Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation

This is the final post in our series from the Zimmerli Museum on their Water exhibit (and our final guest blog for 2010).  The exhibit ends on January 2; we urge you to see it if you can, but if you can’t, be sure to read on and find out how an amazing audio tour of the exhibit featuring a wide range of contributions by Rutgers faculty is just a phone call away.

By Donna Gustafson
Andrew W. Mellon Liaison for Academic Programs and Curator
Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers

As I have written in an earlier blog, the Water exhibition on view at the Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers University until January 2, 2011, was an interdisciplinary project involving many individuals at the university. The exhibition is wide-ranging in scope and the 105 works in the exhibition include a variety of artists, cultures, historical time periods, and different media.

There are paintings, prints, photographs, sculpture, site-specific installations, videos and even a process piece that is continually unfolding in time. Titled Waiting, it is by the artist Geoffrey Hendricks. It came to us as two watercolor paintings on paper; one shows a beautiful blue sky with white clouds, the other shows a nighttime sky with a moon and clouds. The artist’s instructions were to immerse these works of art into a glass dish filled with water and wait. Beside each dish is a small card on which the artist inscribed the I Ching signs for water over sky.

We monitor the state of the paintings and the dishes of water daily, refilling when necessary, changing the water if necessary. On January 2, 2011 when the exhibition closes, we will remove the water from the dishes and assess the conditions of the paintings. Many people find this to be a mysterious addition to the exhibition; however, I see it as a beautiful representation of water’s role in nature as a constant instigator of change and a reminder of passing time. It also presents a certain irony in that we at the museum are actively engaged in the destruction of a work of art rather than in protecting and conserving art.

I wanted also to talk about our faculty collaborators who lent their voices and expertise to the cell phone tour that accompanies the exhibition. Fifteen faculty members each chose one work of art to discuss from their own interests and perspectives. We asked two professors from the Department of Art History, Joan Marter and Susan Sidlauskas, and three curators from the museum: Alfredo Franco, Curator of Education, Julia Tulovsky, Assistant Curator of Russian Art, and me. The five of us spoke as curators and art historians, which is to say, we talked about what we thought the works of art meant and artists’ intentions.

The other faculty members had very different points of view. The first to come in and record his impressions was Barry Qualls, a member of the English faculty and a scholar of British Victorian literature. He chose to discuss a painting of Brighton Beach by the English painter, John Constable, and explored Constable’s motives in going there in search of a sea cure for his wife who was suffering from tuberculosis. After Barry’s successful recording, we began to really get excited about the project.

It was clear that there would be some very interesting discussions and we began to schedule all our participants. Thomas Papathomas, from the Department of Biomedical Engineering and the Associate Director of the Laboratory of Vision Research, was next. His description of how eye and mind work together to comprehend what we see, was concise and clear, so clear in fact that I used his description (with his permission) of how we see in my summer art history class. As the process continued we found each of our faculty participants to be both eloquent and insightful.

Yair Rosenthal, whose interests lie in paleoclimatology, paleoceanography, and geochemistry, and is a member of the Institute for Marine and Coastal Sciences, constrasted his interests in the ocean’s depths to Vija Celmins’ focus on the surface in her image of the ocean.

Rebecca Jordan, from the Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Natural Resources spoke about her research on the habits of fish and her observations of fish behavior and coloring in the context of Emma Amos’s vivid representations of swimming fish.

Peter Wacker (Geography) and Joanna Regulska (Women and Gender Studies and Geography) each talked about landscapes and described the historical events represented and the ways in which the land and water in the scene had participated in that history.

Ousseina Alidou, Director of the Center for African Studies spoke about a photograph of the Namibia Desert in West Africa by Cary Wolinsky.

Sumit Guha, a historian whose focus is South Asia, examined three photographs by Raghubir Singh of the Kerala Coast (the historic center of the spice trade) and Cheryl Wall, from the English Department and a scholar of African-American literature, spoke about the Mississippi River and Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn as presented by Thomas Hart Benton.

One of our participants, historian James Delbourgo, was in England for the summer, but we found a way to record his discussion long distance. While James specializes in early modern science and the Atlantic World, he chose to speak about Amazing Grace, a contemporary video by the Kenyan born artist Wangechi Mutu, and reflected on the Atlantic Ocean as a space of passage and labor for Africans sold into slavery.

All of these discussions can be accessed in the museum as you walk through the exhibition and they add fresh insights, historical facts, and new perspectives to the works on view. It is also possible to dial 732-339-6060 from your phone outside the museum and enter extensions 1 through 15 to hear the audio tour. You will not have the benefit of the individual works of art to look at while you listen, but you will get a sense of the exhibition and be reminded that approaching works of art from your own experience and perspective is a good entry point for all art. The cell phone tour and the Water exhibition will close on January 2, 2011 so there are just a few weeks left to visit the exhibition.

The museum is closed on Mondays. During the holidays we will be open between December 26 through January 30, closed on December 24, 25, 31, and January 1, 2011. On December 28, from 12:30 to 3:00 pm, the museum will host a special holiday workshop for children to “Create a New Year Calendar.” On Sunday, January 2, children can participate in a Scavenger Hunt and win a prize.

Part 1 of this series: Diving Into Water
Part 2 of this series: Atlantic Crossing: A Robot’s Daring Mission

All photos courtesy of McKay Imaging Photography Studio & Gallery

Introduction by Michelle Knapik, Environment Program Director

Last year, the team from the Center for Urban Environmental Sustainability (CUES) at Rutgers asked Dodge to provide a bit of seed funding to help support their vision for an expanded University Extension Program (i.e., outreach, research and educational services designed to be of practical value to residents). While Rutgers has one of the oldest and most well regarded Ag Extension Services in the country, the CUES faculty wrestled with changing conditions and demographics in New Jersey. Given that NJ is now the most densely populated state in the nation, one in which rural, suburban and urban lines can be blurred into one big metro region, the CUES team wanted Extension Services that would be relevant to all New Jerseyans. The result is a pilot program of Environmental County Agents who apply creative solutions that meet the sustainability test of addressing integrated environmental, economic and social justice goals.

Yes, farmers and county and town officials are still able to call the County Ag agents at Cook College, but now, Environmental Commissions, Sustainable Jersey Green Team members, town engineers and planners, and school officials can call Environmental County Agents to help with water resource (e.g., stormwater management challenges), urban infrastructure, and landscape rehabilitation issues. There is now one county agent per every two urbanized areas in the state (Morris/Somerset, Camden/Burlington, Passaic/Essex, Union/Middlesex).

The CUES team is leveraging federal and state funds (and a seed grant from Dodge) to support the growth of this innovative program. In this new guest blog series from CUES, we will hear stories about ways in which the new Environmental County Agents are providing technical assistance and building community capacity to generate solutions to pressing urban environmental issues in New Jersey, but first we hear from the CUES team to get some historical perspective and an overview of the Center’s work.

By Dr. Beth Ravit, Dr Wolfram Hoefer,
Dr. Christopher Obropta, and Jeremiah Bergstrom

Imagine yourself as Abraham Lincoln. In your own presidential way, you are trying to help students who cannot afford to go to the existing colleges and universities figure out a way to get a higher education—if not in the traditional, textbook, general education way, then through a new way—a more practical approach. Lincoln signed the law that created a uniquely American system known as the Land Grant University. Under this system, states would be “granted” random parcels of land to sell to acquire funds needed to build a school that would provide “a liberal and practical education for the industrial class” —hence the Land Grant Colleges established through the Morrill Act signed by President Lincoln in 1862. So, the state of New Jersey sold off its parcel of land, oddly enough located in Utah, and in 1864, the Rutgers Scientific School was created, just edging out cross-state rival Princeton, and the college began instructing students in the practical issues of New Jersey.

At that time, the education that students received was primarily concerned with agriculture and engineering. It was said at the time by Abraham Browning of Camden that the state of New Jersey, the “Garden State,” was like an immense barrel filled with good things to eat and open at both ends, facing both New York and Philadelphia. Students got to study questions ranging from blueberries, cranberries and beautiful crops in southern Jersey to the industry that was dominant in the northern regions of the state. Over time the Land Grant College developed a three pronged attack to address these issues. The college itself offered a more traditional education approach, while the Agricultural Experiment Station was responsible for leading research, and the Agriculture Extension Service placed “County Agent” educators in a very hands-on role out in their communities.

Fast forward one hundred and thirty years. (more…)

David Grant, President and CEO

As I move through my last six months at the Dodge Foundation, I find myself appreciating the “gems” of New Jersey life all the more.  One of them is coming up this weekend: the Marion Thompson Wright Lecture at Rutgers-Newark, affectionately referred to by its devoted followers as MTW.

For thirty years, it has been an event of note during Black History month.  Indeed, there has been nothing like it as a sustained showcase of public scholarship on African-American history and culture.  But it is even more than that.

Picture the big meeting room upstairs at The Paul Robeson Campus Center overflowing with people, on a Saturday morning.  The Mayor is there; the President of Rutgers is there; sometimes the Governor is there.  So are Newark high school students and their teachers.  There are grandmothers with great hats and people who look like they haven’t glanced up from their Blackberries in months.

It is a joyfully diverse crowd at this most diverse of universities, and they greet each other as if this were a reunion – or maybe a concert where everyone felt lucky to have a ticket.  In an age where it is hard to get anyone’s attention for more than a few minutes, they settle in for the day – because MTW takes its time for the civilities of civic engagement.

For me, MTW is a vision of how universities and their communities should ideally interact.  It is about scholarship without being stuffy.  It is about important and potentially divisive matters, but it exudes a generous and inclusive spirit.  MTW assumes we can learn from our shared history, and we can make sense of it together.  I have said in another blog entry that I think art may save us. I feel the same way about the MTW celebration of ideas and human connections over time.

At the center of MTW, standing at the podium calling the event to order and welcoming us into its world, is the embodiment of its spirit, Rutgers Distinguished Professor Dr. Clement Alexander Price.  Perhaps it is more accurate to say MTW is the embodiment of Clem’s spirit, and that of his long personal and professional friendship with MTW co-founder Giles R. Wright, from the New Jersey Historical Commission.  This is the first MTW Giles did not help plan, as he died a year ago this month

This 30^th incarnation of MTW will take place over two days, not one, beginning on Friday afternoon at 1 p.m. and ending on Saturday at 4 p.m.  The 2010 MTW Letcure itself will be given on Saturday morning by Rutgers Professor Annette Gordon-Reed, whose book The Hemingses of Monticello, won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize.  The theme of the two days is Laboring in the Vineyard: Scholarship and Citizenship, and fourteen former MTW Lecturers are returning to Newark to be part of the program.  See the Rutgers’ website for details.

The 2010 MTW program is dedicated to the memory of Giles Wright and John Hope Franklin.

As the Dodge Foundation shifts its focus this time of year to our Education grants, Education Program Director Ross Danis notes the work of an organization in Newark helping young people succeed, even under the most difficult of circumstances:

Dr. Vincent Mays runs the Youth Education and Employment Success Center (Ye²s Center), a remarkable partnership between the City of Newark, the Newark Public Schools, Rutgers University, and a spectrum of non-profit organizations. He is a “can-do” guy, who, with an extraordinary team, is helping to improve education and employment opportunities for the youth of Newark.

(more…)