UCSD Arts Libraries

Cabinet Magazine’s A Minor History of Giant Spheres

I love Cabinet Magazine, and this timeline of Giant Spheres through history is so excellent. The best one in my opinion is the entry from 1984 where an Austrian artist builds a giant spherical house, gets in trouble with the government for doing so and then declares himself and the house an independent nation named the Republic of Kugelmugel. Too good.

So, Everything Is On Fire

I hope this post finds everyone safe and sound, un-singed and indoors away from the smoke. The library was closed for a couple of days and the entire campus is closed for the rest of the week, but library administration has reopened the library to provide the 7500 or so students stuck on campus with a place to go. We aren’t offering regular services or hours, but it’s likely that those four dorm walls are starting to look all too familiar.
But lets say that you don’t feel like going to the library, and you have the unexpected gift of a week off of school. What to do? Well, if you’ve got a car, and some money in your pocket, I’ll tell you what I’d do.. Take a road trip to Leila’s Hair Museum!
That’s right, head on over to Independence, Missouri to look at the largest hair museum in the whole United States! According to Leila, “It could possibly be the only hair museum in the United States, maybe the world.” Puts everything in perspective, doesn’t it?

Third Thursdays in Solana Beach!

Sanctuary 143 will celebrate the season on the evening of October 18th with a Day of the Dead inspired SUPER NATURAL Art and Music Festival in the Solana Beach gallery. S143 invites guests to join in a celebration of life and death with a lively night of artwork, dancing, and assorted treats. (Easy directions here!)

DJ Hogie, direct from the Hogie Club rock venue in Hollywood, will be mixing a selection of obscure, haunting vintage soundtracks and dance music. The artwork will be equally eerie, featuring Aki Kaneko’s “evil box,” an interactive installation piece with visual projections and fearsome artifacts.

Hogie McMurtrie will be exhibiting his four by eight foot pen and ink piece “Populis Panorama,” in which supernatural creatures wander through a highly detailed futuristic landscape based on a sold out comic book series. Also highlighted will be paintings by Orange County artist Jeff Faeth and photographs by Tony Greene.

Learn more about the event & Sanctuary143 here! and look for links to other gallery events happening at the Cedros Design District Third Thursdays.

Shakespeare on Screen

Don’t miss MoPA’s The Film’s the Thing, Shakespeare on Screen The program, guest curated by Beth Accomando, KPBS Film Critic and Co-host of Film Club of the Air, includes educational workshops for students and film screenings for the general public. This week it’s Akira Kurosawa’s 1957 masterpiece, Throne Of Blood, with guest speaker Stefan Tanaka from UCSD. Thursday October 4th at 7 pm.

The Educator’s Open House

Museum of Photographic Arts presents
The Educator’s Open House
October 17th, 2007 from 4:00-6:00 p.m.

This FREE event is an opportunity for educators to preview current exhibitions, learn about MoPA’s Education Staff, and reserve tours and workshops. Come visit the museum store and enjoy an evening of conversation and light refreshments.

Learn how you can enter students in our 3rd Annual Youth Exhibition, Writing with Light.

Enter the raffle and win a free bus reimbursement for your next visit to MoPA and Balboa Park!

R.S.V.P. by calling 619.238.7559 EXT 235 or teachers@mopa.org

For more information on Educators’ Events…

Come Learn About ARTstor!

Did you know that over half a million high-quality digital images are currently available to UCSD in a searchable database? Thanks to initial funding from the UC Libraries and CDL (the California Digital Library), every UC campus now has access to ARTstor and the ability to share images!

What is ARTstor?

ARTstor is a digital library containing nearly 550,000 images covering a wide variety of disciplines. Thousands of additional images covering an extensive range of cultures and time periods are added each month.

How Can I Find Out More?
Monday, October 15, 2007
1:00 – 2:30 PM
Seuss Room, Geisel Library
No reservation necessary

Continue reading Come Learn About ARTstor!…

Desperate Communications and Dia De Los Muertos

Oh boy, it’s time for some terrific new exhibits here in the Arts Libraries! Come to the first floor of Geisel library in the West Wing to check out Desperate Communications: from Safety Coffins to Crystal Balls to Tea Leaves. Learn about various desperate forms of communication: the use of crystal balls, reading tea leaves, diagrams of “safety coffins” wherein the interred (and surprisingly awakened) dead can pull a cord to ring a bell to alert those above ground, and more! As always our exhibits are an entertaining mix of books, objects, graphics and multi-media items so come take a look! (Through November 5th)

Also going up as I write is a small and lovely display highlighting my favorite holiday,
Dia De Los Muertos.

The archaeologist and the artist meet up to talk about presence

From SEED

video link

“In 2005, Michael Shanks, the Omar and Althea Hoskins Professor of Classical Archaeology at Stanford University and director of the Archaeology Center’s Metamedia Lab, and three colleagues started The Presence Project to explore issues of presence and documentation across the arts and sciences. Artist Lynn Hershman Leeson, whose work has been shown at more than 200 major institutions and is part of the permanent collection at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, joined soon after and, together with Shanks and others in the Stanford Humanities Lab, created Life to the Second Power, an online encounter with her archive. As they see the project through to its completion in 2010, Shanks and Hershman Leeson plan to further explore memory, identity, and place. Seed invited them to advance the conversation.”

Fresh sushi any time of day - because it’s fake

When you have guests over for sushi, do you have a hard time describing the many varieties you can make? Do what restaurants do and show your guests these professional sushi samples.

“The first food replicas in Japan date back over 80 years. Food samples gained added popularity with restaurant owners after 1945, when the arrival of more westerners post-war, created the need for a simplified ordering system. Japan is the acknowledged world leader in food replica production.”

To avoid an embarrassing situation and a call to 911, you may want to present them with the same disclaimer the manufacturer uses:

“food samples are replicas and should not be eaten, placed in the mouth or used as toys for children.”

from Goods from Japan

New Art & Photography Books

Want to see a regularly updated list of new books that we have here at UCSD? Look in Roger (UCSD’s online catalogue of everything that you can find here like books or dvds) towards the bottom of the page for the ‘new books, videos etc’ link, or just click here!