece in the museum’s outdoor sculpture collection and it’s the first by an African American sculptor. The sculpture is in the shape of a giant speech bubble that also serves as a bench. Thomas chose this shape because he wanted each person who sits there to know they have something of value to add to the conversation happening around them.

The sculpture installed in front of the Ulrich is one of three benches in the series, all similarly named after Thomas’s grandparents, that will be on the Wichita State campus. The other two benches will be installed at a later date and will be located just off the main traffic area leading up to Woolsey Hall.

“These sculptures are the perfect fit for our WSU campus,” Leslie Brothers, director of the Ulrich Museum of Art, said. “They serve as a playful celebration of expressing individuality through free speech.”

Thomas’ sculptures are the first works by an African American artist in the Ulrich Museum’s outdoor sculpture collection. In addition to his sculpture, Thomas’s 2009 series of 20 paintings titled “I Am a Man” is a work that the museum recently lent to Willis’ large-scale traveling mid-career retrospective, and they were featured in its Ulrich + Artists + You Community Billboard Project last year.

Visitors are encouraged to come by, sit within the speech bubble, and have their photos taken with Thomas’s sculpture. If you post your photos on social media, be sure to tag the museum (@ulrichmuseum) and use the hashtag #ulrichmuseum.

Citizen Science in Action. Dr. Alice Boyle, associate professor of biology at Kansas State University. Tuesday,

The Ulrich Museum of Art on the Wichita State University campus invites you to a special presentation at 3:30 p.m. today with Dr. Alice Boyle, associate professor of biology at Kansas State University, who will deliver a  Citizen Science in Action talk titled “A prairie bird’s love-hate relationship with humans.”

The talk connects her ongoing research with the Ulrich’s current bird-human-themed art exhibition, Look it’s daybreak, dear, time to sing: Richard Ibghy and Marilou Lemmens, which is on display at the museum through Dec. 4. The talk is free and open to the public. If you are unable to attend the talk in person, click here to view a livestream of the program.