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Supporting Creative Research
CREATIVE ARTS AWARDS
Each year the Division of the Arts recognizes the achievements and service of students, faculty, and staff and provides support for future creative endeavors and research. With the assistance of the Creative Arts Awards Selection Committee, five outstanding students, faculty, and staff were recognized for awards totaling $61,500.
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In addition, three residents of the Studio were also recognized. Due to the COVID-19 shutdown, the usual in-person ceremony was canceled and the recipients were celebrated online.
2020 AWARDS IN THE CREATIVE ARTS
Congratulations to the recipients of the 2020 Creative Arts Awards!
Creative Arts Award
Fred Stonehouse, Professor, Art Department
Emily Mead Baldwin Award in the Creative Arts
Leslie Smith III, Associate Professor, Art Department
Edna Wiechers Arts in Wisconsin Award
Anna Campbell, Assistant Professor, Department of Gender & Women’s Studies
Joyce J. and Gerald A. Bartell Award in the Arts
Sherry Wagner-Henry, Director and Faculty Associate, Bolz Center for Arts Administration
David and Edith Sinaiko Frank Graduate Fellowship for a Woman in the Arts
Midori Samson, DMA Candidate, Mead Witter School of Music Thank you to this year’s committee: Susan Zaeske, Interim Director, Division of the Arts; Lisa Gralnick, Art Department; Florence Hsia, Associate Vice Chancellor for Arts and Humanities Research and Graduate Education; Carolyn Kallenborn, Design Studies Department; Sarah Marty, Program Director, Madison Early Music Festival, Division of the Arts; Johannes Wallmann, Mead Witter School of Music; and Jin-Wen Yu, Dance Department.
go.wisc.edu/artsawards
The Division of the Arts continues to support the Alliance for the Arts in Research Universities (a2ru), a partnership of over 43 institutions committed to ensuring institutional support for the full spectrum of arts and arts-integrative research, curricula, programs, and creative practice for the benefit of all students, staff, and faculty at research universities and the communities they serve.
The Division’s a2ru conference committee worked diligently over the past academic year to plan a2ru’s eighth annual conference, Land & Equity: The Art and Politics of Place. After planning originally to host the conference on campus, the committee moved the programming to a virtual platform due to COVID-19. Featuring four keynote speakers, including Michele ByrdMcPhee, Dr. F. Fleming Crim, Dr. Adrienne Keene, and 2019 MacArthur genius award winner Emmanuel Pratt, as well as 26 separate panel discussions, the Land & Equity conference took place online October 15–30, 2020.
To prepare for hosting the a2ru annual conference, some Division staff and affiliates attended a2ru’s seventh annual conference, Knowledges: Artistic Practice as Method, at the University of Kansas in November 2019.
In February 2020, the Division of the Arts also sent four undergraduate students to a2ru’s annual Emerging Creatives Summit, hosted by the University of Cincinnati, where the event’s theme was “Rise Up! Risk Something Real.”
We want to recognize the involvement that our colleague and friend Sherry Wagner-Henry, who passed away on May 30, 2020, had with a2ru and with the Division of the Arts overall. As the director of the Bolz Center for Arts Administration at the Wisconsin School of Business, Wagner-Henry helped launch many initiatives with the Division. She also served on a2ru’s executive committee and was part of the conference planning committee. Her energetic support and creativity will be greatly missed. The Division’s tribute to Sherry is available at https://
artsdivision.wisc.edu/2020/06/09/sherrywagner-henry-tribute/
ENVIRONMENTAL ARTS INITIATIVE
Throughout the 2019-2020 academic year, the Division of the Arts; the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies and the institute’s Center for Culture, History, and Environment (CHE); the Madison Arts Commission; the Overture Center for the Arts; and Dane Arts (the Dane County Cultural Affairs Commission), along with other campus and community partners, collaborated on the Earth Day@50 – Arts Initiative.
Honoring the 50th anniversary of Earth Day and the Nelson Institute, the initiative enabled artists, environmentalists, and community members to contemplate and celebrate environmental stewardship collaboratively. Artists and other participants were able to submit information about environmental arts events, including art exhibitions, performances, films, and lectures, to the initiative’s community calendar.
As part of the initiative, the Nelson Institute partnered with the Division’s Interdisciplinary Arts Residency Program, which hosted Carrie Hanson and Ben Barson and Gizelxanath Rodriguez as the year’s visiting artists-inresidence. The Nelson Institute also supported the world premiere of FLOE by Hanson’s dance company, The Seldoms, at the Wisconsin Union Theater in January 2020, as well as a presentation Barson and Rodriguez made at a conference CHE hosted on campus, Environmental Justice in Multispecies Worlds: Land, Water, Food, in early March 2020.
Among other arts-related in-person events sponsored by key partners, Art & Nature: The Year of the Environment, an exhibition organized by the Madison Arts Commission, was held at the Madison Municipal Building. Curated by Dakota Mace, who earned a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in the arts from UW–Madison,
the exhibition featured the work of 20 local artists who have a connection to UW–Madison. The exhibition’s opening and artists talk were held in February 2020. As part of the Earth Day@50 initiative, the Overture Center for the Arts also held multiple exhibitions related to the environment and climate change.
While some arts-related programming and initiative events were canceled due to the pandemic, other events, including the Nelson Institute’s annual Earth Day Conference and the final residency performance of visiting artists Ben Barson and Gizelxanath Rodriguez, moved online. The Overture Center for the Arts also moved several exhibitions planned for the spring and summer of 2020 to an online format.
