Sustainably made honors cords adorned by 281 U-M graduates this year
In support of ongoing sustainability efforts across the University of Michigan, this year the Excellence in Sustainability Honors Cord Program offers special graduation cords for those who have excelled in areas of sustainability.
Led by Stamps School of Art & Design professor Joseph Trumpey, director of the Sustainable Living Experience, and Alex Bryan, sustainability programs manager in the Office of Student Life, the interest in these sustainable cords has almost tripled since they piloted the program last year with 281 students wearing these special cords for 2021-22 commencement.
“Most of the fibers in the world have polyester or nylon in them which are fossil fuel-derived materials,” Trumpey said. “We really wanted to steer clear of anything that had any sort of deep fossil fuel footprint or was manufactured overseas.”
Trumpey had a longstanding relationship with Zeilinger Wool Co. in Frankenmuth, Michigan, who milled and spun wool from local sheep into yarn utilized for the program. The yarn was dyed with goldenrod harvested from Matthaei Botanical Gardens and indigo grown at the campus farm as part of a dye garden project between the Botanical Gardens and the fiber studio at the U-M Art & Design school. Students came together to create these cords by hand over the course of several sessions.
The creation process begins almost a full year ahead of graduation, starting with the harvesting of goldenrod in the fall. Looking ahead, Trumpey and Bryan have plans to take the process even one step further, utilizing laser cut drop spindles created at the art school for their newly procured spinning wheels.
They will take raw wool, spin it in-house, and then proceed to hand-dye and braid the cords. There is even talk of bringing in a few sheep to the campus farm to keep the process as local as possible. They also hope to hire four arts and cultural organizers within student life sustainability to further integrate the humanities into what is typically an environmental science-heavy space.
Bryan is also looking for ways to utilize buckthorn, an invasive species that grows prolifically, as an additional dye source. Buckthorn leaves and berries can be harvested to create a blue or green color dye; using this process as an opportunity to cut down on an invasive species while creating something meaningful adds another layer of importance to the program.
“This program is really about engaging in sustainability that shows up and takes place in lots of different ways,” Bryan said. “For some that’s a heavy focus on environmental sustainability, for others that might be more focused on social sustainability, making sure that our communities are whole in addition to the planet. We try to take that broad approach.”
To apply for the cord program, students fill out a questionnaire with background data and accrue points for completing activities in school or their spare time that are connected to sustainability. Point values vary across things like attending a sustainability conference or participating in volunteer work in the community, to having a year-long internship or a major or minor in sustainability. Each student needs 10 points to qualify for a cord.
“I think our interest in trying to build the cord program is really about showing the breadth, depth and diversity of students that are interested in sustainability and doing sustainability work,” Bryan said.
As one might expect, a large percentage of honorees come from the School for Environment and Sustainability, but more than 100 students from the School of Literature, Science, and the Arts will receive their sustainability cord, along with others across Taubman College of Architecture; School of Music, Theatre and Dance; Stamps School of Art & Design; College of Engineering; Ross School of Business; and several others.
“Hands-on experiential learning is always great, but it’s an added bonus when we can have students actually making things with other students in mind as they create it,” Trumpey said. “They’re sort of reflecting on their experiences and thinking about other students that are a lot like them entering the world, and visualizing themselves in that kind role in the future. It is a lot different than placing an order for some yellow nylon cords from overseas.”
U-M program reshapes undergrad research
The curiosity and passion for understanding the use of literary expressions as nonviolent resistance brought together University of Michigan professor Samer Ali and student Elizabeth Tower.
After Tower, a junior majoring in international studies, took Ali’s class on peace and nonviolence in Islamic cultures, she wanted to dive deeper into Arabic art forms, such as music, poetry, film and more. Their similar research interests connected them and a mentor-mentee journey began.
Ali then suggested Tower join the Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program, so they would have up to two years to develop a research project and the resources to build it. She jumped all in and next week will share their experience working together at UROP’s annual research symposium April 20.
“Mentoring is usually one-on-one and one of the best types of teaching,” said Ali, associate professor of Middle East studies. “It’s very practice-oriented, and we’re addressing problems, talking about the trade-offs that go with each solution. I learned how to teach using the philosophy of John Dewey, “learning by doing” and then engaging the mind, body, and heart of the whole human being.”
UROP Mentor Samer Ali (right) and Elizabeth Tower. Image credit: Sean Carter.
Ali and Tower have been working together for the past two years. Their research falls under a broader umbrella: nonviolence in Arabic-Islamic cultures.
“It’s the capacity of human and literary expressions to transform social reality in a nonviolent way,” Ali said. “It’s nonviolence and the idea of creative resistance to injustice.”
Tower’s work intends to demonstrate that Palestinian hip-hop is a multimedia cultural movement that blends multiple forms of art at every possible stage: inspiration, production and integration into society.
“As a genre characterized by intermediality and multifunctionality, Palestinian hip-hop transcends cultural, social and political boundaries to offer everyone an access point to resistance,” Tower said. “This research helps us understand how creative work—when coupled with resistance and characterized by intermediality—straddles the boundaries between art, politics, news media and education to make a widely accessible form of creative resistance.”For Tower, the most valuable part of being a UROP student is the mentorship relationship.
“Professor Ali has not only guided me through my research, but he has spent endless time helping me as a writer,” Tower said. “He’s also looked for opportunities for me to present my research and to network with other scholars. It has just enriched this experience for me as a student and as a scholar.”
In its 34th edition, the UROP symposium, which has about 58,000 alumni, celebrates the partnerships created between students and research mentors.
It is a capstone project for more than 1,000 undergraduate students—from arts and Humanities, engineering and environmental sciences to physical sciences, public health and social sciences—conducting research around campus. They will present in a hybrid format this year, returning to in-person research presentations at the Michigan League.
“Seeing all the research posters, listening to students present their work, and all the energy and excitement in one space will be exciting,” said program director Michelle Ferrez. “Many of our undergraduate researchers have been looking forward to this opportunity. It is always a rewarding time for the UROP staff and research mentors to see how much a student has developed and grown in the past year.”
For Ferrez, research and scholarship are how the academic community communicates with the world and, therefore, the contributions from research go well beyond the academy.
“Engaging undergraduate students in research helps them mature as thinkers and doers,” she said. “Research is all about finding an interesting question or scenario and not knowing the answer. In addition, it provides students with an invaluable networking experience. It is those connections and skills they will be able to apply in the future.”
Investigating math learning and teaching
Mentor Vilma Mesa and her students. Image credit: Sean Carter.
Vilma Mesa, U-M professor of education and mathematics, has mentored 20 UROP students since 2004. This year, she is working with four students to investigate mathematics teaching at community colleges.
Duo Lelia Burley-Sanford and Amy Xinyi Hao spent the last year analyzing qualitative data and calculations to determine how students and instructors use open-access textbooks in college. Another piece of the research is to understand how they can develop textbooks that will improve teaching and learning.
“My UROP researchers are helping us understand the connections between the use of some specific textbook features by college students and how teachers work with these textbooks,” Mesa said. “We have an extensive project that allows us to map and track the viewing of textbooks, and we have identified ways in which teachers and students view particular features.”
During next week’s symposium, Burley-Sanford and Hao will talk about their experience working on this project and discuss some of their findings.
“We found interesting differences across our teachers in using one of the textbook features and also differences in the versatility their students describe as using the same feature,” Hao said. “Some instructors use the feature only for planning or only during instruction; using the feature during instruction seems to prompt more students to use the feature to learn the material more.”
With this information, the team believes it can demonstrate that the feature does fulfill the purposes for which it was created.
“Faculty who use the feature for planning and instruction do not see the need to use it for student assessment,” Mesa said. “Adding this component to the feature would be an unnecessary use of resources.”
Burley-Sanford said that once she started the project, she felt overwhelmed and underprepared.
“That is where a great mentor can step in,” she said. “Professor Mesa has been an inspiration and has helped shape my academic experience. I have learned valuable skills that will benefit me both in academia and in life, such as critically thinking about something and analyzing information.
“The best part about having a mentor became clear when she encouraged me not to give up.”
Oboe professor runs a marathon in every state
Nancy Ambrose King traveled in January to Hawaii to run in the Maui Oceanfront Marathon.
When she crossed the finish line, she completed a goal that was years in the making: running a marathon in each of the 50 states.
Nancy Ambrose King.
“It was really thrilling, and maybe even a little bittersweet,” King said. “I had been working toward that moment for nine years. Overall, it was just a really exciting morning, and I was happy that I accomplished what I’d planned to do.”
King, professor of oboe in the School of Music, Theatre & Dance, picked up running as a hobby in her mid-40s when her neighbor invited her to join a local 10K race.
King discovered she loved the way running made her feel, both physically and mentally. That first race led to others, and running became a regular part of her routine.
As her 50th birthday approached, King thought participating in a marathon would be a fun way to mark the milestone. That year’s annual Detroit Free Press Marathon happened to fall on the same weekend as her 50th birthday.
“I thoroughly expected it to be the first and last marathon I ever ran. But six months later, I did one in Cleveland,” King said, “and just kept running.”
King learned about the 50 States Marathon Club, a nonprofit organization whose members share the common goal of running marathons in all 50 states. People are eligible for membership after they’ve run 10 marathons in 10 states.
King decided to try to complete all 50 marathons before she turned 60. She started signing up for marathons across the country and launched a vigorous training schedule.
“I’m a goal-oriented person,” she said. “It’s sometimes not that much fun to get up in the morning and go running when it’s snowing and 5 degrees below zero, or 95 and hot and humid.
“It’s easy when you’re only accountable to yourself to take a day off or a week off. I felt the goal of having a marathon coming up held me accountable to getting out there every day and running.”
King ran as many as nine marathons a year. To train, she ran 45 miles a week divided into short runs on weekdays and longer runs on weekends.
The medals earned by Nancy Ambrose King, who completed a marathon in all 50 states.
“I really found that (running) is a time that I could have completely to myself and my thoughts,” she said. “I would come up with really good ideas and projects. It was just an hour or a few hours that I would be out there unreachable for the most part, and I found it to be a creative time mentally. Physically, I like the way I feel when I’m in good shape.”
At first, finding marathons was easy. But King had only a few states left when the COVID-19 pandemic struck, forcing her to get creative with her schedule as she scurried to locate replacement races for ones that had been canceled.
She said one of her most memorable races was in Boston in 2015, two years after the Boston Marathon bombing. She also loved the scenery during a race in the mountains above Seattle.
“Even though a lot of the marathons I did were big-city marathons, some of the most memorable were in the small towns that I never would have had the opportunity to visit if they weren’t the destination for a marathon in their state,” she said.
King always knew the final marathon in her goal would be in Hawaii.
“It’s just such a beautiful destination,” she said. “I knew it would be a great trip to celebrate the project’s completion and share that moment with my family.”
On Jan. 16, King’s husband, two sons and their girlfriends, her neighbor, her neighbor’s family and even a couple former students who are living in Hawaii were there to cheer her on.
She said she hasn’t yet decided what her new running goal will be. She plans to participate in some half-marathons and recently picked up a new sport: golf.
King has actually exceeded her 50-marathon goal. She ran the Marine Corps Marathon in 2014 in Washington, D.C., bringing her total to 51.
“If Washington, D.C., ever becomes a state, I have it covered,” she said.
Nancy Ambrose King playing Danse (Sigillum Saturni) by Dirk-Michael Kirsch.
Q&A
What memorable moment in the workplace stands out?
Each time one of my students achieves a great milestone or is recognized for their effort and ability is a memorable experience for me. I am so fortunate to work with students who are among the finest musicians in the nation, and it is truly a privilege to guide them through their career.
What can’t you live without?
Definitely my family. My husband and two sons are my biggest supporters. And my daily New York Times crossword puzzle!
Name your favorite spot on campus.
Hill Auditorium. I have so many memories of performances I’ve played on that stage and amazing concerts I’ve heard as an audience member, going back to my days as a student here in the early ’80s until the present day. It’s a jewel on our campus.
What inspires you?
I am inspired by great musicians who transcend their instrument, by the beauty of our natural surroundings right here in the state of Michigan, and by those in the world who tirelessly give of themselves for the betterment of our world. Seeing small random acts of kindness in the midst of our pandemic is a great testament to the strength of our community and is inspiring.
What are you currently reading?
I just finished “The Splendid and the Vile” by Erik Larsen. I have Michelle Obama’s “Becoming” next up on the list.
Who had the greatest influence on your career path?
Definitely the three oboe professors I had in my life. Arno Mariotti, who I studied with from the age of 10 until I was 20; Harry Sargous for two years right here at U-M; and Richard Killmer at the Eastman School of Music, who guided me through both master’s and doctoral degrees and has been my lodestar for 35 years since.
UMSI students provide Arab American National Museum invaluable community accessibility and usability expertise
The halls of the stately Arab American National Museum (AANM), usually echoing with the patter of feet and expressions of awe, have sat silently awaiting the return of patrons since March 2020.
With the pandemic necessitating the temporary closure of AANM’s physical space, the institution turned to University of Michigan School of Information (UMSI) students for assistance and expertise in improving the digital accessibility of the museum’s collections.
Located in Dearborn, Michigan, AANM is the only museum out of the nation’s 35,000 that is dedicated to preserving, celebrating and sharing Arab American culture. The institution has long been a champion of curatorial accessibility; however, ensuring that its tens of thousands of annual in-person visitors have the same intimate and meaningful interactions with its online collections is a new challenge.
While the museum was closed due to the pandemic, staff hosted an online music festival, in their pajamas, from Yasmine Nasser Diaz’s “Teenage Bedroom” installation. Video by AANM.
“The pandemic and our inability to have visitors come to the museum really forced us to ask who’s accessing our things online, who do we want to be accessing them and whether they’re getting the full experience that we want them to,” says Matt Jaber Stiffler, the research and content manager at AANM and lecturer within the U-M College of Literature, Science and the Arts’ American Culture department.
To answer these questions, Master of Science in Information (MSI) students William Cheng, Michelle Torby and Angel Caranna met regularly with Stiffler as part of the fall 2020 SI 547: Engaging with Communities course, led by clinical associate professor David Wallace. The class is client-based, meaning that companies, nonprofits or organizations host student teams that work to address real-world information challenges.
UMSI’s Engaged Learning Office helps recruit projects for the course that facilitate community partnerships and allow students to make an impact while building their portfolio through real-world experiences. In SI 547, students are challenged to examine the principles, methods and ethics involved in community collaboration.
The Arab American National Museum, located in Dearborn, is the first and only museum in the U.S. that is devoted to Arab-American history and culture.
Wallace says, “This type of experiential, hands-on, client-facing work is fundamental for professional development as it explicitly joins course theories and concepts to pragmatic, real-world problem solving and shaping positive client outcomes.”
At the start of the semester, each student submitted a questionnaire surveying their skills, experience and interests. The students were subsequently matched with projects where they could make a meaningful impact.
Cheng, who graduated from the MSI program in spring 2021, was excited to be a part of AANM’s project because he could exercise both his technical user experience (UX) design skills and his empathetic objectivity.
“I’m an international student, so I can relate to the way that Arab people feel in U.S. society in terms of status and suffering,” Cheng said. He came to UMSI after growing up in Taiwan and earning both a BA and MA in library and information science from National Taiwan University.
The students worked with Stiffler and the team at AANM to set realistic goals. AANM had just migrated to a new website for the first time in 13 years during June 2020. Around the same time, the museum had been forced to lay off nearly two-thirds of its staff due to pandemic budgeting constraints.
The museum’s website contains object, archival, art and library collections in addition to born-digital collections that preserve online content. AANM started the partnership with the intent of making the museum’s digital space more accessible specifically for those with hearing and vision impairments.
Through a series of user interviews, students discovered that people with sensory impairments were not the only users having trouble accessing information on AANM’s new site. The students determined the website needed a stronger structure before it made sense to solely concentrate on audio and visual accessibility.
Entrance to the exhibit “Coming to America” at the Arab American National Museum in Dearborn.
“We expanded the project’s scope to focus on general accessibility that could benefit everyone,” says Torby, a second-year MSI student.
Her advice to those taking client-based courses is to “be open to changing the scope of the project and working with the organizations to voice your concerns, because if you don’t, then you can’t best pivot to meet the needs of everyone.”
The students spent four months engaging with the website to create a usability report. During their regular meetings with the team, AANM was receptive and often implemented the students’ suggested changes on the spot.
AANM found the experience of working with the students so useful that when an opportunity arose to continue the partnership during the winter 2021 semester in the SI 622: Needs Assessment Usability course, they seized it. A new group of MSI students, including Austin Zielinski, Jordan Graves, Qinchi Chen and Shujie Li, picked up the project.
In SI 622, students utilize a variety of methods — including observation, surveys, interviews, performance analysis, evaluation in the design/iteration cycle, usability tests and assessment of systems — to provide clients with recommendations for performance improvement. The winter 2021 course was taught by clinical assistant professor Mustafa Naseem.
“The AANM project goal was to better understand how to bring users to the website and how they access information,” says Zielinski, a second-year MSI student.
Epicenter X, a timely exhibition of Saudi Contemporary Art in Dearborn, Michigan opened at the Arab American National Museum (AANM) on 8 July 2017, and ran until 1 October 2017.
The interdisciplinary team assessed the website and held interviews with users and stakeholders. They also conducted comparative analysis assessments with other museums and did usability testing. At the end of the semester, the students sent a report to AANM along with a final video summarizing their findings.
“The recommendations were very clear: Change the wording of headings for clarity, adopt color contrasts to make screen reading easier and run tests to understand how screen readers are picking up the information,” Stiffler shares. “We had really good suggestions, so it’s just a matter of implementing them now.”
Stiffler and his colleagues at AANM were impressed by the final product. “It was very professional, very useful. Throughout our conversations, the team understood what we were trying to do, and the end product will be very helpful for us as we move forward.”
AANM recently reopened to the public and hopes to continue implementing the changes to their website for those interested in exploring the museum’s digital collections. The institution plans on sustaining its relationship with UMSI in the future, too.
“I think it’s great that UMSI is so invested in these projects. It’s really nice that we don’t have to seek out ways to get help, that they’re always there,” Stiffler says.
Fair Representation in Arts and Data
Stamps Associate Professor Sophia Brueckner has long known that small things can make a big impact. However, the fact really hit home for her very recently through her work with the ongoing research project, “Fair Representation in Arts and Data.” In the last year, she’s been part of a team of dedicated University of Michigan (U‑M) researchers who used several of the most popular face detection algorithms designed to distinguish a variety of factors (including gender and race) to analyze the entire collection at UMMA.
“We’re trying to draw parallels between bias and exclusion in the museum world and bias and exclusion in technology,” Brueckner says. “With our research, we hope to create a more aware — and more inclusive — local community and world.”
Funded by the U‑M’s Arts Initiative, Brueckner explains that the year-long collaboration between data scientists, artists, and museum curators has focused on exploring how bias is present and problematic, the process where bias happens, and if they could recognize some trends in the diversity of UMMA’s collection.
“There’s simply no other project like this anywhere, and it’s really important research to have in this day and age,” says the project’s lead investigator and data scientist, Dr. Jing Liu.
Liu, who is also the managing director of the Michigan Institute for Data Science, shares that previous to working on “Fair Representation in Arts and Data,” she had already been kicking around the idea of how artwork could be used to demonstrate to the public, “in a very intuitive way, both the power of data science and the harm of data science.”
“We know that data science and artificial intelligence (AI) systems have implicit bias and that momentum needs to be built up around the topic,” Liu says. “For a few years now we have thought about educating the public in some way. When we found out that there was funding for pilot projects, I knew it was a chance to be a part of doing something really substantial.”
Working Together To Make Change
The project’s initial findings are certainly thought-provoking. Some key highlights were not too surprising to the research team. For instance, they uncovered that the algorithms often failed in recognizing females in the collection and that the collection is very white-heavy.
“We essentially did face detection over UMMA’s entire collection,” Brueckner explains. “We found all the faces in the collection and then we applied algorithms that are available publicly and open source, which helped identify race classification and gender classification to those faces.”
She said that it’s very hard to understand sometimes why these algorithms are making certain decisions, but the researchers have found the results really interesting. She points to one unexpected discovery: when left to an algorithm to categorize visual input, the most representative face found in the collection is a painting of a clown.
Georges Rouault, Cirque de l’Etoile Filante. Plate XIII: Le Renchéri (p.106), 1935. Full information
“We applied a different type of algorithm that looks at which features are really important in detecting a face and then look at the averages,” Brueckner says. “That the algorithm concluded on the ‘clown’ is funny, but it actually sort of makes sense, because clowns have exaggerated facial makeup.”
Motivated by the knowledge that both the algorithms and UMMA’s collection are biased, the “Fair Representation in Arts and Data” team inspired the UMMA exhibition, White Cube Black Box.
“The phrase ‘White Cube’ is a term that refers to museums historically being exclusionary and having blank white walls and removing all the context, which makes the work actually quite inaccessible for those who aren’t highly educated in the subject matter or coming from certain communities,” Brueckner explains. “And, the term ‘Black Box’ is used in engineering to talk about how a lot of these technologies that we rely on are opaque.”
She and the rest of the research team are currently talking about the next steps of expanding the project. In the meantime, Brueckner is looking forward to public feedback – UMMA visitors can see the initial findings on display at the Apse at UMMA inside of the You Are Here exhibit. Curated by Jennifer M. Friess, associate curator of photography at UMMA, You Are Here centers on the idea of being present as the world reopens after the COVID-19 pandemic.
Friess shares that the idea of being present is different for everyone. In her view, It can be really joyous to be back in a museum, but if a person doesn’t see themself represented in a collection, and in the works that are on view, then it can be quite alienating.
Entrance at UMMA during the “You Are Here” exhibit (2021).
“White Cube Black Box really makes such a good counterpoint and another way to speak to the idea of being here,” Friess says. “Underneath monitors, where the findings and research play out in a narrative way, we’ve asked the question ‘Are you here?’ as a type of reverse of the exhibit title, and people can really take in the data and contemplate and make connections.”
She and the rest of the research team are currently talking about the next steps of expanding the project. In the meantime, Brueckner is looking forward to public feedback – UMMA visitors can see the initial findings on display at the Apse at UMMA inside of the You Are Here exhibit. Curated by Jennifer M. Friess, associate curator of photography at UMMA, You Are Here centers on the idea of being present as the world reopens after the COVID-19 pandemic.
Friess shares that the idea of being present is different for everyone. In her view, It can be really joyous to be back in a museum, but if a person doesn’t see themself represented in a collection, and in the works that are on view, then it can be quite alienating.
“White Cube Black Box really makes such a good counterpoint and another way to speak to the idea of being here,” Friess says. “Underneath monitors, where the findings and research play out in a narrative way, we’ve asked the question ‘Are you here?’ as a type of reverse of the exhibit title, and people can really take in the data and contemplate and make connections.”
Viewers examining UMMA’s 2019 Photography Exhibition “Take Your Pick,” which showcased every aspect of 20th-century American life you can imagine—and some you probably can’t.
For Liu, the power of people from different disciplines coming together to share ideas has not escaped her. She shares that in her usual experience when different groups of people talk about the same topic, they tend to talk over each other.
“But, with our project, artists and scientists sat down and talked with each other and learned from each other and challenged each other to strengthen our collective effort,” she says. “I want to see more of this and I’m really hoping that our project is an example that helps to steer things away from the status quo.”
Seconding her wish is Brueckner, who also hopes that the team’s work will steer people towards becoming more educated consumers who will vote for more data privacy and security. If the project can provide an inroad to making people aware of the pitfalls in technology that is being embedded locally, and all across the world, a bit earlier, then she’ll be plenty happy.
“This type of biased data collection is already being deployed around the world, and some of it is useful and some of it is frankly pretty scary,” she says. “Recently, there was a disturbing case in Detroit where a child was misidentified at a skating rink and was given a ban all because of an algorithm. We need to raise awareness that these algorithms are still deeply flawed.”
Ancestor garden: Community plants butterfly garden honoring Detroiters lost to COVID-19
DETROIT–Asia Hamilton showed up on a misty fall day to Detroit’s historic Virginia Park district to plant three flowers: one for her mother, one for her father, and another for her sister.
She was one of dozens of people that stopped by that day to ceremoniously plant blooms one-by-one, each in honor of loved ones who had passed away—most from COVID-19. Many were unable to have funerals during the pandemic.
It’s no surprise so many gathered. An early “hot spot” in the pandemic, the city of Detroit data indicate that more than 2,800 Detroiters have died of COVID-19 to date with more than 7,000 deaths likely related to the virus.
“Losing my mom last year was really shocking, especially to COVID,” said Hamilton. “And since then, I’ve really gotten into gardening. A garden is a place that offers peace, beauty and unity, and I thought it would be an amazing way to honor her and other family members I’ve lost.”
Venita Thompkins said that every memorial garden needs a soldier in it, so she planted a purple coneflower in honor of her brother, Irvin Thompkins, a Vietnam veteran who died from COVID-19 in May 2021.
“Every garden needs a soldier in it; this is for Irvin Thompkins,” said Venita Thompkins, referencing her brother, a Vietnam veteran who died from COVID-19 in May 2021, as she knelt down to plant a purple coneflower.
Samantha Pickering found out about the garden over the summer and had been looking forward to participating.
“I lost my dad to COVID April 1, 2020, so I came here to do something in memory of him. Having to grieve through isolation, we never had a funeral or memorial service, so I’m grateful for this opportunity.”
They all had responded to a call for community members to contribute to the planting of the “Ancestor Posterity Butterfly Garden,” located just outside the Joseph Walker Williams Center off of Rosa Parks Boulevard. The three-year-long project is the brainchild of University of Michigan alumnus Douglas Jones, a Detroit-based artist, activist and community organizer, and his co-collaborator and fellow artist Errin Whitaker.
Just before the stay-at-home orders were issued in March 2020, the project was commissioned and greenlit by the city of Detroit and Design Core Detroit. Though the plan was always to design a garden in the historic neighborhood, the pandemic and its devastating impact on the people of Detroit gave it more meaning as plans stopped and stalled but continued to move forward.
“It feels so great to be out here today, to see this come to life,” said Jones, who greeted each person stepping onto the plot with a cheery hello and a socially distanced elbow bump.
Jones, who has facilitated public art projects in several locations across Michigan including Detroit, Jackson, Ann Arbor, Ypsilanti and Grand Rapids, says the garden is an example of the brand of “public art” that he believes in.
“Through my work as an artist, I’m trying to shift the narrative of public art,” he said. “Most of it is consumptive, but I’ve always thought of it as something that requires participation and collaboration from the community, from the people that will enjoy it most.”
Errin Whitaker, a Detroit artist who collaborated with Jones to create the butterfly garden, created the ancestor posterity chair that is positioned in the middle of the garden.
Led by Jones and Whitaker, there were several people who helped bring the project to fruition, including Kyle Bartell, co-founder of Sit On It Detroit, who crafted the wooden benches that surround the garden and Akello Karamoko, a farmer at Keep Growing Detroit who grew the starter seeds for the native Michigan plants that make up the butterfly garden.
While Jones designed the garden, Whitaker created the “ancestor posterity chair” that is positioned in the middle of the plot, where it will eventually be enveloped in plants as the garden matures in the coming years. According to the artists, the chair was inspired by Wole Soyinka, a Nigerian playwright first introduced to Jones while taking undergrad classes at U-M, and his idea of a symbolic chair created for our ancestors, both past and future.
“My biggest influence with the chair was my grandmother. She had three daughters and three grandsons and she never thought we got enough rest as Black men,” Whitaker said. “I made the chair in quarantine, where I was able to sit still and rest. I thought about her a lot while making it, and I thought about all of the people, ancestors, that are continuing to transition during this time.”
Jones and Whitaker are currently working to create potential community programming related to the garden, and to create a plan with the community to continue its upkeep.
“We didn’t realize how powerful the idea would be pre-pandemic when we started planning the project,” Jones said. “It’s full of symbolism—hope, unity, renewal—and I know it will be cared for and nurtured by all of the people who showed up today to grieve and reflect. This is the kind of art that I want to do.”
Just outside the garden, a historic sign memorializes those who died during the events of the summer of 1967.
$12M gift of Chinese calligraphy transforms Asian art collection at U-M Museum of Art
ANN ARBOR—The University of Michigan Museum of Art has received a gift of Chinese calligraphy from the family of Lo Chia-Lun valued at more than $12 million—the largest gift of art in the university’s history.
The Lo Chia-Lun Calligraphy Collection, donated by his daughter Jiu-Fong Lo Chang and her husband Kuei-sheng Chang, will transform the museum’s Asian art collection, adding an impressive breadth of works to an already stellar collection of Chinese paintings and ceramics.
Lo Chia-Lun (1897-1969) was a student leader in China’s “May Fourth Movement” and became a prominent government official in Nationalist China as well as a scholar, calligrapher, poet and president of two major universities—National Central University and Tsinghua University.
The Lo Chia-Lun Calligraphy Collection will contribute significantly to contemporary scholarship on Yuan and Ming dynasty calligraphy, and includes masterpieces by Yang Weizhen (1296-1370), Wang Shouren (1472-1529), Wen Zhengming (1470-1559) and Wang Duo (1592-1652), among others.
Yang Weizhen (1296 – 1370), Two Calligraphy of Poetry (detail), Yuan dynasty, handscroll in two sections, ink on silk, 8 ¼ x 13 ¼ inches (first section); 8 ¼ x 16 ½ inches (second section), Gift of Jiu-Fong Lo Chang and Kuei-sheng Chang, UMMA.
It also represents a major contribution to the study of Chinese cultural history, as it includes pieces from many cultural leaders of the early 20th century, including Cai Yuanpei (1868-1940), Chen Duxiu (1879-1942) and Shen Yinmo (1883-1971), as well as later artists Xu Beihong (1895-1953) and Zhang Daqian (1899-1983).
The collection preserves important evidence of cultural pursuits among these notable historical figures, while also reflecting the tastes and intellectual exchanges among leading intellectuals in the early 20th century.
The Lo family in Taiwan in 1963. Image courtesy of Elaine Chang.
The gift to UMMA is the result of a long relationship between the Lo family and U-M, and builds upon their history of philanthropy including previous gifts of Chinese art. Lo Chia-Lun’s wife, Djang Wei-djen (MA ’27), earned a master’s degree in political science at U-M on a Barbour Scholarship—one of U-M’s oldest and most prestigious awards, offering funding to female students from Asia and the Middle East since 1917.
Their daughters, Jiu-Fong Lo Chang (MA ’57, PhD candidate) and Jiu-Hwa Lo Upshur (MA ’61, PhD ’72), also attended graduate school at U-M as Barbour Scholars; their son-in-law, Kuei-sheng Chang (MA ’50, PhD ’55), earned a master’s degree and doctorate in geography from U-M. In the past decade, Jiu-Hwa Lo Upshur has endowed a scholarship in her father’s name at the Rackham Graduate School and created internship endowments at UMMA.
“This gift honors not only the legacy of my father, but it also recognizes our family’s deep roots at Michigan and our gratitude for the opportunities U-M afforded us at a time when few Chinese students had the privilege of studying abroad,” Jiu-Fong Lo Chang said of the calligraphy collection.
Wen Zhengming (1470 – 1559), Twelve Poems (detail), Ming dynasty, album of twenty-six leaves, ink on paper, 9 ¼ x 6 ⅛ inches (each page), Gift of Jiu-Fong Lo Chang and Kuei-sheng Chang, UMMA.
UMMA will partner with U-M faculty and global scholars to research and interpret the works in the collection for major exhibitions and collections installations in the coming years.
“The Lo Chia-Lun Collection will have a major impact on U-M and UMMA, in terms of both research and scholarship on Chinese calligraphy and our ongoing outreach to Michigan’s large Chinese community,” said Ann Lin, the Lieberthal-Rogel Professor of Chinese Studies and director of the U-M Lieberthal-Rogel Center for Chinese Studies.
The calligraphy collection numbers 72 pieces, dating to the Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties and the Republican Period, including some of the finest examples of Chinese calligraphic works outside of China. The gift also includes several seals, ink stones and other objects from Chinese literati culture.
“The addition of the Lo Chia-Lun Collection will be transformative for UMMA’s Asian art program,” said UMMA Director Christina Olsen. “It will significantly deepen UMMA’s holdings of Chinese calligraphy and will add depth and perspective to other UMMA artworks, enabling a more complete portrayal of Chinese art for museum visitors. UMMA is extremely grateful to continue the legacy of the Lo family and to share this rich and beautiful collection with the world.”
Career quandary: Engineering or opera?
Nature or nurture?
Sebastian Catana, BSE ’95, is one of those rare creatures equally adept at the arts and sciences.
Immersed in opera since conception, Sebastian was the only child of a pair of renowned performers in Romania. As his mother tells it, the mathematical genius was born to pursue music. It’s in his nature.
“When I was pregnant, I kept singing until my 28th week, so actually Sebastian was on stage with me,” says his mother Emilia Catana. “In our house, all we listened to was opera.”
Sebastian Catana, BSE ’95, holding the iconic Rigoletto’s hat in his hands.
The boy saw his first opera performance when he was 4 years old. His mother was on stage.
“He was so impressed,” she says. “I think at that moment, in his mind, he wanted to be an opera singer.”
In 1990, the widowed Emilia looked to the U.S. after the fall of the Berlin Wall. She moved with her son to Dearborn, Mich., just as Romania’s iron-fisted dictator Nicolae Ceausescu lost power.
A gift for math
Catana spoke very little English when he enrolled at Dearborn High School (DHS). He often stood to reply when teachers addressed him, amusing his American classmates. Everything changed when a teacher, Gordon L. Bremenkampf, BS ’63/MA ’67, discovered his keen aptitude for math. It became their shared language.
“It didn’t take long for me to realize what a jewel he was,” Bremenkampf says. “He was undoubtedly the finest student I had encountered in my 39 years at DHS. He was brilliant, motivated, disciplined, and mature.”
Bremenkampf, who also taught at Henry Ford College (HFC), felt compelled to nurture Catana’s unlimited potential. He helped enroll the high school student in calculus courses at the college.
“I gained an ever-increasing appreciation for not only his academic prowess but his personal qualities,” says the mentor. “Sebastian was friendly, outgoing, and modest. I took him on several outings to Ann Arbor that summer, touring the campus, visiting the engineering facilities, and wandering through the bookstores. He belonged at U-M after completing high school; we both knew that.”
Getting into U-M
One Saturday in 1991, Bremenkampf and Catana met with the international admissions and recruiting coordinator at U-M. Romanian authorities had refused repeated requests from DHS for Catana’s school records in retribution for the family fleeing the country. The admissions team assured him they would evaluate his academic performance at DHS, HFC, and on the SAT. Bremenkampf was confident Catana would be accepted.
Gordon L. Bremenkampf, BS ’63/ MA ’67, (left) helped Catana enroll at U-M.
“As an alum myself, one of my obvious motivations in taking Sebastian to the Office of Admissions was to recruit a gifted student and, therefore, enhance the University’s reputation for excellence,” he says.
Catana scored 780 (out of 800) on the math portion of the SAT. U-M admitted him under two conditions: He had to pass the TOEFL test of English proficiency, and the administration would monitor his academic performance throughout his freshman year.
“My education at U-M was an exciting, challenging, and transformative full four years of my life, during which I learned so much about the world and myself,” Catana says. “I remember a world-class faculty and student body, an amazing diversity of people and ideas on a beautiful and welcoming campus.”
He completed a five-year program at U-M in four, graduating magna cum laude with his bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering. He subsequently earned his master’s degree in chemical engineering from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. Bremenkampf’s nurturing had worked.
A passion for opera
While pursuing his doctorate in chemical engineering at Carnegie Mellon, Catana met Claudia Pinza, founder of the Ezio Pinza Council for American Singers (EPCASO) in Pittsburgh. Named after Pinza’s late father, a prominent actor and opera singer, EPCASO sponsors opera training programs in Italy. Catana enrolled in Pinza’s voice performance class at nearby Duquesne University. Pinza was so impressed by the talented baritone that she invited him to tour and perform in Europe. In 1999, Catana earned his performer’s degree/artist diploma from Duquesne.
Suddenly the multi-talented artist was at a career crossroads. His doctorate was nearly complete. But the stage also beckoned. In the end, he made his professional opera debut in 2001, singing in Les Huguentos at New York City’s Carnegie Hall.
Catana performed several roles with the Baltimore Opera Company for the 2001-02 season and the Seattle Opera for the 2002-03 season. From there, he appeared in a special concert with the National Symphony Orchestra in Mexico.
Sebastian Catana, BSE ’95.
The Met
In 2003, the artist made his debut at the New York Metropolitan Opera, better known as the Met, one of the most prestigious operatic venues in the world. He played the role of Schaunard in La Boheme.
“The Met was fantastic,” says Catana. “You work with the best singers, conductors, and directors – I can’t even begin to express it.”
His mother attended the debut, along with Bremenkampf, Pinza, and Dr. John L. Anderson, former dean of the Carnegie Mellon College of Engineering.
“One of my greatest joys was to see Sebastian sing the role of Schaunard in La Boheme,” says Bremenkampf, who was seated in the director’s box. “I can’t quite describe what it was like to see him come on stage [at the Met] and fill that 4,000-seat auditorium with his beautiful voice.”
The two remain close to this day.
“Gordon Bremenkampf has been my teacher, my friend, my mentor, my counselor – everything,” Catana says. “He is a fantastic man who has had a huge influence on my career. He helped me get into college. He believed in me, and it is truly a blessing to have him in my life.”
Putting in the work
Catana spent nearly five years at the Met. Some of his roles included Fiorello in Il Barbiere di Siviglia, Marullo in Rigoletto, Morales in Carmen, and Valentin in Faust. He has toured opera houses throughout Europe and Israel for the past decade and currently is playing Tonio in Pagliacci. The production, directed by Cristian Taraborrelli, is at the Teatro Carlo Felice di Genova in Genoa, Italy.
Rigoletto Sebastian Catana, BSE 95, pleading with the courtiers
“Tonio is one of the greatest roles in baritone repertoire,” says Catana, who is performing the role for the first time. “It’s a difficult part to sing; it’s a difficult part to act. It takes a lot out of you. If you do it too early, you might harm your voice.”
No regrets
Catana as the eponymous character in Nabucco.
These days, Catana is based in Pittsburgh, living a life far different than a chemical engineer. He rehearses 6-8 hours daily, sometimes longer. He favors the operas by Giuseppe Verdi, including Aida, Otello, Falstaff, Rigoletto, Il Trovatore, and La Traviata. He has won awards and accolades from the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, the Licia Albanese-Puccini Foundation Voice Competition, the Giulio Gari Foundation International Voice Competition, and the Loren L. Zachary Society National Vocal Competition.
“I always enjoyed the intellectual challenge of engineering and appreciate the education I received at U-M, but I’m much more passionate about what I do now,” says Catana.
At first, Bremenkampf was disappointed that Catana quit engineering, especially given his command of mathematics and physics.
“Yes, I initially thought he was making a mistake,” his mentor says now. “That was one of many examples in my life where I was wrong, as evidenced by his tremendous success on the stage.”
It’s all there in black & white
Close up and personal
Photographer. Documentarian. Truth teller.
Robin Fader, BA ’78, is all those things.
She also is female, 65, and a type 1 diabetic. So she probably should have taken cover in early 2020 when COVID-19 ravaged the populace and shut down the streets of Washington, D.C. But this multi-Emmy Award-winning producer and photographer has long been a student of human nature. Her experience in broadcast news, social work, and psychology compelled her to get outside. She needed to document humanity’s response to the global pandemic.
Armed with curiosity, courage, and a camera, Fader got a surprising wake-up call. The nation’s busy capital had become an urban wasteland. She realized she had little to fear from the invisible virus or the people who may have had it. For 100 days straight (and beyond), she ventured into the abandoned streets to document the eeriness of lockdown.
“I think the first time I really cried was when I came upon an empty playground blocked with caution tape,” she says. “And that just killed me because I thought, ‘This is life for children now. What is this going to do to their lives?’”
Little did she know the worst was yet to come.
No answers
Robin Fader, Washington, D.C.
It’s mind-boggling to reconcile that COVID-19, George Floyd’s murder, the U.S. presidential election, and the deaths of Representative John Lewis and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg happened within a single year. And then, just six days into 2021, the country experienced a domestic assault on the nation’s Capitol.
But there it is – in black and white.
Fader’s photos appear in the new documentary photography book 2020 UNMASKED (2021). Her work chronicles the year’s historic events as they unfolded in D.C. Fellow photographers Susan Baggett and Victor A. Mirontschuk photographed events in their home cities of Boston and New York, respectively. They, along with photo editor Ari Espay, let the streets tell the story of that tumultuous year, as three urban cityscapes devolved first into desolation and then chaos. Fader says the collaboration among the team was so strong it helped them cope with the burdens and hardships of COVID.
Take your shot
At 350 pages, 2020 UNMASKED is a vivid historical document that feels at once too soon and not soon enough.
The proximity to the action is breathtaking, a little frightening, and something you won’t see on the network or cable news, “because I was there when they weren’t,” Fader says. “This is a different lens, a different way of seeing everything that happened.
“As a street photographer, you have to remain present in the moment; you don’t want to keep putting your head down to your camera to see what you have,” she continues. “And with the protest stuff, you have to work very fast. You have to be acutely aware of what’s happening. If someone starts to yell, that could spark an altercation — and that altercation could turn into something much larger.”
Fortunately, people in the street tended to look out for the little white woman with a camera.
Uncluttered
Each of the photographers submitted an essay for the book to contextualize their experience. Internationally acclaimed photographers Joe McNally and Ira Block provided the introduction and final thoughts. Danielle Hernandez was the graphic designer. Additional commentary comes from a teacher, a doctor, an activist, a protester, an artist, a college student, a restaurant owner, and a food distributor. Images are identified on the page only by city, with details in an index at the end of the book. Espay reviewed thousands of photographs by all three photographers and selected a few images that benefited from color. He used them sparingly.
“When you strip away color from the photo, you’re left with the essence and emotion of the image without all the clutter of the color,” Fader says. It was the same with the decision to leave out captions. “We wanted the images to remain pure and not be distracted by any text or verbiage.”
Stand down
One of Fader’s most impactful images, taken at night on Dec. 12, is a horizontal shot that crosses the book’s spine and bleeds to the edge of each page. It captures a line of metro police weighed down by bulky riot gear. The officers’ shapeless forms span the width of K Street in the heart of D.C.’s business district as fuzzy white globes of light float overhead. The menace is palpable.
To make this dramatic photograph, Fader had to stand in the middle of the street, facing those officers. They provided a woefully inadequate buffer between MAGA supporters (behind the police) and anti-MAGA protesters (behind her). Violence could erupt at any second.
“Afterwards, I was thinking, ‘Was I mad to be there?’” Fader says, “but I felt…I felt no fear whatsoever. And I would do it again in a heartbeat.”
Stay with the shot
Robin Fader, Washington, D.C.
“I could hear Ari’s voice in my head: ‘Stay. Don’t move. Don’t move. Work that moment.’”Working with Espay in the editing process reinforced a lesson easily forgotten in the heat of the action. During a July 3 rally in Freedom Plaza, Fader once again encountered a police line that separated opposing protesters. She trained her camera on a woman obscured behind a Trump flag. The woman seemed to be hiding, reluctant to be photographed.
Eventually, one of the woman’s eyes appeared, looking directly at Fader’s lens. She got the shot, which includes an African American man, mask down and mouth open, shouting at a police officer. He is wearing a “Black Lives Matter” shirt. The officer appears resigned to the juxtaposition of extreme opposites.
“You have the BLM folks and the Trump people critical of the police because neither side feels like they’re getting justice,” Fader says. “It’s very, very upsetting.”
Photos like that illustrate how complex police reform is in modern America, she says. The image appears on one page of 2020 UNMASKED. On the opposite page, an African American woman with a baby on her hip holds a sign that reads: “Fear Less Love More.”
“That was one of many portraits I took at the ‘Black Lives Matter Memorial Fence’ by Black Lives Plaza,” Fader says. “The fence surrounded the White House and for four months was a place for people to place their art and protest messages. It was was often Ground Zero for protests by white supremacists.”
Fader befriended the two women, formerly strangers, who protected the fence 24/7. She is now working on a documentary about them.
Transformed
Victor A. Mirontschuk, New York.
The photographer claims she doesn’t chase danger, though she often found herself in dangerous situations.
On the night of Jan. 5, 2021, she was out photographing at Black Lives Matter Plaza. At about 10 p.m., word came down that a crowd of 200 Proud Boys was working its way toward the plaza. This time, seriously concerned for her safety, Fader asked to be escorted to her car about two blocks away. She had to take a circuitous route to dodge clashes between Trump supporters and Trump protesters, and it took about 2.5 hours to get there, she says.
Other times Fader found hope in the least likely of places, including a 16th Street food distribution center. Many people, mostly Hispanic and non-English speaking, waited for hours, only to be turned away when the supply was exhausted. Not to be stopped by a language barrier, Fader returned with a sign that read in Spanish: “I want to take your picture to show others how important it is to donate food.” Even people who had waited to no avail stopped to interact with her.
“Donate money to a food bank,” Fader says to anyone who feels unable to solve this problem. “That’s the biggest, the best, the most powerful thing you could do.”
A splash of color
Susan Baggett, Boston.
After “months and months of go, go, go,” Fader, Baggett, and Mirontschuk settled in with Espay for the arduous process of editing and indexing all the images for publication. The catharsis was intense, Fader says. To page through the book is to flash back to one of the cruelest and most challenging periods in our country’s history. It comes with a bookmark because the creators anticipate people will need breaks between viewings.
While going through every photograph she provided for the book, “I just broke down and cried because I realized there was so much pain, so much hardship, so many unexplainable things that I saw with my eyes and my camera,” Fader says.
She believes 2020 UNMASKED will serve as a long-lasting historical document and teaching tool. All profits are earmarked for Statement Arts, a New York City nonprofit that helps at-risk high school students enter college.
“I hope the book makes us feel more compassionate in every situation we encounter,” Fader says. “Maybe that’s the benefit of looking at hard-to-look-at pictures. You have to think about them. And maybe you will think, ‘What can I do differently going forward?”
Fader found one possible answer among the masked children she photographed playing in a rowdy schoolyard.
“Their joy and laughter were abundant,” she says. “And it was fabulous to see that nothing was stopping them. I would say, ‘I want to see you smiling with your eyes. Come on, show it to me.’ And you could tell when they were smiling, even with their masks. Seeing those kids was a wonderful thing.”
U-M Stamps School of Art & Design celebrates work by 5 Michigan artists with ‘Envision’
ANN ARBOR—The Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design at the University of Michigan presents the exhibition “Envision: The Michigan Artist Initiative,” on view now until mid-January at the Stamps Gallery.
Organized by the Stamps Gallery and curated by Srimoyee Mitra, Envision is a new awards program designed to celebrate contemporary artists living and working in Michigan. The exhibition continues through Jan. 22, 2022.
In early March 2020, the Stamps Gallery launched the project with a statewide call for work, resulting in 259 submissions. Five finalists were selected to receive a group exhibition: interdisciplinary artist Nayda Collazo-Llorens, painter Michael Dixon, fiber artist Carole Harris, interdisciplinary artist Kylie Lockwood and photographer/digital artist Darryl DeAngelo Terrell.
Envision jurors included Carla Acevedo-Yates, curator of MCA Chicago; artist and U-M alum Ken Aptekar; and U-M alum Loring Randolph, director of Frieze New York. On Dec. 10, the Stamps Gallery will announce the jury-selected recipient of the 2021 Envision Award, a $5,000 prize.
Programs related to the exhibition include:
Exhibition Opening Reception (6-8 p.m. Friday, Nov. 12): A special musical performance by Max Bowen is scheduled.
Nayda Collazo-Llorens examines the way in which we perceive and process information, dealing with concepts of navigation, memory, language, hyperconnectivity and noise through her interdisciplinary creative practice.
Through oil painting, Michael Dixon explores the personal, societal and aesthetic struggles of belonging to both white and Black racial and cultural identities, yet simultaneously belonging fully to neither.
Carole Harris is a fiber artist who extends the boundaries of traditional quilting by exploring other forms of stitchery, irregular shapes, textiles, materials, and objects.
Kylie Lockwood is an interdisciplinary artist whose work reconciles the experience of living in a female body with the history of sculpture.
Darryl DeAngelo Terrell explores the displacement of black and brown people, femme identity, and strength, the black family structure, sexuality, gender, safe spaces, and personal stories through photography and digital art.
