Arts And Culture

The Technology Fallacy: How People Are the Real Key to Digital Transformation (2019, MIT Press) by Gerald C. Kane, Anh Nguyen Phillips, Jonathan R. Copulsky and Garth R. Andrus, EdD’88 Digital technologies are disrupting organizations of every size and shape, leaving managers scrambling to find a technology fix that… Read More

Blair’s Deanna Walker, left, welcomes to her songwriting class Claude Kelly, middle, and Chuck Harmony of the duo Louis York. Photo by Steve Green Deanna Walker was initiated into the world of hit Nashville songwriting in the usual way. She suffered a broken heart. In the 1990s,… Read More

Melissa Scrivner Love. Photo by Becca Murray Like many children who grew up in the 1980s, Melissa Scrivner Love, BA’02, was raised on James Bond films. That cinematic introduction to the KGB led her to double major in Russian and theater, and to consider two possible career paths: working… Read More

Detail of Middle Ground by Sophie Drouin and Rachel Sager Mosaic artists convene in Nashville, bringing two exhibits to Vanderbilt Mosaics were originally invented about 4,000 years ago to create durable and inexpensive flooring, but they quickly became more art than craft. A highly refined technique developed during… Read More

Adrianne Mathiowetz Photography Nafissa Thompson-Spires, MA’05, PhD’09, was announced as one of 10 Whiting Award winners March 20 at a ceremony at the New York Historical Society. Thompson-Spires’ short story collection Heads of the Colored People (2018, Atria/37 INK) has been honored with a PEN Open Book Award,… Read More

“Untitled” by Alicia Henry, mixed media, 2 feet by 3 feet Paper dolls have long been used to emphasize cultural norms regarding femininity and beauty. As often happens, childhood play subtly reinforces society’s notions of the “ideal.” Once these playthings are cast off and one enters adulthood, these romanticized… Read More

Junior Nicholas Heilborn conducts his commissioned piece with chatterbird musicians. Photo by Susan Urmy The composer Michael Slayton can’t remember the first time an ensemble performed one of his pieces. That’s perhaps not surprising, since Slayton’s works, especially his chamber music, are now frequently commissioned and performed… Read More

Photo by Anne Rayner Douglas Shadle, assistant professor of musicology, was presented with the American Musicological Society’s inaugural H. Robert Cohen/RIPM Award at this year’s annual meeting in San Antonio for his book Orchestrating the Nation: The Nineteenth-Century American Symphonic Enterprise (2015, Oxford University Press). The award honors… Read More

James Threalkill, BS’79, poses with the portraits he has painted for the Legacy Pioneers series. (Joe Howell) Chancellor Nicholas S. Zeppos unveiled four portraits during Reunion weekend in October that are part of a new Vanderbilt Trailblazers portrait series honoring members of the Vanderbilt community who broke barriers at… Read More

Works by Middle Eastern women artists build bridges of understanding Mother, by Emirati artist Maitha Demithan, was created by the process of scanography, using digital scanners to generate images and then collaging the images together. In the exhibit catalog the artist states that the piece depicts a mother as… Read More

Joshua Moore is the voice of the Versify podcast. Photo by Anne Rayner When listeners tune in to Nashville Public Radio’s Versify podcast, they’re greeted by the voice of host Joshua Moore, a second-year master of fine arts candidate in Vanderbilt’s creative writing program. Versify—which can be found… Read More

courtesy of AETN.com Florence Price was the first African American woman to have her music performed by a major symphony orchestra—in 1933. Bringing together the European classical tradition in which she was trained and the haunting melodies of African American spirituals and folk tunes, Price’s music has experienced… Read More

Photo by Philip Franck In October, Vanderbilt University Theatre opened its 2018–19 season with The Language Archive by Julia Cho, a comedy that explores what is lost and found in the gaps between what is meant and what is said. “One of the most interesting aspects… Read More

Photo by Tomas Loewy Dean Whiteside, BMus’10, of Miami—shown conducting that city’s New World Symphony PULSE concert—is the 2017–18 winner of the American Prize in Conducting in the Professional Orchestra division. After earning his undergraduate degree at Blair, the New York City native trained in Vienna at the… Read More

Seasonal Cycles mural by Polly Cook Come sun, rain or snow, one of the best places on Vanderbilt’s campus to find shelter is under Calhoun Hall’s stone portico, facing out toward the law and business schools. This refuge is also home to a mural of campus life, Seasonal Cycles,… Read More

Jon Parrish Peede Jon Parrish Peede, BS’91, who was confirmed by the U.S. Senate in April as chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, has taken several paths in government service, all of them paved with words. “I discovered during my student days that what I loved were… Read More

Students play alongside faculty in this side-by-side concert at the Aspen Music Festival. Photo by Alex Irvin Cornelia Heard has spent nearly every summer since she was in eighth grade at a music festival. “I went to the Rocky Mountain Summer Music Center that first summer,” she… Read More

Photo by Matt Murphy The Band’s Visit, a musical about an Egyptian orchestra stuck for a night in a remote Israeli town, swept the Tony Awards on June 10, winning 10 awards, including Best Musical. Katrina Lenk and Tony Shalhoub (above, seated) both won Tony Awards for their… Read More

Lauren Urquhart, photo by Steve Green For the second year in a row, Blair undergraduates won national honors competing against both undergraduate and graduate students at the 2017–18 Music Teachers National Association annual competition March 17–21 in Orlando, Florida. To compete at nationals, musicians have already won their state… Read More

Joshua Austin Forges The Vanderbilt University Department of Art awarded its prestigious Margaret Stonewall Wooldridge Hamblet Award for 2018 to Joshua Austin Forges, BA’18, from Davie, Florida. He received a $25,000 prize that provides for a year of art research and travel, culminating with a solo exhibition in Space… Read More