“The field is very narrow in France, where I came from,” said Robillard, assistant professor for computational visual design. “It’s a niche thing there. In the U.S., there was a need. That need and my path met.”

Robillard’s class, available to undergraduate and graduate students, is part of a larger initiative at the university. AI Fluency allows students to develop a rich understanding of how AI can be used in their chosen field of study.

“Ohio State is a good example of how a university can transform in the AI era,” he said. “I’m happy to contribute to this dynamic with my course as well as my research in AI, art and design.” 

Before diving into using AI, Robillard will walk students through the technology’s history. The question of using technology in the arts is not a new one, he said.

“This goes back to the 1960s,” he said. “Now, software like Adobe is everywhere. It’s a core component of design. With AI, it’s worth it to ask, ‘Where is my agency as a designer or an artist? How does this relationship work?’ It’s a question we should ask – we shouldn’t forget about it. But that relationship has shifted in a big way.”

Robillard also wants students to grasp the impact of AI and generative media.

“Generative media is spreading on the internet,” he said. “It’s a media phenomenon. So we’re looking at not just AI as a tool but AI as a system.”

Students will complete a series of creative projects that cover skills like developing prompts for AI generators, creating thematic atlases and exploring AI frameworks.

“I want students to be able to design interactions with AI in things like smart watches,” Robillard said. “They will make design choices as to how we relate to AI in our daily life.”

Thywill Olude is a graduate student in Robillard’s class. Working with emerging technologies is one of the reasons he’s studying at Ohio State.

“I have a background in art – I used to paint,” he said. “When I saw this class, I wanted to explore how tools like AI can be helpful in creating art beyond using traditional tools.”

Olude said he and other artist friends used to view technology with some skepticism. As they’ve developed and matured, though, that’s no longer the case.

“One way or another, we’ve always accepted technology, whether we like it or not,” he said. “It’s your reality at the moment. The best you could do is embrace it.”

Joining Olude in the class is Maria Palazzi, Ohio Eminent Scholar in Art and Design Technology and professor of design. She hopes to learn from Robillard’s curriculum and best practices.

“Obviously, AI is going to become an important aspect of the way designers practice,” she said. “I want designers to be able to make informed choices about the way in which they’re going to use AI. That means I have to be informed, too.”

Ensuring that her students are ready for an AI world is a driving force, Palazzi said. Working with AI as developers, instead of just consuming it, will help direct how it should be used in and out of the classroom.

“We want to prepare our students for the future they’re going to face with these new tools.”

“This is the first time y’all have seen the mural, right?” Terron Banner, director of Urban Arts Space at The Ohio State University, asked the students before teachers pulled down the cover. They could barely contain their enthusiasm, all shouting “Yes!”

Students from both schools supplied the designs. Banner and the Urban Arts Space team facilitated much of the work, including scanning and arranging student drawings into the larger painting, which was then split into halves.

Rainbows, joined hands, flowers, ice cream, and more covered the brightly colored mural, as did words like “kindness,” “honesty” and “responsibility.” Students were eager to point out their own contributions.

“I painted the people,” said Akari Campbell, a Shady Lane student. “I love painting.”

“There’s two ice cream cones with a ring around them like Saturn,” said Gwen Gigliello, a Cassingham student. “I painted those.”

Akari was looking forward to bringing her parents to the mural. They’re excited to see it, she said.

She was not the only one ready to show off their hard work. Gwen said she couldn’t wait to come back.

“I’m going to show my whole family,” Gwen said. “I’m going to have people come in from where they live and come here.”

The mural is the product of a larger process, Banner said. Banner and the Urban Arts Space team – connected with Erase the Space by university’s College of Arts and Sciences' engagement office – facilitated much of the work, including scanning and arranging student drawings into the larger painting, which was then split into halves. 

“We had prompts every week and they would share their ideas about their community, about fairness, about responsibility … hardships, too. When something’s not fair, what do you do? We started putting that into a visual language. What does it look like to be happy? What does it look like to be fair, to be kind?”

Combining the halves, each painted by a different school, made the metaphor real, Banner said.

“We’re literally erasing the space between both proximity and distance but also between different communities, different cultures, different identities and different personalities.”

Melissa Hohenberger, art teacher at Shady Lane, was happy to see how quickly the students bonded.

“When we met for the first time, we met at the library and talked, did some initial drawings,” she said. “After we left, the kids talked about wanting to meet up again and missing their new friends.”

Gwen remembered feeling nervous when she met her partner.

“My partner was shy and I was shy, but then we slowly started to come together,” she said. “I asked how old she was, if she had any pets. She asked me the same.”

Banner hopes that the students hold on to the lessons they learned from the experience.

“Working together, this collaboration and community, I think, builds bonds and that’s really the importance of this,” he said. “Whatever they may do in their future, whether it be through high school, college, their career paths – maybe they’re artists, maybe they’re politicians – collaboration and community are central things.”

Community engagement projects like this are fundamental, Banner said, both to Urban Arts Space and Ohio State as a whole.

“It’s part of our responsibility, right?” he said. “We are a land-grant university. We have a responsibility to the community.”

Michael T. Bivens, Whitehall’s mayor, agreed. He learned about the unveiling just that morning and immediately added it to his schedule.

“I couldn’t help but to come support our young people,” he said. “I’m not surprised that Ohio State is involved in this. They’re a great community partner. I’m never surprised that they’re involved.”

“It’s an interesting time in terms of progress and regression,” he said. “I want to think about hope. What could the next 250 years look like?”

Since 2023, Ohio State has named an Artist Laureate every spring. The position comes with funding that allows the Laureate to travel the state, including the university’s regional campuses, and collaborate with communities whose stories, histories and creative traditions have not always been centered within mainstream arts spaces.

Anderson, professor of Afro-contemporary dance and choreographic methodologies in the College of Arts and Sciences, was thrilled to be named the university’s fourth Artist Laureate.

“I was completely shocked,” he said. “I squealed.” 

His excitement comes, in part, from his proposed project. “Croatoa: Re-Singing America’s Next 250 Years” will be a statewide effort to build connection between Ohio residents. Anderson’s Artist Laureate work is envisioned to include engagement with Ohio State’s regional campuses in Lima, Mansfield, Marion and Newark, alongside collaborations with peer institutions across Ohio.

“We’re not all going to have the same perspective,” Anderson said. “That’s part of the American experiment. Coexistence isn’t about sameness – it’s about learning how to remain in relationship to one another while imagining a broader sense of who ‘we’ can be.”

The name Croatoa comes from the lost Roanoke Island colony. In 1587, a group of English settlers landed on an island off the coast of North Carolina. By the time a second party arrived in 1590, the entire colony was deserted. Accounts vary, but many describe a tree with “CROATOA” carved into its bark. A move to Hatteras Island, formerly known as “Croatoan,” has long been considered a possible theory for what happened to the settlers.

“I’m a native of Richmond, Virginia,” Anderson said. “We took trips to Jamestown when I was in school. A teacher once mentioned that Jamestown wasn’t the first colony in the United States and I became fascinated by that.”

That fascination has continued to this day.

“I’m a big sci-fi geek and I think about speculative fiction,” he said. “Imagine if they didn’t disappear from Roanoke Island but instead took a different path for the last 250 years. That’s what this project is: imagining what the United States will look like 250 years from now.”

“Charles has exciting plans for the year, which include activities with all of the communities served by our regional campus, tie-ins with the university’s America 250 programming and collaborations with colleges and arts organizations across Ohio,” said Lisa Florman, vice provost for the arts and history of art professor.

“His project utilizes his experiences as an academic leader and as a professional choreographer and dancer and combines those with collaborative engagement practices in ways that directly align with the goals of the Artist Laureate initiative, to co-create work with Ohio communities often underserved by the arts.”

Anderson will travel the state to facilitate movement and vocal workshops, gather oral histories, and construct participatory ‘wailing walls,’ where individuals can leave written promises, secrets, and hopes.

A small cohort of Ohio State students and local artists will serve as creative facilitators and community docents, helping guide participants through experiences centered on dialogue, reflection and collective storytelling, Anderson said.

“The intention is not to force anyone,” he said. “I know a lot of people don’t like performance. We’re using it as a tool to have conversations that can feel sensitive. To have an intellectual conversation through a physical, embodied experience.”

Oral histories are a foundation of Anderson’s idea, he said.

“My intention is to show that all of them are part of the American story,” he said. “We want to subvert the idea of a dominant narrative. We are all here and have existed here, some of us for generations.”

Valuing stories equally comes from Anderson’s teaching experience.

“How many times do we have students who know a lot more than they realize?” he said. “But that knowledge doesn’t feel valuable to them, because it’s not attached to a reward. How do we shift the notion of ownership, which often creates a hierarchy, to a sense of belonging?”

Anderson said the most meaningful part of these projects is the communities that form through the process.

“I’m interested in what becomes possible when people come together with intention,” he said. “How many different histories and perspectives can contribute to a shared future?”

In March, the theatre department hosted the Earth Matters on Stage (EMOS) Ecodrama Playwrights’ Festival and Symposium, promoting sustainable theatre. In addition to learning about the concept, attendees were also able to see what a play produced with sustainable principles looks like.

The play, “Acute Exposure” by August Hakvaag, was produced as part of the department’s mainstage season and directed by J Briggs Cormier, an adjunct assistant professor in the Department of Theatre, Film and Media Arts. Sustainable theatre isn’t new to Ohio State, but continues to be a movement worth pursuing. 

“I think it is important to support artists who are also endeavoring to use theater to make a positive change in the world,” said graduate student Joshua Lewis, who co-chaired the festival alongside his wife, Paitton. “Moreover, the festival aligns with our department’s focus on producing new works. It also supports the university’s commitment to sustainability and its long-term goal of creating a carbon-neutral campus.”

Sustainability impacts all areas of producing the play. Everything from set design to costumes and even the programs are factored in. 

Cormier said that the programs have been moved entirely to digital QR codes to save paper programs from being thrown away at the end of the night. Costumes, often bought or made new for each show, were mostly repurposed or bought used instead.

“For this show in particular, the costume designer did almost everything through thrift stores except for maybe a couple of pieces,” said Cormier. “It’s some stuff from our stock; some stuff from thrift stores. That cuts down on shipping costs. When you buy things on Amazon, you’re racking up the carbon footprint because some things come from overseas.”

To take it a step further, the set’s backdrop was hand-painted rather than purchased, giving the set a level or originality and staying true to the sustainability movement. 

“We were able to reuse a drop we already had in stock,” Cormier said. “That’s actually a pretty significant cost saving opportunity.”

Even Ohio State’s new Theatre, Film and Media Arts building has vastly improved the play’s eco-friendliness. 

“It is a smart building, so it’s being controlled by a computer system that regulates temperature so that it doesn’t heat or cool spaces if people aren’t actively in a room,” he said. 

With all of these new approaches to sustainability, it only makes sense that the plot of the play itself surrounds an environmental issue. “Acute Exposure” is a coming-of-age drama that centers on two high school seniors, Dell and Mara, living in the small town of Loving, New Mexico. The play revolves around their developing relationship against the backdrop of an environmental crisis – a nearby underground nuclear waste disposal site, which actually exists in Carlsbad, New Mexico.

“I think they’re looking for a bit of entertainment and maybe a little bit of education,” Cormier said when discussing what the goal of the sustainability festival is and why “Acute Exposure” was chosen to be featured. “No one on the production team had known about the nuclear waste storage facility before we started working on the project.” 

Cormier said that the play’s story is just as important as the mission of sustainability, especially as it pertains to theater at Ohio State. Part of the joy of theater can be its ability to create hope and develop ideas for a better future, and that’s a message many college students – and people in general – can benefit from.

“Most of our audience are college students here at Ohio State. A large part of what we’re trying to do is introduce them to theater, hopefully show them that theater can be entertaining and fun, even if it deals with heavy topics,” Cormier said. 

Through its sustainable theater performances, Ohio State is hoping to inspire change while also developing a thirst for knowledge and a passion for theater.

The Community Engagement Internship is one of three projects backed by the grant; a parallel opportunity for graduate students and a Spark Grant competition are the other two.

The internship comprises two parts: a semester-long internship for undergraduate students at Urban Arts Space, where students focus on foundational training, professional development and critical frameworks for ethical community engagement; and a semester-long placement, or externship, with local arts and cultural organizations, where students can put their new skills to use.

Community partners range from the Columbus Museum of Art and the Priscilla Tyson Cultural Arts Center to Roy G. Biv Gallery and Fort Hayes High School.

In addition to supporting the local arts community, program participants gain valuable exposure to the professional art world, said Terron Banner, director of Urban Arts Space.

“I want all the interns to be competitive, to be well-versed, to be experienced and knowledgeable in all the fields,” he said. “You never know what you may experience in the job market, at your organization, as an entrepreneur, whatever you do.”

The internship program meets a need that art departments at Ohio State have long struggled with, said Lisa Florman, vice provost for the arts and history of art professor.

“Part of the impetus behind the grant was our sense that we do a very good job educating arts students in the arts, but we’ve done less well on helping them navigate the art scene post-graduation, particularly those who want to be independent artists,” she said. “They will need, and will want, to work with community arts organizations to support their practices.” 

Imara January was an intern for the first half of 2025. After spending her semester at Urban Arts Space, she matched with Maroon Arts Group (MAG), a collective that celebrates Black art and culture in Columbus.

“To me, it seemed like a great opportunity,” she said of the internship. “I sat down with Dr. Banner in my junior year and said, ‘I have no idea what I’m doing. I need an internship, but I don’t know what I’m going to do after I graduate.’ He said, ‘I’ve got just the thing for you.’”

During her externship, January, who graduated in 2025 with a degree in arts management, helped curate an exhibition featuring work by the externs at MAG, including her own pieces. She also oversaw community fitness classes in MAG’s outdoor space.

Her favorite experience was working on MAG’s Juneteenth event.

“I was on one of the committees that planned a lot of the activities,” she said. “I got to talk to all of the organizations involved, network with them. I even built my own program for the event.”

January now works at the Columbus Museum of Art in the museum’s family and youth programs. When she interviewed for the role, she didn’t worry about being qualified.

“One thing I made sure for myself, as I went through the intern/externship process, was that I didn’t want to be a one-trick pony,” she said. “I had an impressive resume walking into my interviews. I had done data collection, program management, community engagement, all that jazz.”

January was born in Columbus. In fact, Maroon Arts Group is in a neighborhood that she spent time in as a child.

“The church I go to is three minutes down the street. My grandma lives 10 minutes away,” she said. “Being able to serve the community where I grew up was absolutely amazing.”

Stories like January’s are exactly what Banner had in mind.

“We have a multiplicity of outcomes,” he said. “One is students staying here after they graduate, contributing to the creative economy here, contributing to the communities that they’re a part of.

“Another is some going into graduate school because they see another path forward that they weren’t aware of before this work. And some of the students now work at places like the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The former student there said on LinkedIn just the other day that he owes his trajectory to this internship.”

Florman and Banner agree that a program that centers professional development is key to the success of Ohio State art students. Professional standards can vary between artists, cultures and communities, Banner said.

“We needed to find a throughline,” he said. “We’ve found responsiveness, humility, addressing biases are all foundational. We’re thinking about the values and themes that are consistent across the community.”

“It dovetails very well with the emphasis that President Bellamkonda has placed on internships, experiential learning and even workforce development,” Florman said. “What does that look like in the arts? We think it looks a lot like this.”

Developed to expand on Ohio State’s AI Fluency Initiative, which integrates AI skills and experiences into the undergraduate curriculum, AHAII will build on the college’s distinctive strengths, as well as on faculty expertise in AI foundations and applications in departments ranging from art and design to linguistics and philosophy. 

“AHAII will serve as a national model for how the arts and humanities can shape the future of AI: not merely as tools or technologies, but as cultural forces that demand ethical scrutiny, historical awareness and imaginative rethinking,” said Dean of Arts and Humanities Dana Renga.

Under the leadership of Interim Director Chris Coleman, AHAII will serve as a community hub where faculty and students can explore questions central to how humanity engages with AI; develop innovative curricula; connect with external partners to provide student internships in arts and humanities fields focused on AI; collaborate on important AI-related topics such as ethics, bias, creativity, rediscovering history, and art and technology; and use and critique AI tools to understand how they interact with arts and culture.

“At its core, AHAII positions the arts and humanities as central to defining our collective future with AI technology,” Coleman said. “Where the AI Fluency Initiative is aimed at students, the institute is really about how can we also give our scholars and researchers the tools and capabilities they need to expand beyond fluency. We’re really curious as to where AI would be helpful and what we can do to empower the people who want to head down that road.”

In addition to hiring a number of tenure-track faculty who work at the intersection of arts and humanities and AI this academic year, the college is launching several academic programs with an AI focus, including undergraduate certificate programs in AI, Art and Creativity (in development); AI, Ethics and Society, and AI, Language and Mind.

AHAII also oversees a new Arts and Humanities AI Postdoctoral/Post-MFA Program for scholars who will help launch those certificate programs, as well as the Arts and Humanities AI Explorer Program for “AI-curious” faculty members who are interested in developing skills and engaging AI as an aspect of their research, creative work and teaching. 

Overall, and in addition to the bold tenure-track hiring initiative, the college is investing more than $1 million in arts and humanities scholarship on AI.

“Exhibitions are hard work,” she said. “I started to think about all the collection materials that I wanted to show and as I made this list, I thought, ‘What is my theme?’ It took me months of brainstorming.  And all of a sudden, I realized everything that I wanted to show had some kind of artistic quality.”

“Polar Expressions: Finding Beauty in the Coldest Regions on Earth,” Kissel’s final exhibition, opened in February and will be on display in Thompson Library’s gallery space through Aug. 2.

Founded in 1960, the Institute of Polar Studies, now called the Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center (or Byrd Center), is focused on maintaining research excellence and supporting public engagement in polar and climate studies at Ohio State. The Polar Archives is a collaborative program between the Ohio State University Libraries and the Byrd Center, as well as one of eight special collections at the university’s library system.

The materials in the Polar Archives date back as far as the 1890s and document the history of polar exploration.  There are hundreds of collections held by the Polar Archives, but the cornerstone collections are the Papers of Admiral Richard E. Byrd, Sir George Hubert Wilkins and The Frederick A. Cook Society

Scholars from around the world come to Columbus to study the Polar Archives, Kissel said.

“Archives by their nature have unique materials,” she said. “If you want to research Richard Byrd, can you do it without coming here? Yes, you can. But if you’re trying to explore something new, if you want to look at original materials, that’s where we come into play.”

The collections of the Polar Archives are home to typical items like diaries, letters and newspaper clippings, as well as photographs, drawings and posters. Explorers like Byrd were immensely popular, Kissel said, so the collections also hold cartoons and poetry from the public. 

“He would have been like John Glenn, in terms of his heroic status” Kissel said. “An explorer who had ticker tape parades and all that.”

Drawings from Walt Disney’s office and Rudy Wendelin, who created Smokey Bear for the U.S. Forest Service, demonstrate just how captivating Byrd’s adventures were.

There are also more unusual items, like a painted portrait of Byrd’s dog Igloo, who was famous in his own right. 

“We have a painting of Igloo that someone sent to Byrd,” Kissel said. “Byrd went to both poles and took Igloo with him. Igloo was very popular.”

Other items on display include a vibrant series of pastel drawings by David Abbey Paige, who served as Byrd’s expedition artist. The Polar Archives has 60 of Paige’s original 100 colorful drawings. Kissel wanted to include them in the show because of the surprising range of colors Paige used.

“I assumed that Antarctica is just some big, wide, open white,” she said. “But there is contrast and color. I think Paige does a fabulous job of capturing that.”

One of the larger pieces is a hand-painted advertisement for a lecture by Wilkins about his explorations. The vivid poster is actually six 30-inch-by-40-inch sheets mounted together, announcing “6,000 feet of THRILLS. Above, Below and in the ICE” to entice potential audience members.

“Polar explorers were not wealthy people,” Kissel said. “In order to make money, they lectured. They lectured before they went on an expedition, then they lectured after to pay the bills.”

The exhibition does not ignore the people who were already living in the Arctic when explorers arrived. Just inside the gallery door is a case displaying stone and ivory figurines carved by Cree and Inuit artists. There are bears, whales, seals, both necklaces and freestanding objects.  

“These have been shown at the Byrd Center but never elsewhere,” Kissel said. “This is their first time for wide viewing, and I love how we are able to display them.”

Exploration has always raised questions that are challenging to answer. One – Who got there first? – is reflected in the show.

Cook claimed to have been the first man to reach the North Pole. Robert Peary, a fellow explorer, disputed the claim and made it for himself. Ironically, both claims are viewed as uncertain today.

“Imagine trying to prove in the 1900s that you were somewhere first,” Kissel said. “We have smartphones and tagging and GPS now. Proof then was a different kind of thing. You might have a diary; you might have a photograph or two, but you’re certainly not going to have the documentation we have today.

“And how close is close enough? Do you have to get to a specific spot, or can you be a mile away? There are a lot of questions around these expeditions that will never be answered. How do you prove it?”

Questions like these are why archival work is so important, Kissel said. It can be hard to know what to save. You never know what’s going to be interesting to the public and scholars in the future.  

“All of the work that the scientists at the Byrd Center are doing now is important and interesting today.  And it’s gratifying to know that the documentation of that work will end up in our archival collections, accessible to scholars and researchers far into the future.”

At “New Perspectives on the Northwest Ordinance,” held at The Ohio State University, scholars from Stanford University, Howard University, Johns Hopkins University and many others joined Ohio State faculty for two days of discussion about an easily overlooked founding document, the Northwest Ordinance.

Adopted by the Confederation Congress in 1787, the Northwest Ordinance provided a framework for statehood for territories northwest of the Ohio River. Crucially, it outlawed slavery in what became Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin and parts of Minnesota – an early example of the use of federal power in the nascent country.

The event was co-sponsored by the Mershon Center for International Security Studies and the Salmon P. Chase Center for Civics, Culture, and Society, along with the Ohio Commission for the 250th America250-Ohio, the Ohio History Connection and Ohio Humanities.

In his opening remarks, Christopher McKnight Nichols, co-organizer of the conference, argued that the ordinance may deserve more credit as a founding document for the country.

Calling it “perhaps the essential blueprint for national growth, settlement and development,” Nichols, Wayne Woodrow Hayes Chair in National Security Studies, said:

“In my humble opinion, the Northwest Ordinance … the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution … those three are critical in understanding the early foundations of the republic. But the Northwest Ordinance provided something else, as we’re going to learn from a whole lot of the scholars who are here with us today. It represents for me the apotheosis of that triad of documents: how to settle, how to develop, what shape would republican governance take, and for better and for worse, these were the contested terms by which the republic unfolded over the next several centuries.”

After making what he called such a “provocative claim,” Nichols welcomed Trevor Brown, dean of the John Glenn College of Public Affairs and senior vice provost for academic affairs.

Brown spoke about how he was first introduced to the ordinance as a child studying journalist Horace Greeley. “Go West, young man” is a popular Greeley quote, imploring young people to leave places like Washington, D.C., and explore the new frontier.

Greeley’s quote comes 80 years after the Northwest Ordinance. The Second World War happened 80 years after the quote and a little more than 80 years before now. Our history is not all that far away, Brown pointed out.

“I’m reflecting on how still young we are as a nation,” Brown said before he introduced Gov. Mike DeWine.

DeWine shared his passion for the state of Ohio, which would not exist in its current form without the Northwest Ordinance, he said.

“This was an aspirational document,” he said. “To me, one of the most significant things is if you think about the time the Revolutionary War occurred, 13 colonies become 13 states and now they’re thinking about what goes beyond that.”

The new nation didn’t have to dilute the power of the original colonies by adding others, he said. The Northwest Territory could have remained a territory.

“They obviously thought this was the next step,” he said.

The conference closed the following night with a keynote address given by Pulitzer Prize-winner Annette Gordon-Reed, a history professor at Harvard University.  

For more information about Ohio State's America 250 programming, please visit the website: https://go.osu.edu/america250.

“It’s a paradigm shift about even how the U.S. described this act,” said Christopher McKnight Nichols, Wayne Woodrow Hayes Chair in National Security Studies and professor of history, about the U.S. mission to arrest Maduro through “Operation Absolute Resolve.”

Nichols was one of seven faculty members who spoke about the ongoing situation in South America during a recent panel hosted by the Mershon Center for International Security Studies. He was joined by Dakota Rudesill, associate professor in the Moritz College of Law; Mathew Coleman, chair of the Department of Geography in the College of Arts and Sciences; Kendra McSweeney, professor of geography; Ryan Fontanilla, assistant professor of history; Sarah Brooks, professor of political science; and Max Woodworth, associate professor of geography.  

Over 90 minutes, the group discussed legal questions related to the operation, as well as the geopolitical repercussions, particularly regarding oil in the region.

Using this specific event as an example, Nichols argued that the language used to describe American foreign policy is changing.

Previously, Nichols said, the U.S. frequently cited human rights when taking global action.

“We see no, or only the faintest, lip service of a human rights justification,” he said of Venezuela. “The people who are actually giving [that] justification there are some of the current government in the Maduro regime.”

It is figures like Delcy Rodriguez, acting president of Venezuela, who have released political prisoners, Nichols said, out of respect for America’s commitment to human rights.

“The United States didn’t call for that,” he said. “You didn’t hear Secretary Rubio calling for that, right? You heard a lot about oil and a few other things about narcoterrorism.”

This focus on narcoterrorism and immigration is a move away from how administrations, as recently as the George W. Bush administration, justified actions like the removal of Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq in 2003.

“There’s a bundling together of immigration policy and narcoterrorism, which have been longstanding police power actions in the U.S.,” Nichols said. “No longer are they putting forward those rhetorics of democracy.”

Coleman, whose research interests include political geography and statecraft, also noticed this shift. He compared this period to the one immediately after 9/11. A graduate student at the time, Coleman was one of many who scrambled to learn about the relevant laws and policies to “piece together something that was shrouded in uncertainty.”

This is not the case today, he said.

“Any casual reader of The Wall Street Journal or The New York Times, anybody who turns on PBS in the evening, can make sense of what is going on, why it’s going on and how it’s going on.”

While news coverage plays a significant role in this accessibility, there is another factor, Coleman said.

“There’s really no attempt here to hide the machinations of statecraft,” he said. “Concealed operations and quietly engineered geo-strategy have gone by the wayside. Statecraft is stated bluntly; it’s stated plainly.”

American foreign relations also appear more ad hoc, Coleman said. Actions appear to be taken simply because they can be.

In closing his remarks, Coleman again reached back to the early 2000s, citing a quote later attributed to Karl Rove, George W. Bush’s deputy chief of staff.

“‘We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality – judiciously, as you will – we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study, too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors … and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.’

“This is sort of how I’m feeling right now about things being stated plainly and bluntly without any sort of veil over them,” Coleman said.

While arrests have been made in connection with the theft, the stolen items have yet to be recovered. Carlos Rivas, assistant professor of history of art and ethnic studies at The Ohio State University, said the heist was straight out of “The Da Vinci Code.”

“They’re in the heart of Paris, in a museum that everyone knows, dressed as construction workers,” he said. “They break in, walk up and break the glass, take the jewels. Then they walk out the same way they came in.”

Rivas, who studies early modern Latin American art, is particularly interested in the theft because of the origins of the stolen jewels.

“I’m focused on the emeralds,” he said. “There is a necklace and a set of earrings that belonged to Napoleon Bonaparte’s second wife, the empress Marie Louise. Those emeralds came from mines in Colombia, in South America.”

At the time, Rivas said, Colombian emeralds were considered the highest quality in the world.

Rivas noticed a thread of schadenfreude online as he read about the heists. He thinks it stems from changing views regarding items created through colonial projects, as is the case with the emerald mines, which were owned by the Spanish. Slave labor was a key to procuring such quality stones.

“I noticed a discourse about calling this karma,” he said. “People would say, ‘These things were stolen 300 years ago by the French monarchy, and now they’ve been stolen again.’”

Rivas thinks this could be an oversimplification. The thieves aren’t do-gooders, he said.

“These things haven’t been returned,” he said. “We assume they were stolen for the black market. This isn’t a case of repatriation.”

“Repatriation” refers to a growing movement in the museum world that questions the ethics of institutions keeping items that were previously acquired in ways that would now be considered theft. In some cases, pieces have been returned to their country of origin.

“My understanding is that these were mined by the Spanish during colonial times, then Dutch merchants sold them in Amsterdam and then the stones were further dispersed throughout Europe, landing in the French court,” he said. “I don’t think the emeralds were stolen from Colombia. It’s more that the mines were unethical in nature.”

As far as Rivas knows, Colombia has never tried to claim the emeralds.

“It’s complicated,” he said. “Who would they be returned to today?”

Repatriation in this case may be putting the cart before the horse. After all, the stolen items are still missing. The theft of jewels is part of a trend Rivas has noticed in art heists. There seems to be a growing preference for jewels and other small items made of raw materials.

“A painting, you keep intact. That’s the whole point; you won’t be cutting it into pieces. It’s easier to recover a painting,” he said. “If you have something like a crown, with all these jewels, you can strip everything and sell pieces individually. There’s no trace of it.”

Still, Rivas is optimistic about the jewels being found.

“I think we’ll see them again,” he said. “If the pieces hadn’t been distributed across the black market before the arrests, I think the suspects will talk. It’s possible that pieces have already been broken down, so we might not get complete items. That will be fascinating: where they ended up if they are found.”

If the crown jewels are returned in pieces, Rivas has an idea for how to display them anew.

“I like the idea of displaying them incomplete or in a re-creation that shows what was lost. The heist is part of their history now,” he said. “In the history of museums, in art history, whenever something is stolen, it’s inevitably a scandal. All eyes are focused on that story.”

On Oct. 10 and 12, visitors to the Wexner Center for the Arts at The Ohio State University can see an opera adaptation of “The Old Man and the Sea,” one of Ernest Hemingway’s novellas.

“When Beth Morrison Projects first pitched “The Old Man and the Sea,” I immediately knew it was the perfect piece for our first collaboration with the Wexner Center,” said Julia Noulin-Mérat, general director and chief executive officer of Opera Columbus. “What captivated me was how it blends cinematic video design with a meditative score – it feels as much like an immersive art installation as an opera. Partnering with the Wexner Center for the Arts and Ohio State makes perfect sense because this production lives at the intersection of opera, film and contemporary art.”

The show first ran in 2023 at Arizona State University’s Gammage Auditorium. Elena Perantoni, senior producer at the Wexner Center, saw it last year in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

“I was floored,” she said. “This is contemporary opera. It is engaging in the way we want contemporary art to be: a commentary on our current lives and our world.”

The 90-minute opera, by Paola Prestini, Royce Vavrek and Karmina Šilec, is based on Hemingway’s story about a fisherman chasing one last catch. Interspersed through the original story are portraits of everyday life that examine aging, legacy and humanity’s relationship with the ocean. 

The performance could not have come to Columbus without internal and external partnerships, Perantoni said. Co-presented by the Wexner Center and Opera Columbus, the piece is also produced by the Beth Morrison Projects.

Inside the university, the Wexner Center was joined by the Office of Academic Affairs and the School of Music in developing the performance opportunity.

“This breathtaking production is a perfect extension of the many ways in which the Wexner Center for the Arts supports students and faculty. We are committed to inviting and ensuring that our campus communities are engaged with every part of the multidisciplinary contemporary works of art that we carefully choose to present,” said Gaëtane Verna, executive director of the Wexner Center. “Co-producing with Opera Columbus and receiving the invaluable financial support of the Office of Academic Affairs was essential to our ability to present and share this bold and captivating new original production from Beth Morrison Projects, which reimagines Hemingway’s iconic story from a new perspective.”

Music students had a special opportunity.

"In addition to the four main characters, there is a chorus of 16 people,” Perantoni said. “Many of those roles are cast locally, including from the School of Music. The others are community members with ties to the university – alumni, faculty, staff and others.”

Increasing student access to artists is a focus for Perantoni, she said.

“How can we bring students in to see how artists work? How can we bring artists to classrooms to talk to students?” she said. “We’ve had a lot of luck with that kind of engagement. We look for every opportunity where students can engage with artists. It’s a core part of the Wexner Center.”

Sidra Bell, graduate research associate in the university’s dance department and The Wex’s presenting team, serves as an artistic collaborator with the directing team. She has been with the production since its early days in 2023 and has worked for director Karmina Šilec as a consultant since 2015.

By including locals in each performance, she said, the show has a specific flavor.

“It’s exciting that every city has a different chorus,” she said. “The leads stay the same. The show becomes this web of new perspectives.”

The staging of the show is also different from a typical opera. Actors move around, and sometimes in, pools of water.

“There is quite a bit of water on the stage,” Perantoni said. “That’s a technician’s worst nightmare. Microphones and electrical cords don’t mix with water. Luckily, Beth Morrison Projects has already figured this out. We’ve kept everyone safe.”

Bell took special care to mitigate risk for the dancers interacting with the water on stage.

“There’s always risk in movement work,” she said. “To avoid injury, the chorus is organized in a specific way and follows a specific path.”

Audience members don’t need to worry about bringing plastic ponchos, Perantoni said.

“No water comes off the stage,” she said. “There’s no splash zone.”

Performances like this are why Bell came to Ohio State to pursue her doctorate.

“Ohio State has this reputation of being on the cutting edge of dance,” she said. “There’s a lot of opportunity here.”

In fact, Bell’s coursework allows her to appreciate her opera experience from an academic perspective as well as a creative one.

“I’m taking a music history class and we’re getting into the origins of opera,” she said. “I’m actually practicing the things that we’re talking about in my classes. It’s amazing. I’m very lucky.”

 “Growing up, I would translate for my parents,” said Gonzalez, whose parents moved to the United States from Mexico. “I’ve always been ready to defend and advocate for people.”

Throughout his career at The Ohio State University, Gonzalez has used dance as a way to connect people, to build community and to tell stories. This past spring, he had a chance to share these passions with a new group of students through the university’s Ohio Prison Education Exchange Project (OPEEP).

Gonzalez taught a class of 21 students, a mix of “outside” students from Ohio State’s Columbus campus and “inside” students from London Correctional Institution (LoCI). OPEEP’s first dance class, Citizen Artists, met for three hours each week, for 16 weeks at the prison. Instead of focusing on technique, Gonzalez chose a less restrictive path, one that allowed students to share their stories through choreography and improvisation.

“I was working with people who are institutionalized,” he said. “They’re already being forced to move in a specific way. A technique class – like a ballet class – there’s a rigidity to it. I wanted to step away from students feeling like someone else was dictating how their body should move.”

OPEEP’s classes are designed to expose students to different ways of thinking, said Mary Thomas, co-director of OPEEP and professor of women’s, gender and sexuality studies.

“Ohio State is known for its high-quality education,” Thomas said. “We want to bring that excellence to incarcerated students. Courses in the arts, like Citizen Artists, challenge students, both inside the prison and from campus, to collaborate and engage with new perspectives. They encourage empathy, develop tools for self-expression and provide outlets for creativity. For incarcerated students, these courses are especially powerful: They guide people along new paths of self-discovery and equip them with enhanced skills for future education, both during their time in prison and beyond." 

Students worked alone and together to choreograph dances from both personal stories and written text. This collaborative work helped students and Gonzalez alike overcome their largest hurdle: The prison does not allow touch between people.

“We took time to imagine how to connect without touching. What does it mean to do a partnered, social dance without touching?” he said. “Maybe that’s mirroring each other’s movements, maybe that’s using your voice to move someone else. We also did individual choreography that allowed people to move next to each other, to create energy that way.” 

Another barrier Gonzalez and his students navigated was the vulnerability dancing requires. LoCI is a male prison and Gonzalez is familiar with the stigma that can be associated with male dancing.

“There were questions. ‘How much are we going to move?’ ‘What are you going to make us feel?’” he said. “‘I don’t think I’m ready for this.’ ‘I don’t know how the other guys are going to see me.’ It was my job to let them know that we’re building a space where we get to sweat and move with each other in the moment. You can take whatever you want from that.”

This was not Gonzalez’s first time teaching dance in a prison setting. Unlike previous instances, though, he was able to spend weeks with the same students.

“It was such an exciting thing. My previous experiences have been one-offs,” he said. “I got to see a whole semester of growth and cultivation. You had folks from different circumstances coming together to build community. It was powerful.”

In fact, Gonzalez’s students struggled with the idea that they wouldn’t be able to speak with each other once the semester concluded.

“We’ve built this community and then one day, we are to have no more contact with one another,” he said. “My students would ask how we can maintain contact. I had to remind them that we’re not allowed to communicate. The contact lives in the lessons we learned. I take the dance with me for the rest of my life. It lives inside my body; it’s archived inside my body.”

“I remember being in a five-and-dime store with my parents and finding comics that were on sale – 10 for a dollar,” he said. “They let me at that pile, and I came away with 10 comic books. Fifty years later, I’m still buying them.”

Smith is the dean of The Ohio State University at Newark. He has made a career of studying the stories of Batman, Superman and others, and has a collection of more than 20,000 individual comic book magazines.

Beyond stories, Smith said, comics have plenty to share with readers.

“Comics are always a reflection of the culture from which they spring,” he said.

A good example of this is Superman. The iconic hero was created in Ohio by Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegel.

“Superman gets his start in 1938. He’s an interesting time capsule about the attitudes of the late 1930s,” Smith said. “The initial stories are about a superhuman fighting injustices: toppling crooked union organizers, corrupt government officials. He’s out there fighting for workers who are underpaid or underprivileged. He’s supporting people who can’t support themselves.”

The Man of Steel is on Smith’s mind lately, as the character is coming back to movie theaters this month in “Superman,” which premieres on July 11.

“Every trailer I’ve seen has made me more excited,” Smith said. “I have to go – it’s part of my scholarship.”

Smith isn’t Ohio State’s only comic expert. The Columbus campus is home to the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum, which is the largest collection of comics and art materials in the world.

The museum houses 300,000 original cartoons, 63,000 books and graphic novels and 2.5 million newspaper comic strip pages and clippings – not to mention over 100,000 comic books, journals and magazines. Smith serves as a faculty adviser to the center.

Among those are collector’s items that any Superman fan can appreciate, said Jenny Robb, head curator of comics and cartoon art.

“The creators of Superman, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, lived in Cleveland,” she said. “We have rare original artwork by Shuster. We also have original art by other Superman artists, like Wayne Boring, who defined the look of Superman in the ’50s, and Curt Swan, the quintessential Superman artist from the ’60s to the ’80s.”

There are also Superman comic strips, she said.

“People may not know that soon after the comic book was launched, a daily newspaper strip was also created,” she said. “Kids could read it at home if their families subscribed to the newspaper. They didn’t need the 10 cents to buy a comic book.”

Robb isn’t surprised that Superman’s story has resonated through the decades.

“People love to see justice prevail. They love to see the good guys win,” she said. “Superman has superpowers. He could use them for anything, and he chooses to use them to stop crime, to rescue people in danger.”

Smith agrees. Superman stories are about more than being able to fly.

“What writers put into him, what I’ve read into him is a story about our duty to one another,” he said.

Superman is Smith’s favorite comic book hero. The values the hero holds mean so much to Smith that he raised his children on them.

“Superman is someone who’s not willing to hide. He feels a responsibility to everyone around him to use his gifts. That’s the real story of Superman,” he said. “I always told my boys that we’re all gifted with some kind of superpower. I don’t care if it’s your ability to write a report or bake a chocolate pie, everyone’s got one and everyone has an obligation to use that power for the benefit of others.”

“All of the music I’ve ever made… now belongs… to me,” she said in a statement on her website.

In 2019, Swift’s then-label Big Machine Records sold her entire catalog, six albums at the time. She maintained that she was not provided the opportunity to purchase them herself, under acceptable conditions. In an effort to regain control of her work, and dilute the value of her original albums, she re-recorded four of the six.

But now, she owns everything: the originals and the new versions.

Two Ohio State professors offer their thoughts on what this means for the record industry and for musical artists.  

What is a master recording?

When an artist signs a contract with a record label, the label typically covers recording fees, marketing fees and other costs upfront. This provides the artist a better chance of having a successful album. The record label also owns these original, or master, recordings.

Jesse Walker, assistant professor of marketing and logistics at The Ohio State University’s Fisher College of Business, played bass for the group Flobots for nine years. While this initial monetary support can be helpful, he said, it can also present a challenge to a band.

“You basically pay back that advanced cash through your royalty percentage,” he said. “Essentially the record company is giving you a massive loan. Only once you pay it back do you start receiving your portion of the royalties.”

Walker, who was in the band from 2005-2014, said they still do not own the masters for the three records they released while signed to labels.

While Swift no longer needs to worry about the royalties – her estimated net worth is $1.6 billion – she has talked about the sentimental and creative attachment she has to her work. Jason Rawls, assistant professor of hip-hop in the School of Music, echoed this sentiment.

“There’s something to be said for owning your own music, your own product,” said Rawls, who is both a producer and recording artist, going by J Rawls professionally. “When you create music, it’s part of you. It’s who you are. It’s almost like having a baby.”

Will this change the record industry?

Neither Walker nor Rawls thought Swift’s announcement would change much in the record industry.

“There may be changes here and there,” Rawls said, “but I don’t see sweeping changes. The industry is the way it is for a reason. The record companies aren’t going to give up that much power. Still, it’s a step in the right direction.”

Walker agreed. Swift’s ability to craft a narrative around the sale of her masters, including the re-recordings, made this a unique situation.

“The re-recordings, from a business perspective, that’s brilliant,” he said. “She was able to do that because she’s a highly effective storyteller. I don’t know if another artist out there would be able to spin that narrative as successfully as she did.”

Getting people to listen to the re-recordings, dubbed “Taylor’s Versions”, is impressive on its own, Walker said. In fact, many of Swift’s fans refused to listen to the masters out of loyalty to the performer.

“Replications of art are not valued nearly as much as the original,” he said. “What she’s done is a kind of replication. It may have worked because she built this amazing story around it. I don’t think most artists would be able to do that.”

What does the future look like?

While Walker doesn’t anticipate a cascade of change in the record industry, he does believe that the conversation around Swift’s music has raised other concerns.

“What does it mean to monetize art?” he said. “I don’t think most people like the idea of a faceless corporation owning the music that they’re listening to. They want to support the artist, right? But the labels could argue that they add a lot of value, that they do things artists can’t do themselves. So, how valuable is that?”

Rawls is happy that Swift’s campaign is calling attention to the complexities of record deals.

“Most artists assigned to major record labels never own their masters,” he said. “To be able to own them must be one of the best feelings in the world. What she’s accomplished is magnificent. It’s a win for all of us.”

Wrapping up on May 22, the exhibition presents works of art from students, faculty, residents and staff at the university’s seven health sciences colleges and The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center. 

The show begins as part of a larger collection in Hamilton Hall, which accepts works from anyone in those groups. Then the works are reviewed by the James Art Program Strategic Steering Committee, said Peggy Kohler, who manages the performing and visual arts programs at The James. 

In addition to skill, Kohler said, the group looks for uplifting artworks.

“We want people to come and have a little respite in the gallery,” she said. “We want them to have something interesting to look at, something that will take them somewhere else or buoy their spirits or just give them a break.”

Jessica Wojtasek, a senior user experience designer with the hospital’s digital marketing and communications team, has participated in the show twice. Wojtasek, who paints professionally and has shown her work across the city, captures scenes from around Columbus. This year’s James exhibition shows five of her pieces, including a painting of the iconic Tee Jay’s Country Place sign on Columbus’ north side. 

“I want people to feel an attachment to the city we’re in,” she said. “We experience it every day, whether it’s raining or it’s a beautiful spring day. I want viewers to feel a connection to this place.”

Wojtasek’s department was excited to see her works included in the exhibition, she said. She has enjoyed sharing her paintings with them.

“Getting to do this with my co-workers has been fun,” she said. “Ohio State is so supportive of their employees and our interests. It’s a fun way to connect with everyone beyond our day-to-day work.”

Third-year medical student Natalie Brillhart is also participating for the second year and has also found the exhibition to be a positive experience. She received her bachelor’s degree from Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee. Since she graduated, Belmont has begun its own medical graduate program; Natalie had feedback to share with them.

“I told them about this show,” she said. “It’s been one of my favorite experiences throughout medical school. I’ve been trying to make sure that other schools have this, too, because I’ve loved it.

Brillhart has experience as a patient, as well. She has had two major surgeries, one as a child and one three years ago. Her piece in this year’s exhibition is a reflection on the more recent procedure, the removal of part of her thyroid gland.

“My recovery was rougher than I anticipated – it took a long time for my energy to return,” she said. “I created a painting that shares my story as well as my ability, as a future doctor, to empathize with patients. I’ve been here before. There’s a lot to this journey, even after your incisions have healed and you walk away.”

Brillhart has worried about abandoning her art to pursue medicine. Opportunities like this have shown her she doesn’t have to do that, she said. 

“The further I get in my career, the less separate the two are,” she said. “I’ve noticed that I’ve become more creative in how I study, which helps me grow. That’s me as a student: the arts and the medicine, together. Just like our patients, who want to be seen as a whole human being, not just someone who’s sick.”

Brillhart hopes that, if nothing else, her artwork helps someone else express themselves in whatever way is comfortable for them.

 “I cannot sing to save my life,” she said, “but some songs shake me to my core. So if I can create something that helps someone else heal – that’s my biggest hope.”

“I didn’t pick up my first digital camera until I was done with my undergraduate degree,” said Shannon, associate professor of art at The Ohio State University. “Once digital photography exploded, I found myself existing between two worlds, grounded in the physical and evolving with the digital. I’ve been fascinated by that change. I think about what we gain and what we lose as we shift from a physical photographic process to a digital one.”

Last month, Shannon was named Ohio State’s third Artist Laureate. The program allows each year’s recipient to travel the state – including the university’s regional campuses – and share their art with a variety of audiences.

“This is a wonderful opportunity,” she said. “I’m excited about it. I’m hoping it will also open up new avenues for my own artwork, whether that’s creating artwork in collaboration with the communities I visit or finding inspiration in what we do together.”

“Insofar as the Artist Laureate program was created to engage with communities across the state — especially those with less access to the arts — Kate’s application really resonated with the selection committee,” said Lisa Florman, vice provost for the arts. “The events she’s proposing involve both hands-on making and historical inquiry into photography, which struck a chord. Photography is an eminently accessible art form — almost everyone has photographs, even old analog ones, in those historical archives we call the family photo album. I’m excited to see what arises from Kate’s collaborations across the state.”

Shannon teaches at Ohio State Mansfield. It is a joyful experience, she said, working with students.

“I have the opportunity to engage with students from Mansfield and the surrounding areas that may not have as much exposure to the arts,” she said. “We’ll have students who have never been into an art gallery and by the time they finish the year, they’ve not only gone to an art gallery and interacted with professional artists, they’ve also had the opportunity to display their own artwork. Creating those types of experiences for students is really meaningful.”

Shannon is thrilled that a regional campus faculty member was selected this year.

“Ohio State is one university,” she said. “The Artist Laureate program was created with the regional campuses in mind. While art students in Columbus have access to a wide range of cultural opportunities, students at the regional campuses sometimes don’t have the same access. This program acknowledges that gap and helps create meaningful arts experiences for those students. As a faculty member at a regional campus, I appreciate that.”

While Shannon started her career with film, her students today have grown up in a digital world. They’re curious about other ways to capture images, she said.

“They were born into the smartphone age,” she said. “An age where everyone has a camera in their pocket. That’s why showing them how a camera obscura works, letting them hold antique photographs, feels increasingly meaningful as they grow further removed from the physical world of photography. Learning about the history of the medium helps them better understand and be more mindful of a tool they now use almost instinctively every day.”

Shannon is planning to bring these physical interactions with photography to the state in her new role. In the past, she has taught students how to make cyanotypes, a type of photographic printing process that involves exposing light-sensitive paper to ultraviolet light, resulting in a vivid blue image. Shannon and other photographers often make them outdoors, using natural light.

“I’d like to adopt that model around the state,” she said. “It’s a great way to engage with the community, make art, explore your surroundings and learn about the history of photography.”

At previous events, participants brought photographs to share with Shannon. She hopes this trend will continue.

“I didn’t ask them to do that; they just did,” she said. “They wanted to show me and have conversations about their own photographs.”

The conversations are part of the photography experience for Shannon. People don’t need to be artists to appreciate the medium, she said.

“Photography can engage different communities and interests. I can engage with people regardless of their artistic background,” she said. “We can find ways to connect to whatever their passion is.”

This year’s Paul H. and Erika Bourguignon Lecture in Art and Anthropology was given by Gurche, artist-in-resident at the Paleontological Research Institution in Ithaca, New York. His work has been featured in museums around the country, including the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C., and the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.

Erika Bourguignon’s career at The Ohio State University spanned 40 years. She was chair of the Department of Anthropology from 1971 to 1976, making her the first woman to hold such a role in the university’s College of Social and Behavioral Sciences (now part of the College of Arts and Sciences).

Her husband, Paul-Henri Bourguignon, was a celebrated artist and art critic. The Department of Anthropology has held an annual lecture in their honor for more than 20 years, with speakers discussing the intersection between art and anthropology.

“With exceptional drawing, painting and sculpting skills, John reconstructs extinct species,” said Barbara Piperata, professor of anthropology. “Working with human paleontologists, John studies the original fossils of our human ancestors and primate anatomy to create his reconstructions.”

Gurche discussed a project he did in collaboration with National Geographic: recreating the face of a “Denisovan,” a species of early human.

Discovered in 2008 in the Denisova Cave in Siberia, Denisovans are still a physical mystery. With few fossils found, it’s difficult to know what they looked like. This is where Gurche comes in. He shared his technique for building an anatomical model that, layer by layer, gives viewers a glimpse into the past.

“How can we reconstruct the face of an extinct species?” he asked the audience. “We don’t have [modern data]. We have to be a little more clever. What could possibly be the evidence that we could use in reconstructing an ancient face?”

Gurche described his use of comparative anatomy – using data from humans and our closest relatives to make educated guesses about bones, musculature and facial features.

“I have to look at some of the major differences between ape faces and human faces when I do a reconstruction,” he said. “I want to let the bones speak for themselves instead of making … an assumption.”

While Gurche is an accomplished artist, he only uses his creativity at the very end of a reconstruction.

“I try to use art as little as possible because I want the science to take me as far as I can,” he said. “I do use art when I’m thinking of facial expressions. I want that expression to be somehow reflective of the species.”

In the case of the Denisovan reconstruction, Gurche chose to let the challenges of life nearly 150,000 years ago dictate the expression.

“I wanted this individual to look a little bit wary,” he said. “I wanted this to look like an individual who has seen a lot, and not all of it good.”

Expressions also help modern-day viewers connect with his work, Gurche said.

“One of the things I have to put into my reconstruction is a feeling that there’s someone home, a feeling of presence behind the eyes,” he said. “I want you to look into the eyes of this thing and really relate to it as a being that was once alive, that was living and breathing and felt joy and fear and pain.”

Pointing to a photograph of his model, Gurche walked the audience through using art and science to reconstruct the Denisovan’s mouth.

“[Using science,] I can tell you something about the major form of the mouth, like how wide it is, for example,” he said. “But science will not tell me, at least not presently, any details about the specific form of the lip. Does it have a little divot? Does to have an upturn at the corners? … That’s where the art comes into it.”

Before taking questions, Gurche ended his presentation with a question of his own.

“Is this the face of a Denisovan? We still don’t know,” he said. “Almost all of these talks end with, ‘We need more fossils.’ So I’ll say, we need more fossils.”

“It’s an annual commitment we’ve made,” she said. “It’s a legacy project from a previous director, a long time ago, even before Urban Arts Space existed.”

The exhibition features work from art department staff and associated faculty. This year, 14 artists are participating in the show, on view in Hopkins Hall Gallery through April 25. The gallery is one of two spaces run by Urban Arts Space. The other is in downtown Columbus’ Lazarus building.

Many department staff members are artists themselves but, in their day-to-day roles, don’t have a chance to share their work.

Kate Durham, Urban Arts Space’s administrative assistant, is showing a piece for the first time this year. “under ohio stars” is a quilt-style cyanotype collage with coffee, sodium borate, twine, clothespins and nails.

“It’s important for artists who are more established in their careers to not only have the opportunity to show their work but to create space for a dialogue with emerging artists,” she said.

Van der Heijden agrees that student artists benefit from seeing exhibitions like this one.

“It makes sense to show students this kind of connection that we, as professionals, have to the arts,” she said. “It’s not just that we advocate on behalf of our students, but we also are actively involved in the profession in one way or another. And from an artist’s point of view, perhaps someone working with students in an administrative capacity, this gives them a chance to showcase their thinking and their mediums, the ways in which they engage in the arts themselves.”

Beyond that, she hopes that students will see that art is a lifelong learning process.

“People talk about talent, but I don’t love that term,” she said. “I think there is a misconception around the arts that you have talent or you don’t. We show that many of these skills can be taught or developed, too.”

Sahar Tarighi, a post-MFA scholar in the department, has experienced this firsthand.

“As artists, our work is shaped by the contexts we live in – our personal histories, social environments and global events,” she said. “That evolution doesn’t stop after school; in fact, it often deepens as we encounter new challenges, materials and perspectives.”

Tarighi is presenting two works in the exhibition: “Run for our right,” a video, and “Eternal Bloom of Şiler شلێر,” a ceramic, sand, foam and fabric sculpture.

She is excited to participate in the exhibition and sees it as a chance to contribute to the university’s creative community. She also views it as an opportunity to demonstrate openness and vulnerability as an artist.

“This [ongoing process] shows that making art is not about perfection or arriving at fixed answers but about continuously questioning, experimenting and refining our voice. I think students benefit from seeing that artists are learning and growing – struggling with ideas, pushing boundaries and taking creative risks.”

In addition to art students, van der Heijden hopes to reach another audience: campus visitors.

“Casual visitors in our buildings are important,” she said. “I think universities can be perceived as inaccessible to outsiders. Having exhibitions like these, that are open and free to the public, that allows for a broader public to engage.”

She continued, “I think about parents, people who work at the university, students, all just having the opportunity for a chance encounter with work in which they may see themselves.”

“I let it slip,” she said. “I told them we were moving to Columbus so I could work at the Wexner Center for the Arts. They were so happy and surprised.” 

Lowery started her role as curator of exhibitions, which is now public knowledge, in February. After a career on both coasts, at institutions like the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in Los Angeles, she’s excited to work at an art museum affiliated with a school – The Ohio State University.

“For years, when colleagues and friends asked what I saw for my professional future, I always talked about an art museum set within an academic community,” she said. “This has been the goal. I’m thrilled.”

“We are pleased to welcome Rebecca to the Wexner Center for the Arts,” said Gaëtane Verna, executive director. “Her enthusiasm for being part of a university-based, multidisciplinary arts center made her stand out. She will help us build on our track record as a laboratory for talent development, rooted in critical thinking and experimental practice. With her experience, talents, and skills, I have no doubt that she will contribute meaningfully to our role as an innovative forum for contemporary art and a vibrant cultural center for the community.”

The Wexner Center building is famously unusual in its design and layout. It won’t be Lowery’s first challenging exhibition space, however. MOCA, designed by Arata Isozaki, rivals Lowery’s new post, she said.

“The building was Isozaki’s first American commission and it is idiosyncratic,” she said. “It’s mostly underground. Some of the signature galleries are topped with beautiful glass pyramids. They can light up at night but that also meant natural light was getting into the galleries – and we know natural light is the enemy of many types of artworks.”

Lowery enjoyed the opportunities presented by Isozaki’s work and is eager to put her knowledge to the test in Columbus.

“The key is to figure out what fits the building,” she said. “The building asserts itself in a way that the Wexner Center also does. It requires you to respond to it.”

Lowery’s previous work has given her less tangible insights as well. Each institution has its own culture, she said. That culture develops entirely from the employees.

“What I see now at the Wex, looking at it through this lens, is a team that is actively working to build a lasting positive work culture,” she said. “It’s hugely important. When things break down, you can’t do the work you want to do. And the work is what you’re there to do, together.”

She hopes that her work can involve academic departments within the university more directly.

“The Wex has been a leading art institution for years and years but has maybe not always been fully embedded in the fabric of the university,” she said. “We have a strong desire to be part of this community, to assert our shared Ohio State spirit.”

While that of course means collaborating with university art departments, Lowery is thinking beyond that.

“I looked into programs across the university and considered who could be thought collaborators,” she said. “What kind of artists, what kind of subject matter could lend itself to connections across the university? That could be anything from the Department of History to the Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center.”

Lowery’s interest in the arts began when she was young and was accelerated in college, but she knows that not everyone shares her interest.

“I think art can be for everyone, but it doesn’t have to be everyone’s cup of tea,” she said. “Some people don’t enjoy reading novels or going to see live theater. It’s perfectly fine to like some things and not to like others. You don’t need a reason. Plenty of us in this field have art we don’t particularly like.”

It’s the people who say they don’t understand art that Lowery wants to reach.

“That’s where you can have an interesting conversation,” she said. “I’m a big believer, as are my colleagues, in making sure that your exhibition aids – labels, signs, explanations – are legible, that they don’t use a lot of art jargon. And if that’s necessary, then we explain it. It is possible for things to be accessible to the general public while maintaining full respect and appreciation for the artists and the artworks.”

While labels and signs are the museum’s responsibility, inquisitiveness comes entirely from the visitor – and is just as important, Lowery said.

“One way to understand contemporary art is as a series of conversations among artists,” she said. “If you’re coming in without that prior knowledge, there could be some nuances you’re not catching. But the work can meet you where you are. A sense of curiosity goes a long way.”

Lowery is keen to make the Wexner Center exhibitions welcoming. Artists share so much of themselves in their work, she said. She’s thrilled to help the public access it.

“The art is bringing people together, stimulating thought and curiosity, interest and conversation. What could be more vital than that?”

“There certainly is a lot that you can’t tell, right?” Xiao said. “How many trees are in Columbus? How many people? Where are those people? You can’t fully represent a place on a map. What you show is a representation of what data you have. “

Xiao is passionate about maps, which are used in his field to visually describe data. His research focuses on three dimensions: geographic data, quantitative methods and computational methods. He came to Ohio State in 2003.

“Ohio State was one of the pioneers in the field of quantitative geography,” he said. “That’s a branch of geography that uses quantitative and computational methods to solve spatial problems. It’s a good fit for me. I was extremely excited to be accepted here.”

Xiao is the head of the department’s new graduate degree, a master’s degree in geographic information sciences and technology (GIST). The program debuted last year, and enrollment is growing quickly. Born out of a need for more advanced geography degrees in fields like banking, insurance and public policy, the MGIST allows students to explore the subject more deeply.

“We want them to get a better sense of the field,” he said. “What can data tell us? What are the problems in the data? How do you use new technologies?”

With technology as one of the focuses of the program, it only makes sense that the degree is obtained entirely online (although students can apply for in-person courses). In addition, an online program allows for the flexibility that working students need.

“Our students are mainly professionals,” Xiao said. “People who already have a job or are close to getting a job. They don’t plan to go full-time on campus, just to study.”

To graduate from the program, participating students will take 11 out of the 15 courses currently listed in the curriculum, including a capstone project that will showcase their GIST knowledge and skills.

“Ohio State has a long history with the field,” he said. “I think we should provide attractive options for students, and not just our students but everyone looking for an advanced degree from a high-quality brand like Ohio State. We have the capacity to do that, so we are.”

Xiao said that, for the uninitiated, GIST is a confusing subject. To better understand it, he asks people to think of something they use daily.

“Look at Google Maps,” he said. “Google Maps is a celebration of the convergence of different spatial data sources and computation technology. We are at the point where we have a lot of geospatial data from traditional sources, like surveying data, and also from drones and satellites. Social media can be geotagged, right? What’s the impact of so much data? Google Maps is a perfect example of how specifically maps can help.”

After graduating from college with a degree in geography in China, Xiao was introduced to the field and never looked back.

“That was the first time I learned that there’s something called GIST,” he said. “I learned you can use a computer to make beautiful maps. I’d never done that before. I’d never had a computer. It was totally new, and I was totally stoked. I realized this is going to be my life.”

He is excited to share his enthusiasm with more students, at a graduate level.

“Where do our students go after they graduate, our undergraduate students? Do they want more? An advanced degree can help them get a better job, get better pay and advance their careers.”

The conversation, sponsored by the center’s Conversations About Research Ethics program (CARE), was one of many held at the university during Love Data Week, an international celebration of research data.  

Moderator Dana Howard, assistant professor in the College of Medicine Division of Bioethics, kicked off the panel by sharing the theme for this year’s Love Data Week: Whose data is it anyway?

This question was at the heart of the conversation between the three panelists, Casey Fiesler, associate professor of information science at the University of Colorado Boulder; Erin Moore, assistant professor of anthropology at Ohio State; and Annie Specht, associate professor of agricultural communication at Ohio State.

Fiesler first walked the group through her work with data from the social platform X, formerly known as Twitter. Citing the work of another researcher, Fiesler compared X to a fruit fly.

“People don’t study the fruit fly because it’s the best thing to study. It’s not because fruit flies are the most like humans,” she said. “They are easy to study for various reasons: short lifespan, easy to keep alive in the lab. [X] is similarly not the most representative of the population but it’s very easy to get [X] data.”

Specht furthered this point later in the conversation.

In addition to being easily accessed, social media, she said, provides “a real-time snapshot of folks’ opinions, beliefs and attitudes about what they’re seeing.”

It makes sense, then, that researchers would seek out social media data for their research. All three panelists agreed that using the data was acceptable, as long as it was done ethically.

How best to do that? Consider the community you’re entering, Fiesler said.

“What are the norms and expectations of the people who are represented by the data? How could individuals or communities be harmed by using it … or disseminating it beyond its original context?” she said. “Who benefits from this use and are the people benefiting the same ones who are facing potential harms? … What could you do to mitigate the potential for harm or increase the likelihood for the benefits of this work?”

With those questions in mind, researchers need to think long and hard about how they’d answer them, she said.

“Can you answer those questions well enough to suggest that you’re the right person to be conducting that research?”

Moore spoke to the concerns that social media data isn’t reliable.

“Irving Goffman, this old-school sociologist, had this idea that people are performing all the time, that there’s this performance of everyday life,” she said, which suggests that people aren’t being honest in their posting.

Moore’s recent work focused on TikTok videos made by the parents of children with type 1 diabetes. The videos show the psychological toll managing their child’s illness takes. Insulin is administered via injection, so children are frequently in pain and upset.  

“To say something is performed doesn’t make it any less real, right?” she asked. “… Of course, these were produced videos. The parents had to set the phone a certain way to show bruises on kids’ arms. There was a lot that went into making that production there. The production can still be analyzed. It’s like its own artifact.”

Howard asked if there was an argument to be made that users should know their data is publicly available because of the terms of service agreements they sign. Fiesler vehemently disagreed.

“Terms of service are completely useless for making any kind of ethical decision,” she said. “They don’t have anything to do with ethics and they rarely mention research at all.”

In closing, Moore argued that the fluidity of social media means that ethical researchers must be proactive and adaptable.

“I think that involves thinking through the ethics at every step,” she said. “The ethics don’t get decided on the front end and then you go forward. You have to constantly think about it at every step.”

The Heather Pick Music Program at The James offers just that. Pick, a local newscaster who died from breast cancer in 2008, was an avid musician. Friends raised funds in her honor, leading to the program’s start in 2015.  Since then, the musicians have performed music of all kinds – folk, jazz, classical and more – and listeners can enjoy it without leaving the building.

“Having live music in patient space has become a hot topic,” said Peggy Kohler, who manages the performing and visual arts programs at The James. “Why do we not have art, music and poetry in our health care? It’s always been a part of the human condition.”

Kohler ensures that The James has performers year-round. In some cases, the calendar fills itself. Kohler has regulars, she said.

“It’s important to the players,” she said. “It means a lot for them to volunteer. Some people come every week. They’ve been doing it for years because they know how much it means to the patients, and it means that much to them, too.”

One returning act is the MEEK Quartet. The foursome began playing at The James in 2016 and paused only during the COVID-19 lockdown. Rob Montgomery, Dan and Pat Epley and Tom Kaelber met at Ohio State’s Marion campus years ago. The group plays music from the 1930s through the 1960s, which Kohler said is easily recognizable and perfect for singing along.

“It’s nice to give back,” Kaelber said. “It’s my favorite thing to do. I like it better than our other concerts. Even the staff, they appreciate it. They walk by and you can see smiles.” 

“It really brightens up our day,” Pat Epley said. “You can be in a bad mood and then after you sing, you feel better – just to see people and know that you’ve brightened their day a little bit.”

People are drawn to the music, Kohler said. Staff plan their lunches around the schedule so they can eat and listen. Patients will watch and listen from the second-floor balcony near the radiation unit that overlooks the lobby.

“I watch people all the time,” she said. “Some people will go and interact with the performers. Some will sing the words. Some just listen. [People] will dance on their way up the stairs. It’s fun to see how it affects everyone.”

Kohler recalls seeing a patient who wasn’t on the schedule for treatment listening to the music.

“I had a patient who spent two hours sitting here,” she said. “I knew he was listening. He went over to the performers and said, ‘This helps so much with my pain.’ He came in just for the music that day.”

Patients who cannot leave their rooms don’t miss out, Kohler said. The hospital streams performances in-room.

“Channel two [on The James’ televisions] is all live performances from years past. And we’re recording as people perform now, too,” she said.

The music benefits health care providers as well.

“Everyone who comes in that door – patients, family, visitors – has heard the word ‘cancer,’” she said. “They’re scared and often don’t feel well, so, staff are working with people with high levels of worry all the time. … It’s an amazing thing what music does for people in relieving stress, worry and pain for everyone, including staff

In fact, some of the staff members at The James are performers themselves. Despite their long hours, Kohler said doctors, nurses and students volunteer their time to play.  

“I have two doctors who are coming to play Taylor Swift,” she said. “I have a jazz group. I have classical pianists who are doctors. I have a pre-med student flutist who plays with her dad, a medical student who plays soft indie rock. … They want to return here after a long day and give back [to their patients].”

Dallas Carpenter, a lecturer in the School of Music, has brought his contrabass to The James.

“You’ll never find a nicer audience, a more welcoming audience, than at The James,” he said. “As a performer, that’s the number one thing I enjoy. I know I’ll bring music and it’s going to help somebody.”

Kohler and Carpenter are hoping to build a program between The James and the School of Music, with the goal of expansion to other local hospitals.

“I feel it’s important to get real bridges between music schools and hospitals,” she said. “I’m passionate about every hospital having this.”

The limestone mine is a perfect place to house such an important resource. It is temperature- and humidity-controlled and is kept under tight security. Visitors are searched before they enter, as are their vehicles and belongings. Advanced preservation methods allow the materials held inside to be viewed by present and, the hope is, future generations. 

Picturing Black History uses images from the Bettmann Archive to tell previously untold stories from the lives of Black people, said Nicholas Breyfogle, one of the book’s editors and a history professor at The Ohio State University. The book was published this month.

“We were able to embrace the power of images to really be able to capture stories from Black history,” he said. “We live in a very visual world. [We] use these images to tell the stories of everything from oppression and resistance to perseverance, resilience and joy, to everyday life and political moments ... to bring all of that out of the archives, into the world.”

Breyfogle is joined in the editor role by Steven Conn, a history professor at Miami University. Breyfogle and Conn edit Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspectives. After the civil unrest in 2020, Getty Images approached Ohio State and Miami about using their historic images to better understand racial injustice in the United States. So far, this collaboration has created the book and a Picturing Black History website.

Also serving as editors are two Ohio State doctoral students: Daniela Edmeier and Damarius Johnson. For them, the book was a special opportunity. 

“I feel like the chance to work on something like this, as a graduate student, is unheard of,” Edmeier said. “As grad students, especially as historians, we’re deep in the archives. It’s easy to be in your insular little bubble, so to be working on a project that’s so forward facing, that’s collaborating with an organization like Getty, I don’t think I’ve ever had an opportunity like this.”

Johnson was struck by how valued his and Edmeier’s input was. 

“The reception we’ve had from the larger team is important. Conversations could be had between the folks who started the project,” he said. “Graduate students having this much input is awesome. There was a baseline principle that we work as a team and have input from the team in equal balance.”

Having the chance to go down to the Bettmann Archive was remarkable, they agreed.

“Even entering the mine (that houses the archive), you’re going through extreme security,” Edmeier said. “You’re brought in on a golf cart, you’re going literally into a hollowed-out mountain, it’s dark and cold. You see other areas for this branch of the military or that organization. We’re in the epicenter of valuable information, a collection of American history that most people aren’t even aware exists, much less have the opportunity to physically enter.”

Having access to images and being able to discuss them on-site was invaluable, Johnson said.

“There are thousands of images we looked at. We’re having conversations back and forth about these images, in this mine. We’re thinking about how they’ll fit within the structure of the book,” he said. “Our table of contents was set; we knew who the contributors would be and we needed supplementary images. So, there was a lot of conversation, even in the mine.”

In addition to research experience, Breyfogle said, graduate students get valuable career training.

“These are a set of skills that are essential as one goes off into the job market,” he said. “Editing, budget management, engaging with the larger public on a topic, teaching the broader public. It’s a way to train a whole series of skills and opportunities that most graduate students don’t have.”

Proceeds from book sales will support more opportunities for work, research, and education in Black history, he said.

“We’ve designed it to be self-sustaining,” he said. “We’re not doing this because we want to get rich. We’re doing this because it’s the right thing to do and because it’s going to help us do these kinds of projects with graduate students moving forward.”

“Not only that, we’re offering almost every single instrument and voice type now,” she said. “[We’re also offering] three classes: a preschool music class, a music theory class and a video game music class.”

Heck Mueller came to Ohio State last year to oversee the launch of the CMS. She has years of experience with similar programs, dating back as far as working with the Athens Community School while completing her bachelor’s degree at Ohio University.

“I was so excited to see that Ohio State was creating this kind of community program,” she said. “Our goal is community engagement and reaching our neighbors around the university district.” 

While Heck Mueller, who plays the flute, enjoys teaching, she has found the manager role to be just as fulfilling.

“To work behind the scenes as a manager, it’s such a rewarding impact to have,” she said. “It’s a different kind of impact, too. When you’re one-on-one as an instructor, you see the same student weekly and watch them grow. I’m not in the room teaching students now, but to know that we are reaching so many participants in central Ohio – it’s exciting.”

Autumn and spring sessions at the CMS last 16 weeks; summer sessions run for 14 weeks. Classes are hosted at the African American and African Studies Community Extension Center on Columbus’ Near East Side. In addition to classes and private lessons, the CMS is also home to four ensembles, including a flute ensemble and a community choir. 

Lessons cost $25 for 30 minutes and $50 for an hour, plus administrative fees. Classes and ensembles are $20 each. Financial aid is available, Heck Mueller said. 

“‘Community’ means ‘all,’” she said. “It means reaching everyone: all ages, all backgrounds, all learning styles. So how do we make music accessible? A big obstacle is financial constraints, especially when you’re talking about private instruction.”

A number of students received aid this fall, which thrilled Heck Mueller.

“Twenty-seven students were awarded financial aid. Out of those 27, 20 accepted,” she said. “That’s 20 individuals that are receiving music education that didn’t have it before. We’re excited that they’re able to participate.” 

Many of the instructors come from Ohio State, Heck Mueller said. Some are recent School of Music graduates. Graduate associates and undergraduates have been hired as well.

“[We’re hiring] juniors and seniors who are really excelling in their degree program,” she said. “They’re looking for teaching experience. [Hiring them] was important to me. I know the value of that experience.”

After 16 weeks of hard work, students of all ages perform in recitals. In addition to sharing their craft, Heck Mueller said the students learn a lifelong skill.

“They learn about performance anxiety and how to overcome that,” she said. “You can apply that to so many things: public speaking, giving a book report, preparing for an interview. This is a skill we have to practice. We practice facing those fears.”

So far, the program has been a rousing success, Heck Mueller said, bringing a “vibrant energy” to the Extension center.

“We’ve noted that the average height in the building drops significantly after 4 p.m.,” she said. “To hear young voices and those beginner methods, it’s fun.”

The students enjoy themselves just as much, she said, recalling the community school’s first student, Ezra.

“Ezra showed up for the first lesson and bounced through the door with excitement,” Heck Mueller said. “Ezra wasn’t scared or nervous and couldn’t get to that first lesson fast enough.”

“History majors in disproportionate numbers end up finding their ways to leadership roles,” he said. “Roughly 19% go into education. The rest go off to pursue all sorts of careers. And whether it’s law, politics, business, or whatever, they tend to meet with success.”

The reason for this is that history, like the other liberal arts, teaches students how to think, Levi said.

“We teach our students to think historically, to understand the ways that complex historical processes lead to change over time,” he said. “It’s not just one thing shaping an outcome. If you can get students to understand how multiple historical processes, each with varying weights of importance and each evolving at different rates of speed, converge to make something momentous happen … you’ve equipped a student with a skill set that is just as applicable in the boardroom as it is in the classroom.”

With this in mind, Levi set out to create a leadership program in the university’s history department. Realizing that the program could extend beyond any single department,  he worked to create a new interdisciplinary major with a group of university colleagues, including Robin Judd, Piers Turner, Eric MacGilvray and Andrew Martin.

Five years later, the program has blossomed, growing beyond the department into a freestanding major in the College of Arts and Sciences, with the liberal arts at its core.

“Careers change so much over the years,” said Levi. “The liberal arts help students learn how to learn.”

Students can enroll in the major starting spring 2025. The major includes 12 credit hours of core requirements and, after those courses, majors will pick a specialization: politics and law, leadership in society (with thematic pathways that focus on civics, arts, health or sports), business and markets, military and security studies, social justice and civil rights, and science and innovation (with pathways that focus on the environment or innovation).

“What you have here,” Levi said, “is the full representation of the strength of the College of Arts and Sciences. Thirty-eight departments, 900 faculty. These are six strengths that we have now … So, we’ll ask students, ‘Where’s your interest? What’s your passion? Where do you want your career to go?’ We can help them get there.”

In addition, students will take a selection of skills courses, which will depend on their specialization. Internships, ROTC deployments, and university programs like the Mount Leadership Society may also contribute to the major.

“It’s an opportunity for students to get credit for co-curricular activities,” Levi said. “Students are incentivized to go out and take advantage of these opportunities, build their networks, get experience.”

The major culminates in the senior capstone, which includes an independent research project. While the capstone project is created by the individual, they will be in a class with students from different specializations.

“We’ll have students doing social justice and civil rights working alongside students doing business and markets and military and security studies,” Levi said. “They’ll be in small seminar groups, studying the core principles of leadership as they advance their own projects. At the end of the semester, they’ll walk out with a tangible product, something they can use as they’re finding their way into their career.”

It is not lost on Levi that the university’s motto – disciplina in civitatem, or education for citizenship – echoes in the major.

“‘Education for citizenship,’ this is what we do,” he said. “The major lives in that mission. Ohio State is a land-grant university, dedicated to serving the interests of the citizens of Ohio. We are taking students from across Ohio, giving them the opportunity to get a great education at an affordable price. And now they can maximize their opportunity to rise into leadership roles wherever they come from, and wherever their career takes them.”

Levi’s program is an ambitious one. And, as far as he knows, it’s the only one of its kind in higher education. He doesn’t want to keep it a secret, though.

“This is a distinctive liberal arts leadership major. I want the rest of our Big Ten colleagues and other R1 universities to see Ohio State doing this. I want them to copy us,” he said. “With the addition of this new major to the other leadership programs we already have in place at OSU, this can be ‘the Ohio State way.’ This is how Ohio State does leadership.”

In addition to the new major, Ohio State offers several other leadership programs, including at the John Glenn College of Public Affairs, the College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences, the Fisher College of Business, and the College of Education and Human Ecology.

“I will admit, as I’ve been putting these signs up, I’m making a little bit of a ruckus,” Cavanaugh said about her recent project. “I’m hoping people will notice and wonder what I’m doing, then come over, look at the sign and scan the QR code.”

What are the codes for? The university’s partnership with the Bloomberg Connects app to create a guide to the public art of Ohio State. Bloomberg’s app is currently used by more than 550 institutions – zoos, museums, galleries and landmarks – around the world.

“They want to support the arts,” said Cavanaugh. “They want to help institutions get their content out. They want people to take advantage of it as a resource.”

In addition to information about art pieces on campus, the app also contains campus maps and information for visitors. And it’s not limited to the Columbus campus.

“We have the regional campuses, too,” Cavanaugh said. “Lima, Marion and Mansfield all have gallery space and Newark has public art sculptures.”

The app is just one project that Lisa Florman has taken on since being named the university’s vice provost for the arts in September 2022. Another goal: an arts website. 

“That was at the top of my wish list when I started this job,” Florman said.

One of Florman’s charges is raising the visibility of the arts at Ohio State. The issue is not a lack of art but rather a lack of awareness, she said.

“We’re quite good in the arts,” she said. “It’s been surprising to me, though, that people who’ve lived in the area for a long time aren’t aware of that. So, we want to do whatever we can do to bring awareness to all that good work. If we can tell those stories in one place, I think the overwhelming evidence will make it clear that we have a lot of impressive things going on.”

The website has information about special initiatives, public art and a university-wide arts events calendar, which is a first according to Cavanaugh.

“This includes all the College of Arts and Sciences areas – dance, theater, music, visual arts – but it also includes the Knowlton School, the libraries and the Wexner Center for the Arts. It will include non-academic areas like Urban Arts Space. Anything that feels arts-adjacent, we’re happy to put it on there.”

Another role that the website will fill is as a place to share news that doesn’t fit on individual college websites. For example, Cavanaugh said, three Ohio State faculty members recently won Guggenheim Fellowships.

“We have all these people doing amazing things outside of their work on campus,” she said. “But it’s not really academic news. It’s not departmental news. But it’s a big deal. Three [Guggenheim Fellowships] is a lot!”

Florman and Cavanaugh agree that the website and the app are meant to encourage interactions with the arts across Ohio State’s campuses. Cavanaugh found herself thinking about that as she hung QR codes.

“I think you have to have curiosity, to want to learn more about something,” Cavanaugh said. “There’s a lot of stimuli in people’s worlds; we’re fighting through many things for people’s attention. But if we can pull one strand of curiosity, that can lead to learning so much.”

“Check out the website,” Florman urged. “Check out the app. I think people may be surprised by what they find there.”

“Looking at 18th-century manuscripts isn’t easy,” she said.

Despite some unfamiliarity with script handwriting, Newell’s students persevered and gained valuable research experience during the four-week lab. In its second year, the lab is funded by a grant from the Mellon Foundation. Over three years, Newell’s team, including faculty from Case Western Reserve University and the University of Victoria, who earned their PhDs at Ohio State, will receive $493,000 to research African and Native American citizenship.

“The grant is under a rubric of civic engagement and higher learning,” Newell said. “So, I think Mellon expected applications about the modern Civil Rights Movement, but we surprised them by pitching and asking questions about this instead.”

Newell’s research focuses on the years between 1780 and 1920.

“We’re seeking ways to get at these questions: What’s going on with Native Americans and African Americans in terms of voting, in terms of citizenship, in terms of other expressions of community and belonging – the founding of schools and land ownership rights advocacy, access to public ‘goods’ like parks and streetcars, and the creation of independent political organizations?” she said. “Native Americans had to decide at different times and places whether the benefits of U.S. citizenship outweighed the loss of sovereignty and citizenship within their tribal nation.”

In the first year, Newell’s team worked locally and primarily with digital resources. For the second year, she and co-researchers Noël Voltz, John Bickers and Niiyokamigaabaw Deondre Smiles wanted the students to experience more fieldwork. The lab has traveled to different parts of Ohio, Massachusetts and Rhode Island, and met with descendants of people who were removed from land they owned, as well as the descendants of people who were able to stay.

“We’re interested in both: the communities that persist and the communities that don’t,” she said. “What are some of the factors that cause these communities to disappear? Do people move voluntarily, were they subject to the race massacres we know were happening in different parts of Ohio, Indiana and Illinois before and after the Civil War?”

Interviewing subjects in person, sometimes on their original land, was a first for many of Newell’s students.

“Talking to these descendant communities has been particularly moving,” she said. “The idea that we can assist in telling their stories is interesting to students.”

Students leave the lab with extensive research skills that are useful not only in academic settings but professional ones, Newell said.

“It’s an employable skill,” she said. “I have this question; how do I answer it? What sorts of things can I look at? … It’s being a detective. It’s being creative. It’s thinking about what might help me answer these questions.”

In fact, Newell’s lab has become a model for research practices.

“The National Park Service is interested in what we’re doing,” she said. “They want to send their scholars and researchers to the lab. They’re interested in helping smaller historical sites get recognition. … We’re talking about workshops and not just for higher ed but for people in this profession, broadly, of researching, interpreting and sharing American history.”

This kind of lab-based research is just as valuable to the humanities as it is to STEM fields, Newell said.

“Labs are where research occurs,” she said. “And history is a research-based discipline. We’re not making things up. We’re not going over the same ground. We’re trying to ask questions that haven’t been asked before or answer questions that people may think can’t be answered.” 

For Newell, the question she and her students circle back to is “What is the purpose of the humanities?”

“Is it to reaffirm what we already know or is it to break new ground?” she said. “We think there’s plenty of new ground to be broken and stories to incorporate into the larger history of the United States.”

The event was held July 25-26 at the Fawcett Center on the Columbus campus.  

“Part of both Ohio State’s land-grant mission as well as the new strategic vision that the Kirwan Institute launched in September was really around being collaborative conveners,” said Kirwan Institute Executive Director Ange-Marie Hancock. “When we say collaborative, what we really mean by that is that we partner with community organizations, but also that we partner with members in the community who are doing things right that deserve extra support or deserve extra attention.”

The AABH Conference featured topics ranging from how families of children with special needs can receive support and learn to advocate for themselves; addressing Alzheimer’s disease and promoting brain health; and understanding the health challenges, needs and barriers for communities of color in Appalachia.

The conference also included a keynote address by Barbara Jones Warren, a clinical professor in Ohio State’s College of Nursing, on how women can build resilience; a panel discussion on how to reduce the suicide rate among African American youth; and breakout sessions with doctors, social workers and other clinicians.

“We know social workers, school psychologists, all of those folks are out there doing tremendous work and providing tremendous value to our community,” Hancock said. “We wanted to make sure they’re properly tooled up, they’re properly supported, with all of the best and latest research.”

The conference was presented by the Kirwan Institute in partnership with Ohio State’s Office of Outreach and Engagement and the Ohio Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services.

“It’s through these kinds of deep partnerships that our Kirwan Institute is leading that we’re best positioned to benefit those we serve,” said Wendy Smooth, Ohio State’s senior vice provost for inclusive excellence. “Today’s focus on the mental well-being of African Americans certainly calls us into our purpose as an institution that is responsible for marshaling our resources and our research to enrich the lives of Ohioans.”

In the Alzheimer’s disease session, Ohio State neuropsychologist Jeremy Grant discussed risk factors such as physical inactivity, smoking, alcohol abuse, hypertension and diabetes. Research has shown that these and other risk factors can be mitigated by getting enough sleep, limiting exposure to nicotine and alcohol, exercising and eating a diet rich in fruits and vegetables, Grant said.

Maintaining an active social circle and engaging in activities that stimulate the brain, such as crossword puzzles and learning a foreign language, can also help reduce the risk of developing the disease, he said.

“Never stop learning,” Grant said. “Never stop challenging your brain.”

The panel on how to reduce the suicide rate among African American youth featured a discussion with Kamaria Tyehimba, vice president of behavioral health at Talbert House, an agency that promotes family health in the Cincinnati area; Linda Gallagher, Hamilton County Mental Health and Recovery Services Board vice president; and Ryan Hill and Sevin Adams, youths who spoke about how they’ve helped their peers address mental health issues.

Tyehimba and Gallagher said their agencies have formed a regional coalition with community organizations and churches to provide information to individuals and families in need of substance abuse and mental health treatment.

“If someone needed services, to be admitted to a treatment program, we wanted them to be able to know how to talk to that service provider, to have a welcoming atmosphere,” Tyehimba said. “We wanted to destigmatize the whole concept around getting treatment.”

Hill and Adams offered suggestions on how parents, school officials, community members and peer groups can provide support to youth who experience depression or suicidal ideation.

Hill shared an anecdote about running into a high school classmate after graduation. The classmate told Hill that he had experienced bullying in school, and Hill’s friendship prevented him from committing suicide.

“Just being someone’s friend” made a difference, Hill said. “You never know what kindness can do.”

“The entire art world congregates there,” she said. “And so if you want to meet certain people, you can meet everyone you need to.”

One of the Biennale’s regular features is the national pavilions, which showcase the work of artists representing their home nations. Twenty-nine countries have permanent space at the event, which began in April.

Verna attended this year because she was named the curator for Canada’s national pavilion. She reunited with Canada’s chosen artist Kapwani Kiwanga, a tremendous talent, Verna said.

“It was just such an honor,” Verna said. “To work with this artist at this moment in time and to imagine a project this complex and challenging and then bring it out to the world, we hoped people would get it and be interested in it and love the poetry of what we tried to do together.”

Their collaboration produced “Trinket,” an exhibition built around thousands of “conterie,” or Venetian seed beads.

“[At the height of Venice’s merchant power], no explorer, no missionary, no adventurer would leave Europe without beads to trade in all parts of the world – North America, South America, Africa, India. This was currency,” Verna explained.

Strings of beads were installed throughout Canada’s pavilion. In addition to the conterie, the exhibition included palm oil, gold, silver, wood among other materials. The integration of these materials within the artwork were Kiwanga’s way of evoking the exchange and the value associated with cost of trade.

“When we start talking about trade and all of its many forms, there is violence,” Verna said. “These are the worst stories. As an artist, sometimes you don’t need to say things to speak to them. That’s what I really like about this project.”

Verna and Kiwanga have collaborated before, most recently at the Wexner Center. As curator, Verna saw herself as Kiwanga’s primary supporter. After all, she said, a lot of the pressure of any exhibition project falls on the artist.

“I know who bears the most responsibility for an arts project. It’s the artist,” she said. “I am here to champion, to be a thought partner, to push, to research, to write, to be a bridge between the work and vision of the artist and the final project, to work together on every aspects of the exhibition. We must support the artist in every area so they can confidently realize their project to its fullest.”

Curating Canada’s pavilion gave Verna the chance to represent not just her home nation but her employer as well.

“Ohio State is known internationally,” she said. “We have a Nobel laureate. We function on the global stage. How great to have, through the Wexner Center for the Arts and its enduring capacity, another way to engage with the world.”

Verna made sure to mention Columbus whenever she could.

“Every time I was given the opportunity of speaking, I mentioned that I am the executive director of the Wexner Center for the Arts at The Ohio State University. It was important for me to leverage this opportunity as a spokesperson.”

Simultaneously curating an exhibition and running a world-class art center made for long hours here and there, she said.

“My first responsibility is to the Wexner Center,” she said. “Everyone on both teams was amazing. We figured it out. And I’d tell myself, ‘We can sleep when we’re done.’”

The experience was remarkable, Verna said. She looks forward to returning to Venice this summer to explore more exhibitions. Just as the city once served as an international trade hub, it now pulses with ideas from around the world.

“We can think of trade as a beautiful thing,” she said. “But those stories also are filled with horrors. What is our responsibility in this? Can we see a better-shared future through works of art?”

“They said, ‘Trust me. You’ll be glad we interrupted,’” McClatchy said.

McClatchy’s colleagues were right. The assembled group of faculty and staff were there to congratulate him on being named the university’s Artist Laureate for the 2024-2025 academic year. Brown was the university’s inaugural Artist Laureate. She arrived wearing a gold laurel crown and had one for McClatchy as well.

“I was grateful and thrilled,” he said. “It was special to share that moment with my students as well.”

McClatchy will focus on two projects while he serves as the university’s Artist Laureate: an expansion of the Shakespeare and Autism Project, which he directs, and sharing his one-person show, “Scrap Heap,” with audiences across state.

“Kevin’s work with the autism community and military veterans has already been extremely impactful,” said Lisa Florman, vice provost for the arts. “My hope is that, in his role as Ohio State’s Artist Laureate, he will have the resources he needs to grow his efforts, adding new partners, and touching even more lives than he has been able to reach previously.”

McClatchy is eager to begin. He finds his work rewarding, both in terms of what he is able to share and what he is able to receive.

“The secret is that we get at least as much as we give,” he said. “The inspiration and what we learn from autistic children and the families in the autism community, it dwarfs what we can offer. The same goes for veterans and the military community.”

The Shakespeare and Autism Project is a passion for McClatchy, he said. The program trains artists, educators and others on how to use the Hunter Heartbeat Method, a theater-based intervention that helps children across the autism spectrum improve social and communication skills through games using the rhythm of Shakespeare’s language, which is anchored by the sound of a heartbeat.

Already a success in Columbus, the Shakespeare and Autism Project’s next stop is Ohio State’s regional campuses. McClatchy will take the training there as well as to other community sites to spread the program throughout the state.

“We want this to be a foundation of growing this work in those areas,” he said. “We’re bringing those tools and that transformative experience to new places. And we’ll be a resource to people as they continue to grow and deepen the work in the community.”

Another group that McClatchy works with is veterans. With close friends and family members serving in the armed forces, he is familiar with just how difficult readjusting to civilian life can be.

His one-person show “Scrap Heap” is based on the experiences of a friend who served in the 1980s and 1990s. McClatchy performs for local audiences and then facilitators, veterans themselves, lead a conversation about the play.

“I don’t facilitate the conversations,” he said. “I provide an artistic experience and atmosphere where we’re coming together as a community, bringing people together who might not normally be in the same space.”

So many veterans he’s met “wouldn’t change their service but had these challenges [when they came home],” he said.

“I asked myself, ‘What can I do with whatever skillset or talent I have to be of service to them?’”

As with the Shakespeare and Autism Project, McClatchy’s goal is to lead workshops that will facilitate spreading support for veterans across the state, through art.

“The main function of art,” he said, “is making community experiences. We share those experiences in a different way than we go about communicating most of the day. When we look through an artistic lens, it feels like we can express things in a richer way. The Artist Laureate position allows me to do that, to foster those kinds of circumstances. That is a significant charge, a significant responsibility.”

“At the moment of totality, there were several other pontoon boats nearby,” he said. “We all independently put on Bonnie Tyler’s ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’ at the same moment. That’s a pop culture song but it becomes folklore in the sense that this was something spontaneous. We didn’t have CB radio between all of the different groups. … Each group decided to do this on their own.”

Waugh-Quasebarth, a visiting professor in comparative studies and director and archivist for the Center for Folklore Studies at The Ohio State University, said that folklore goes far beyond stories to include moments like what he experienced in Tennessee.

“[People] think about the Brothers Grimm, they think about the folk tales we have,” he said. “But really, it’s an encompassing field that includes music, dance, craft traditions – what I call ‘everyday expressive behavior.’ The ways in which people relate to their world, create meaning out of their world, … all of these things are encompassed by folklore.”

In preparation for this year’s eclipse on April 8, Waugh-Quasebarth dug deep into folklore indexes to see what common motifs have been used to explain the phenomenon. A common one: the sun being consumed by a creature.

While there are stories from many cultures that include this idea, Waugh-Quasebarth cautions against oversimplifying.

“[There are stories from Siberia, Armenia], India, South America, all these different places that we’re pulling this from,” he said. “So it seems to be a fairly common motif throughout those different traditions. [I] think about what gets lost when we put something into such a narrow box like that. How are these actually different things that are happening that aren’t so easily collapsible into a single category?”

While the idea of the sun being eaten may sound frightening to a modern reader, Waugh-Quasebarth isn’t at all sure the story was meant to be a scary one.

“We always have to be really careful with doing this sort of meaning-making, like what are our feelings about being pursued by a monster and how is that a universal feeling?” he said. “Is there a difference that might’ve been happening across time and space? Another way of existing in the world?” 

Not all the motifs suggest that something is pursuing the sun. Others offer that the sun is sad, for one reason or another, and must be cheered up. This humanizing of the sun appeals to Waugh-Quasebarth.

“What I find really powerful here is the ability to sustain a relationship that’s not one of fear or power, that you often see in other popular mythology, [with] the sun,” he said. “[The stories are about] finding a moment of common humanity with a celestial body, which I think is a way that people have historically related to those elements of our world – the sun and the moon, in particular. I think that the idea of kinship [with the sun] is really wonderful.”

These interactions with the natural world are at the heart of Waugh-Quasebarth’s research.

“I’m an environmental folklorist, so I’m specifically interested in the interactions between people and their environments writ large.”

In fact, this foundation has helped Waugh-Quasebarth come to believe that folklore and science can be used in tandem to understand natural phenomena.

“There’s a wonderful alliance that can be made with some of the methodologies of our colleagues working in the natural sciences like biology or geology,” he said. “[They can give us] the kind of ways in which [natural elements] are expressive, the ways they express an agency onto the world.”

“Shakespeare has always been mine,” said Dhar, an assistant professor of English at The Ohio State University. “I didn’t encounter Shakespeare as a child first in his language, I encountered him first in my language. It wasn’t until later that I learned he’s an English author who worked in 16th and 17th century London.”

A scholar of early modern English, Dhar said she is not the only person who feels this way. Shakespeare is read all over the world and has been for generations. In countries that were colonized by the British, like India and Nigeria, Shakespeare was studied while the nations were under imperial rule. But what about after the colonists had left?

“I started to wonder about what Shakespeare was doing in so many parts of the world that had once been under political colonial rule,” Dhar said. “And now that that empire nominally does not exist anymore, what does the presence of Shakespeare in all these places mean?”

Dhar is exploring this question through a podcast entitled “Shakespeare in the ‘Post’Colonies.” Each episode pairs Dhar or another member of the project team with a person who engages with Shakespeare through a postcolonial lens. While “post-colonial” refers to a period that happens after colonization, “postcolonial” is not time oriented but a capacious critical lens.

“It refers to a critical dimension,” she said. “Now we’re talking about a critique of any kind of colonial thinking at all, irrespective of whether that colonial thinking created empire. Anything that could result in empire can be critiqued by postcolonial thinking.”

Since the project started in 2022 (the podcast launched in the fall of 2023), Dhar has spoken with fellow professors, actors, novelists, playwrights, translators, and dancers, all of whom feel strongly about Shakespeare. Many of them also hail from former British colonies.

“[We discuss this] inheritance as persons of post-colonial upbringing, geography, culture and history,” she said.

To recruit interview subjects, Dhar had to make several cold calls. She was surprised by how enthusiastic people were about participating.

“The most amazing thing to me was how eager people were to talk about ‘their’ Shakespeare,” she said. “Not one person said no. Every single person I asked had a substantive, generous, candid and thoughtful conversation with me.”

With her guests, Dhar combs through ideas about colonialism and race in Shakespeare’s work, as well any other impacts made by the notion of empire.

“As another senior colleague says, ‘“Was Shakespeare racist?” is not the end of the conversation. That’s the beginning of it’,” she said. “Why wouldn’t Shakespeare be racist? He is writing when England is at the cusp of empire. This is the air he is breathing. What is interesting, however, is that the man is also interrogating what he’s hearing. His characters are exploring these ideas from multiple facets.”

Though Dhar and many of her interviewees have academic backgrounds, the podcast is for everyone, she said.

“So many of us have been subjected to Shakespeare at some point or another,” she said. “Many have been scarred for life. I think this is a great way to be unscarred. And it’s a great way to have fun. I want this work to be as widely accessible as possible.”

Dhar hopes that listeners will share the podcast with friends and learn together.

“What makes Shakespeare what it is today is this sense of intellectual community, which is now 400 years old,” she said. “This is how learning happens. This is how knowledge happens across the world.”

“The colleges [that survived] changed because they had to, because of the nature of the marketplace of higher education,” said Staley, an associate professor of history at The Ohio State University. “Those institutions are alive today because they changed, they transformed from their original founding.”

That lesson is one that higher education institutions should heed today, Staley argues in his book “Knowledge Towns: Colleges and Universities as Talent Magnets,” which he co-wrote with venture capitalist Dominic D.J. Endicott.

In a Zoom presentation, Staley shared the work he and Endicott debuted last year, in which they argue that colleges and universities can serve as talent magnets if they expand their mission to be more community engaged.

In considering, for example, a list of ways a place can attract workers, Staley said, “What is it that a town can do? Solve environmental challenges, make the most of the surrounding natural environment, create solutions for affordability, encourage community building, supporting ongoing skill formation, incubating novel ideas and enterprise and … [having] a location of academic enterprise,” he said.

Being a hub for these activities transforms a college into what Staley calls “a knowledge enterprise,” that is, “the innovation or creativity cluster for a region implementing a full range of novel ideas.”

The Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) is a prime example of this, Staley said.

When the college was founded, Savannah, Georgia, suffered from a crumbling economy. The college enmeshed itself in the city.

“I don’t think it’s an overstatement to say that SCAD has revitalized Savannah and that the Savannah we understand today wouldn’t be what it is without SCAD,” Staley said.

There are several ways colleges and universities can follow SCAD’s path. As a starting point, the institution should serve as a “third place,” a term that defines communal spaces that are not a person’s home or place of business.

“The term I’ve given it is ‘social capital incubator,’” he said. “Part of what a college or university should be doing is growing and developing social capital, not just financial capital, for a region.”

Mentorship is another, Staley said, but not in the traditional sense.

“The mentorship of students is a key part of what our college does,” he said. “Extend that mentorship outward to everyone in the community. It becomes a vital service offered by the knowledge enterprise. … [We need to expand] the audience of who the consumers of higher education are.”

A third way forward is making the institution physically expansive. The goal is a 15-minute campus, Staley said. Services should be within a 15-minute walk or bike ride: “The way is which SCAD’s campus is spread, not throughout the city, but through a significant [narrow] part of downtown … is not unlike Oxford University or Cambridge University.”

The last suggestion is to turn colleges and universities into venture capital firms themselves.

“The knowledge enterprise [should] serve as a venture capitalist fund, both for faculty ideas and for entrepreneurs in the larger region,” Staley said. “We’re talking about an incubation cluster or an idea cluster for a region that requires venture capital, which is concentrated in too few large cities.”

This is his most controversial suggestion, Staley said. But the idea may just take time to develop.

“Viewers might say, ‘Colleges and universities have no business being venture capitalists,’” he said. “I remember 25 years ago when colleges and universities were starting to become interested in developing their neighborhoods and were becoming real estate developers, that, too, was viewed as a bizarre thing. … And yet now it’s taken as commonplace.”

With the amount of flux higher education is currently experiencing, Staley believes something has to change. Instead of joining Franklin College, he said, today’s colleges and universities should seize the opportunity to evolve.

“I talked about how a campus tends to be isolated in one part of town,” he said. “If [institutions] are not connected to the surrounding areas, they’re connected in a network to other colleges and universities. They pay scant attention to the area in which they reside. [We need to] change that relationship or get a college or university to rethink their mission.”

“I’m genuinely curious about how people navigate technologies, documents and other forms of messaging,” she said.

Teston, an associate professor of English at The Ohio State University, runs the department’s reader experience, or RX, lab. A spinoff of UX labs, which study user experience for products and services, the RX lab examines how people read and understand messages – a good fit for Teston’s passion.

“This is a dream of mine,” she said of the lab, which soft-opened in January.

A cohort of undergraduate students studying business writing are taking the lab for its first spin this semester. They are studying the efficacy of messaging for a plastic-free Great Lakes campaign, in partnership with Ohio Sea Grant and Stone Laboratory.

“They’re interested in knowing whether the messages they’ve designed are effective – are they accomplishing the goals of the campaign? Those goals might be educational, like knowing the current status of plastic pollution in the Great Lakes, but they might also be motivational. For example, how inspired are you to adopt a different practice when it comes to using straws based on your encountering this message that we’ve designed,” she said.

Students observe subjects as they read or watch a message. Participants may be asked to talk aloud about what they’re seeing. Their gestures and physical reactions will also be monitored. All of these cues indicate how a message is received.

While the research has immediate use for students, Teston said it also gives them skills to add to their post-college resumes. A specific benefit to the lab is working with humans.

“[We’re] doing what’s called ‘human subjects research,’ which has such rigorous oversight,” she said. “I think that helps with professionalism. Knowing how to ask for consent – that’s a thing people often don’t know how to do.”

More broadly, the data that students capture can help with another skill: editing.

“We ask students in our writing classrooms to do multiple iterations of the things they write for us, but they often don’t have data for how to improve something,” she said. “Having access to data, or at least access to methods of collecting those data – that is something that could be helpful in the future.”

Student researchers aren’t the only ones who will benefit from the RX lab. Teston believes her university colleagues can use the resource in their work, regardless of field.

“I feel like it’s useful for pretty much any department,” she said. “Any profession, any major, knowing how people are perceiving and reacting to messages – that’s important for folks in the sciences, it’s important for folks in architecture, it’s important for folks in public health.”

In the fall, eye-tracking software will be available for use in the lab. Teston said her graduate students are particularly excited to use it.

“They’re curious about capturing information about where people’s eyes go,” she said. “How fast do they skim messages? Do they skip over paragraphs? What are people’s reading habits? I don’t know that we know a lot about that, especially in the age of online reading.”

UX labs are studying similar veins in places like Australia, South Carolina, Alabama and Arizona, Teston said, but that work is more focused on the body’s response to messages: things like heart rate and brain response.

“Ours is really the only one [focused] on reading,” she said.

All of this work focuses on clarifying messages, which is something for which Teston has been a longtime advocate.

“[My] overarching motivation is continuous improvement of messaging,” she said. “Conflict seems to emerge around miscommunication: what people can expect, what people can’t expect – just making sure instructions are clear. It’s about setting the right expectations. That happens so frequently through writing.”

King, an experienced glass artist and twice a fellow at Wheaton Arts, explained that Khoury and Lucy Zimmerman, the curator of the exhibition, reached out to him in early May with the ideas that would become pieces in Khoury’s work.

“Sahar had her idea for the project pretty well sorted out,” King said. “A Palestinian oil nightlight. She wanted glass vessels that she could fill with this imported olive oil, and a big double-walled vessel to put inside this neon sign.” 

These glass vessels were created by King and his students, some of whom were learning the process of creating bottles for the first time.

“We were kind of developing the forms together,” King said. “I was doing some teaching in that space, but everybody was trying different things. I’d say we were all designing together.”

With consultation from Khoury, King described the shapes of each bottle as slumpy and naturalistic. 

“It depends on the size and the complexity, but the bottles we were making probably took about 20 minutes each,” said King.

He emphasized the trial and error of the process – for every successful bottle, you could count on two unsuccessful ones. (And some of the vessels that didn’t work for Khoury’s project are currently available for purchase at the Wexner Center Store.)

With around 10 bottles chosen for the final piece, the time-consuming process was made easier by Khoury’s request for less traditional silhouettes.

“The process we went through was to take a hot glass bubble and let it drip onto a board on the ground, then blow into it. So, it was really forming naturally with gravity.”  

Given the artist’s anthropology background, it comes as no surprise Khoury was drawn to these more organic shapes, and King – an artist with a similar interest in reclamation and natural elements – understood this vision completely.  

“The bottles were not super complicated because they weren’t transferred,” King said.

This, he said, meant that even his students who were less experienced were able to contribute to the process.

“Most objects, you would blow in one direction, and then transfer them onto another pipe and turn it around … but for these objects, because they were to be formed very naturally, we broke them off and just sort of torched the top. [This was] a little more efficient, and also removed more of the control from us, which was a good thing in this case.” 

King said working with Khoury was a mutually beneficial experience.

“Sahar understood what our mission is here in terms of an educational program, because she teaches, and she wanted to work with us because she knows it’s a unique opportunity to work with a university glass area and not every university has these kinds of facilities. She was really respectful of who we are and what we’re doing here.” 

Zimmerman also reflected on the positive experience she had working with Khoury.

“A great joy in working with Sahar Khoury has been to see how her process unfolds,” Zimmerman said.

“She often experiments with new materials or seeks alternative techniques, learned through an extensive and generous community of artists and technicians in the Bay Area. I am always eager to forge opportunities for collaboration with Ohio State faculty, staff and students, and was delighted upon reaching out [to King] that he and his students were game to create bottles to hold this incredible Palestinian olive oil Khoury purchased from a store called Healthy Spirits in San Francisco.” 

Zimmerman also remarked on King and the students’ work.

“I visited David and his students in May to view the bottles and to observe an attempt to blow the massive, double-walled vessel placed on the top of this sculpture that encases a Camel cigarette neon – a cartoonish, appropriated symbol of the Middle East,” she said. “They even allowed me to gather glass from the kiln, which was equally thrilling and terrifying!” 

Like King, Zimmerman said the experience was something special.

“It was so meaningful to spend time with students and David King to discuss translating Sahar’s vision. I was grateful to see the amazing facilities and equipment students have access to at Ohio State, which are particularly special at a time when many universities are shuttering glass programs.” 

Upon viewing the exhibition, King said, “I think it’s fantastic. I think it’s really playful and humorous and it’s poignant. It’s important work, but it’s accessible work.” 

“I said, ‘You know, I’d like to see the Newark Earthworks,’” said Weiser, a distinguished professor in the College of Arts and Sciences at the Newark campus. “I’d heard about it for decades.”

At the time, that was a rare request for an English professor, but almost 20 years after her first visit to Newark, Weiser could celebrate these same earthworks earning World Heritage status from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). 

In September, the Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks sites, which includes the Newark Earthworks, became Ohio’s first UNESCO site and just the 25th in the United States. Other World Heritage Sites include the Taj Mahal, the Great Barrier Reef and Stonehenge.

The effort to earn that title was over a quarter century in the making, Weiser said, and involved support from organizations all over the state. While it was the U.S. Department of the Interior that applied in March of 2022, many Newark colleagues, like Weiser, contributed time and talent behind the scenes.

Ohio State’s Newark Earthworks Center has played an integral role in uniting diverse supporters to promote the significance of the Hopewell efforts. The center was founded by Richard Shiels, emeritus associate professor in the Department of History, and Marti Chaatsmith (Comanche/Choctaw), associate director of the center, and is now directed by John Low (Pokagon Band of Potawatomi), associate professor in the Department of American Indian Studies.

“I’m the smallest cog in this,” Weiser said. This summer she, Shiels, and local historian Timothy Jordan published a book gathering together the reflections, teachings, and photos of 25 of those key supporters. “In addition to Ohio State faculty, we had staff from the Ohio History Connection, local and state people who’ve been involved for decades, Native Americans with ancestral ties to the site, even Ohio’s former First Lady Hope Taft.”

Hopewell refers to an Indigenous movement that took hold in eastern North America around 2,000 years ago. Sites like the Newark Earthworks served as cultural and spiritual gathering points for Hopewell participants from across the country.

“This site was clearly attracting visitors, pilgrims, tourists, in the same way that a medieval cathedral would,” Weiser said. “You’re bringing people from all over.”

At one time, there were as many as 600 sites in Ohio that had earthworks, but with the removals of Indigenous people as European settlers moved farther west, many sites were damaged or destroyed. This makes the preservation of the Hopewell Ceremonial sites that much more important.

The UNESCO title doesn’t come with any money, Weiser said, but the designation does generate tourism dollars, which can go toward new facilities and learning aids.

“People come to World Heritage Sites,” she said. “But our site needs interpretation for people to understand it. Our local museum is much too small. The book is one step, but we need a more comprehensive approach.”

Weiser, who studies rhetoric, believes that Americans can be divorced from the history of our country and that the earthworks are a key piece to re-narrating that story.

“One of the things I’ve studied is the way national museums around the world tell people their own histories,” she said. “When do other countries think of their history starting? The fact that we are so separated from the story of this continent, especially before Europeans arrived, says a lot.”

And it’s not just the history we need to appreciate, she said. Like students at the Newark campus today, people were using the earthworks to study the world around them.

“The earthworks are aligned to a lunar cycle that is a generation-long,” she said. “People have been looking at the sky in this area for thousands of years and they weren’t just saying, ‘Wow.’ They were doing science; they were interacting with the cosmos.”

Elizabeth Weiser was one of three editors of The Fertile Earth and the Ordered Cosmos: Reflections on the Newark Earthworks and World Heritage, available through The Ohio State University Press at its website: https://ohiostatepress.org/books/titles/9780814258705.html. 

“[When it comes to the degree], we say, ‘dance and…’,” he said. “We have not created a Bachelor of Fine Arts program where we are setting up the false idea that after four years of study, you’ll be able to pay your rent. We are trying to create conditions for our students to understand that their core career path may be in dance, but they should also look at the transferable skills that are developed through our curriculum as a way to sustain themselves.”

Dance performance jobs are few in number and extremely competitive. Many dance majors go on to careers in other fields once they learn about other possibilities.

“Our students are marketable,” Anderson said. “They are not looking at one single aspect of the job marketplace. They’re developing skills that let them audition for cruise ships and Disney while at the same time pursuing classical modern dance forms and emerging technologies that center the body and movement.”

To bolster the department’s offerings, two staff members with these skills were recently promoted to lecturers. Beginning this fall, Jonathon Hunter and Lexi Clark-Stilianos will teach classes that give students firm foundations in dance production and digital programs, respectively.

“I want to empower students to use technology-based applications and tools in the field of dance,” said Clark-Stilianos. “How do you understand digital literacy and digital hygiene? From a creative standpoint, how do you use dance film, sound design and emerging technologies like virtual reality to make art?” 

“We emphasize that dance takes more than choreographers and dancers,” Hunter said. “There are other roles that are just as important, like stage managers and costume liaisons.”

Clark-Stilianos has firsthand experience with using the “and” portion of her dance degree. She began her graduate program at Ohio State in 2015, studying dance with a focus on dance technology, choreography and feminist studies. Her master’s degree allowed her to work as an artist and a teacher in Chicago. Like so many others, she lost her job in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic.

It was her familiarity with technology that brought her back to Ohio State. In addition to teaching, she is the adviser and technical director of dance work in the university’s Motion Lab, which is a rapidly reconfigurable, interdisciplinary space.

“I worked there in a technical capacity when I was getting my degree,” she said. “While my background wasn’t in technical theater, I got some of that from my graduate work.”

Now she works with students, teaching them how to use programs like Isadora, a media playback program frequently used in performances.

“It’s important for our students to have access to that,” she said. “Even if they don’t become programmers themselves, there’s a high likelihood that they’ll work in productions alongside this technology.”

Hunter also wants his students to understand what familiarity with technology can do for them. Programs update regularly and staying current can give students an edge in the job market. He is a member of the American College Dance Association’s board of trustees and hears frequently about technology concerns.

“Many [board members] have said they don’t have the ability to stay up to date on these technology changes,” he said, making students with tech backgrounds strong job candidates.

Furthermore, understanding a program allows students to test its limits.

“We can use technology in such cool and interesting ways,” he said. “You have to know what [a program] is capable of to be able to use it for artistic purposes.”

Still, knowing a program inside and out isn’t always the goal, Clark-Stilianos said.

“A lot of working with technology is finding your own answers,” she said. “I want them to know that I am a resource for them but also, they are their own resource. They have forums, there are tutorials they can use to troubleshoot and find their own answers. That is so much of what anyone who works with technology does.”

Self-reliance, problem-solving – these are the skills with which Anderson, Hunter and Clark-Stilianos want their students to leave Ohio State.

“We’ve had so many students come through the program and realize that there is so much more to all of this than just the performance parts,” Hunter said. “We want to open up their minds.”

“Those skills are what brought me through [the pandemic],” Clark-Stilianos said. “They brought me back here and into an opportunity to that led to the promotion we’re talking about right now.”

“It’s a huge deal. It means the world,” he said. “I grew up going to Ohio State games so to actually be employed here now, wow.”

Rawls is one of two assistant professors joining the university’s School of Music this fall. Along with Stevie “Dr. View” Johnson, Rawls will lead the hip-hop studies program, one of the first in the country. Both positions are joint appointments with the university’s Department of African American and African Studies. 

“Stevie and Jason are incredible human beings,” said school director Michael Ibrahim. “They’re bringing a lot to Ohio State: charisma, energy, warmth.”

Creating the program has been thrilling for Rawls and Johnson.

“I think the most exciting thing is that this didn’t exist,” Rawls said. “We’re able to be at the ground floor of something that I am hoping becomes the norm in higher ed. I’m hoping for a student to say, ‘I’m going to college to study hip-hop’ becomes just as common as ‘I’m going to study jazz.’”

“Jason and I talked about a student who is trying to convince their parents that they want to study hip-hop,” Johnson said. “What can we develop and provide for them to make that conversation a little more palatable?... It’s a matter of making sure we put students in the best position to be successful.”

“Hip-hop is the now”

While university music programs have tended to focus on European composers like Johannes Brahms and Ludwig van Beethoven, more institutions are widening their lenses to make music programs more comprehensive, said Ibrahim.

“I think there’s been a shift in higher education in terms of what thinking about music is and what it might be,” he said. “We no longer want to have just a Western European focus. Ohio State’s mission is to give students a comprehensive education. For us to align with that, we want to do a better job with the music we study and teach.”

“Hip-hop is the now,” Rawls said. “The traditional European works are in the past and that’s not a bad thing. What I’m trying to get people to see is that bringing in hip-hop by no means takes anything away from the past. Hip-hop samples the past; it uses the past to inform the present and the future. And that’s powerful.”

“You can’t go anywhere in the world and not see hip-hop represented,” Johnson said. “Whether it’s music, fashion, architecture, it’s everywhere. It would be a disservice to not have hip-hop represented in the academic space.”

Hip-hop is academic

Johnson’s experience with hip-hop in academia began long before his arrival at Ohio State. He completed his doctorate in 2019 with a dissertation that explored anti-blackness at historically white institutions, which Johnson formulated as a hip-hop album. It won the Bobby Wright Dissertation of the Year Award for the Association for the Study of Higher Education – a first for the awards, which had not previously recognized hip-hop or nontraditional dissertations.

Most recently, Johnson was the Nasir “Nas” Jones Hip-Hop Fellow at Harvard University. The fellowship is named for Jones, one of hip-hop culture's iconic emcees. The fellows are selected for their excellent scholarship and creativity in the arts in connection with hip-hop.

“What a lot of people don’t know is that Nas didn’t graduate from high school,” Johnson said. The irony of Harvard naming a fellowship after someone without a high school degree isn’t lost on him.

“People ask if hip-hop is scholarly. Is it academic? And then [an institution like Harvard] uses the name of someone who never finished high school.”

Johnson will teach courses that focus on the technical side of hip-hop production: beat making, DJing and product design. The speed at which hip-hop can be made is part of what makes it so exciting, he said.

“Some people spend three, four, five years writing a book. By the time it’s published, that moment may have been missed,” he said. “Jason and I want to develop programs around digital creative projects that we can develop in the space of a day, a week, a month, and be able to give that to the masses. Things that speak to what’s happening today.”

Hip-hop is more than a type of music

Known in the hip-hop community as “J Rawls,” Rawls has worked as a producer for artists like Mos Def, Talib Kweli, the Beastie Boys and Aloe Blacc. A key part of his work is what he calls “digging in the crates,” which means sifting through crates of records in music stores to find pieces for sampling. He plans on showing students the value of this technique, not just from a creative standpoint, but from a historical one as well.

“I’m digging. I become an archivist,” he said. “I’m learning about all kinds of different things – soul, rock, country, jazz, calypso, reggae. I’m learning about different cultures. I’m learning about different time periods.”

Rawls’ first class, Art and Politics in Hip-Hop, will use a teaching theory upon which he relies heavily: relational pedagogy. He believes instructors need to build relationships with their students before any teaching begins. Rawls has a doctorate in education from Ohio University and taught for 15 years in Columbus City Schools. His passion for hip-hop is matched by his passion for teaching. 

“What I do is allow students to be who they are,” he said. “I learn what they’re into and we have conversations about it. I center it in the classroom.”

Rawls wants to meet students where they are, he said. The class isn’t just for hip-hop aficionados.

“This culture means everything to me,” he said. “I want to bring that excitement to my students. I want them to see why it’s important to me and maybe see why it’s important to them. Even if they don’t consider themselves part of this culture. Everybody isn’t hip-hop and that’s okay. But I want you to appreciate what we do. I’d like you to see the value in it.”

Part of this value is the hip-hop mentality, which Rawls describes as being innovative with limited resources – a good thing for college students to learn.

“You’re creating things even when people tell you you can’t,” he said. “That’s what my research and scholarship are about, this idea that nothing can stop me. It’s not a Black thing. It’s not a white thing. It’s a consciousness. It’s a way you move. It’s a way you act.”

Movement, she said, is a good way to communicate across cultures. “When you’re a dancer, it’s nice to explore how you can connect with someone who doesn’t speak the same language. It opens doors for connection.”

McCarthy-Brown was named the university’s first-ever Artist Laureate earlier this year. In the position, she will elevate the university’s impact by bringing arts programming to underserved communities across the state. Focusing on creating shared experiences that enrich and inform, she will engage with diverse audiences in urban, rural, suburban and metropolitan areas.

“For Nya, engagement is not an afterthought, not something separate or isolated from her work as a researcher and scholar, but, rather, is integrally bound up with it,” said Lisa Florman, vice provost for the arts. “In creating and performing, she calls on those around her to allow their ideas and identities to help shape the work. To my mind, she is the ideal inaugural Ohio State Artist Laureate, in that her practice embodies the transformative power of art to build inclusive communities and give visibility to the overlooked or marginalized. I couldn’t be more excited to see what she, her students and her community partners will produce.”

Upon learning the news of the appointment, McCarthy-Brown said she was excited.

“It can be hard to make time for your research. So I felt like, ‘Now I have this gift. I get to go make something I couldn’t have made otherwise.’”

McCarthy-Brown is looking forward to traveling the state and interacting with local communities. She has been asked to bring the program to all four regional campuses and at least two of the 88 Extension offices.

While not everyone is a trained dancer, she said, movement is a part of the human experience.

“All people dance. All people move their bodies. All people have rhythm. … Why not talk about the movement you’re already doing in your life?” she said. “We might have a different aesthetic or accent, but it all points back to the same thing: people’s way of engaging with the world.”

To help audience members who might still have some trepidation about participating, McCarthy-Brown is enlisting the help of her students.

“I’ve gathered a group of dance students who are going to be my hype team,” she said. “A lot of times, if somebody takes your hand, takes your arm, dances with you, these overtures can really support people through an experience.”

McCarthy-Brown thinks Ohio State’s development of the Artist Laureate role says much about how the university views the arts.

“This says there’s more than one way to engage people. This really is just an expansion of bringing people together around a mission,” she said.

The arts have this in common with something else: sports, McCarthy-Brown said. At a school like Ohio State, where sports play a large role in students’ lives, either as players or spectators, the arts can serve a similar purpose.

“Sports do a great job of getting people enthusiastic, but so can the arts,” she said. “Oftentimes, students who are engaged in sports or the arts are more likely to stay involved in other parts of their community.”

It is easy for the arts to be sidelined, however, McCarthy-Brown said, especially during times of stress. That benefits no one.

“Art is an expression of our humanity,” she said. “When we explore that, we are engaging our full humanity and our full potential to be creative beings. We need to really experience what life has for us, beyond the daily grind. We need to live our richest, fullest life.”

The group’s weekly rehearsals serve as a welcome break from demanding schedules.

“I spent the first half of rehearsal feeling jittery and anxious about the time I was spending not studying,” Midkiff said about one particularly tough day. “By the end of a fun rehearsal, though, I felt like I had my emotions and stress levels back in check and was ready to be more productive for the rest of the evening.”

The Professional School Orchestra welcomes students – as well as medical residents, fellows and established professionals – from the College of Medicine, College of Nursing, College of Veterinary Medicine, Moritz College of Law, College of Dentistry and other professional and graduate programs. In addition to weekly rehearsals, the group performs four times a year: twice in the fall and twice in the spring. Smaller parts of the orchestra also perform at campus events.

“Our general audience is the communities where our students come from,” said Akila Venkataramany, an MD/PhD dual degree student who plays the violin. “The orchestra practices in Meiling Hall, so anyone who walks through the halls can also hear the music. In addition, we have livestreamed performances into patient rooms.”

The orchestra is part of the College of Medicine’s Humanism in Medicine initiative, which seeks to merge health and creativity.

“Solid data exist that music and other art forms have tangible benefits to patients, both physically and mentally,” said Matt Lordo, another MD/PhD student. Lordo plays the euphonium, a brass instrument related to the tuba. “I am so glad to attend a college that acknowledges that and funds efforts to expose students to that idea.”

And, as Midkiff noted, there are benefits to practitioners as well. Beyond the music, participants can meet other professional students who may be experiencing similar trials and triumphs.

“One night on the way out of rehearsal, I talked to another vet student, who was two years ahead of me,” said Midkiff. “He gave me some pointers on how to do well and helped me figure out some things that had me stumped.”

A common theme among all participants is a love of music, said Venkataramany. The group welcomes musicians of all skill levels.

“We have an environment that’s open,” she said. “We just want people to be happy to be there. We play together in an orchestra, and we get to share that experience of making music together.”

If a student needs help molding a piece to their skill level, the group works to do that. More recently, students from the School of Music have assisted the orchestra, serving as conductors. They also help less skilled students navigate pieces.

“We benefit from our School of Music conductors who know about different types of music we can play,” Venkataramany said. “They’re better able to assess the playing ability of the group and find ways to showcase that ability and then elevate it. They’ve become really strong supporters of ours.”

All three musicians agreed that the Professional School Orchestra and the music it plays help them celebrate their humanity and that of others.

“It draws our attention back to the greater human experience outside of disease and medicine,” Midkiff said. “We play music from different cultures and from different eras that were all written to express something about the human condition.”

“That’s a very odd thing for a Midwestern state,” Johnson said. “The major reason for this comes down to two men: Otto Ege and Bruce Ferrini.”

Ege and Ferrini spent decades in the 20th century finding medieval manuscripts and then breaking them so that the individual pieces could be sold. It is this legacy of book breaking and Ohio’s role in it that is the focus of a new exhibition in Thompson Library, Deathless Fragments.

The title of the show comes from a contact of Ege’s, Johnson said. While Ferrini’s sales were mostly for profit, Ege wanted to make these manuscript pages available to the masses. Beginning in the 1930s, he worked with the Lima public library system to sell the pages as a fundraiser. Georgie McCaffee was head of the library and worked with Ege to sell hundreds of what she called “deathless fragments.”

“These are all remnants of books that were produced for specific purposes, readers and uses back in the 11th, 12th, through the 15th centuries,” Johnson said. “But that’s not the end of their story. They’ve all persisted through time and have continued to have very real cultural and educational relevance today.”

Not only does Ohio State have a voluminous collection of pages – between 1,400 and 1,500, Johnson said – but some of these pages are also from books like the Beauvais Missal and the Hornby-Cockerell Bible, two famous manuscripts.

Johnson’s team is working to reassemble the Hornby-Cockerell Bible.

“We have close to 200 leaves from that,” Johnson said. The manuscript is 440 pages long. Johnson has discovered another 40 or 50 at other institutions, which can be added to the university’s pieces remotely via digital technology.

“We’re in a position where we can reconstruct these pieces digitally,” he said. “There are numerous reconstruction projects happening for manuscripts all over the world. The quality, the size, the breadth, the depth of Ohio State’s fragment collection means that we are a linchpin collection for this work.”

Given Ohio’s role in book breaking, Johnson believes it is the university’s responsibility to aid in reconstruction work whenever possible.

“We are a public institution and, given Ohio’s major role in book destruction and the dispersal of medieval manuscripts, it makes sense that Ohio State be a local focal point for reconstruction efforts.”

Between these two acts, the destruction and the reconstruction of a book, there is a wealth of educational opportunities, Johnson said.

“So much work can happen between these two points,” he said. “Students help with these efforts. We’ve had undergraduates, honors students, individual studies and graduate students – they adopt these fragments for their work.”

“There is the romanticism of rebuilding these things and recovering a lost past and undoing deliberate damage that has been done to truly historically significant objects,” Johnson said. “But more so, there is an educational power in these artifacts when placed in the hands of students who are empowered to work with them.”

Students are not the only ones who benefit from exposure to objects like these. Johnson developed the exhibition with hopes that the public will find them every bit as educational and fascinating.

“These things are accessible. These things are usable. These things are here for the citizenry of Ohio. This is not material you need to be a professor of history or English to enjoy,” he said. “This is not something where you have to be an enrolled student at Ohio State. This is the property of the state of Ohio. This is here for everyone.”

Deathless Fragments is located in Thompson Library, 1858 Neil Avenue, and runs through August 6, 2023. For more information, visit the exhibition’s website: https://library.osu.edu/exhibits/deathless-fragments

“I am incredibly excited for Nyama’s vision as our inaugural Artist Laureate,” said Lisa Florman, vice provost for the arts. “She will enhance our strategic focus on external engagement, outlined in Ohio State’s new Academic Plan, and help further integrate arts into the university’s missions of scholarship, education and service.”

As Artist Laureate, McCarthy-Brown will elevate the university’s impact by bringing arts programming to underserved communities across the state. Focusing on creating shared experiences that enrich and inform, she will engage with diverse audiences in urban, rural, suburban and metropolitan areas.

“As a community engaged researcher, I want to show communities how research relates to life and lived experiences and how research and art can inspire a better future for the next generation,” said McCarthy-Brown.

As Artist Laureate, McCarthy-Brown will create a traveling dance production inspired by her book “Skin Colored Pointes: Interviews of Women of Color in Ballet.” The production, centered on themes of trailblazing, opportunity and allyship, will disrupt ideas of who gets to dance while inviting audiences to identify and demonstrate expressions of allyship and inclusion through words, movement or technology. Ohio State BFA and MFA dance students will perform in the production, supporting their development as future dancers, teachers and community practitioners.

McCarthy-Brown is a nationally recognized culturally sustaining educator; her first book, “Dance Pedagogy for a Diverse World: Culturally Relevant Teaching in Research, Theory, and Practice,” released in 2017, quickly became an anchoring text in dance education. An established scholar, she is also an active consultant and workshop facilitator for diversifying dance curricula for organizations such as the San Francisco Ballet School; Cincinnati Ballet; Enrich Chicago; Dance Educators Coalition, Minnesota; Rutgers University Dance Department; University of Buffalo; OhioDance; and Dance Education Laboratory.

“With the platform of the Artist Laureate, Dr. McCarthy-Brown’s work and impact on the community will be amplified,” wrote Charles Anderson, professor and Department of Dance chair, in his letter of support. “Her proposed creative dance project has the potential to greatly expand opportunities to learn, teach and celebrate historically marginalized dancers. Further, her project will provide our students with a community learning experience and deepen their understanding of engaged research.”

A San Francisco native, McCarthy-Brown has been an active performer, choreographer and educator for more than 20 years. In 2021, she received awards from the National Dance Education Organization and Dance Teacher Magazine for developing anti-racist dance curricula. She holds a bachelor’s degree in political science from Spelman College, an MFA in performance and choreography from the University of Michigan, and a doctoral degree in dance studies from Temple University. 

The Artist Laureate is selected through a competitive process and will receive financial support for a 50% course release for the 2023-24 academic year as well as project funding. 

“As the flagship land-grant institution for Ohio, we are committed to making the arts accessible to all,” said Florman. “Through the Artist Laureate initiative, we will extend our already strong arts outreach, advance diverse perspectives, deepen engagement and foster understanding through the arts.”

“My vision for Ohio State’s first Artist Laureate lifts women of color, community engaged research and the dancing body,” said McCarthy-Brown. “I am grateful for this opportunity to create a performance production that will engage audience members across the state in a research process that takes various forms and is not limited to the page.”

“It all started with a contemplation of our land-grant mission and the possibility of actively engaging with communities across the state,” said school director Michael Ibrahim. In addition to the number of piano keys matching the number of Ohio counties, the word “opus” begins with the letter “O.”

“This term typically refers to a large-scale work or collection of many pieces,” Ibrahim said. “It seemed like a perfect fit for our initiative.”

Opus 88 allows people in every county to experience the school’s offerings in some form. Beginning in October of last year, county visits have included informational sessions for students interested in learning more about Ohio State’s music school as well as concerts with Ohio State students and faculty.

Performances have involved the university’s chorale groups and glee clubs as well as instrumental ensembles like the undergraduate saxophone quartet. Clinics at area schools with professors have also been offered.

“It’s the right thing to do, to serve our state in this way,” said Tanya Sparks, recruitment and admissions coordinator for the School of Music. “We are the School of Music and we are Ohio State. We are for everyone. Students and communities in all corners of our state deserve to have musical experiences.”

Ibrahim echoed this sentiment.

“Let me emphasize that music is simply what we happen to do,” he said. “Whether we were dancers, poets, engineers, healthcare professionals or from any college or department, the benefits of connecting with the wider Ohio community will always be present.”

At the end of February, a group of students from the percussion studio traveled to Gallia County to perform at South Gallia Middle-High School. In between pieces, the musicians spoke to the audience of middle school students about topics like productivity, reading and art. The event concluded with a Q&A.

Ben Kerger, a third-year music major, participated in the Gallia trip and was surprised by his favorite part of the experience.

“Though I’m tempted to say as a performer that I enjoyed performing the most, I have to admit that I actually enjoyed the questions more,” he said. “Each class had a different personality and different questions to ask. Getting to answer them and interact with the students in that way was the most rewarding and fulfilling part of the experience for me.”

In addition to serving the larger Ohio community, these visits benefit Ohio State students, Ibrahim said.

“These visits present a wonderful opportunity to place students in a leadership setting, to bring out the best of our students.”

Since many Ohio State students are Ohio residents, some have had the chance to return to and play at their old schools, Sparks said.

“It’s a highlight for them, to go back and be the student performing,” she said. “To be able to play for their former band director in say, a really great saxophone quartet, that sort of thing is lovely.”

Sharing their gifts with these communities has been meaningful, Kerger agreed.

“I believe that there is music in each one of us, and everyone should have the chance to take that sound and show it to the world,” he said. “By going to Gallia County and performing, I got to share mine, and it was an experience I won't soon forget.”

To request an Opus 88 visit, please go to the program website: https://music.osu.edu/outreach/opus-88/request-visit

The event included a reception with the artist before the screening, featuring fry bread and vegetable soup from the Native American Indian Center of Central Ohio, and a Q&A with Obomsawin following the film. 

John N. Low, associate professor in the Department of Comparative Studies and an enrolled citizen of the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians, offered a land acknowledgment before the film, and Provost Melissa L. Gilliam welcomed Obomsawin to the university. Colin Bird, consul general of Canada in Detroit, introduced the film. Obomsawin is a filmmaker at the National Film Board of Canada.

Obomsawin is 90 years old and has created over 50 films during her decades-long career, many of which focus on Indigenous stories.

“She has devoted her life to being a visible advocate for First Nations issues, for Indigenous struggle,” said Layla Muchnik-Benali, film/video curatorial assistant at the Wexner Center. Muchnik-Benali met Obomsawin in June at the Flaherty Film Seminar. A long-time fan, Muchnik-Benali invited the artist to the Wexner Center.

“She is a powerhouse, a force of nature filmmaker,” Muchnik-Benali said. “She has gone largely unrecognized in the United States but is quite well-known in Canada. They’re our neighbors to the north; we should know more about what happens there.”

Obomsawin’s film tells the story of the Oka Crisis, which captured the nation’s attention in 1990. For 78 days, members of the Mohawk tribe in Oka, a small town in Quebec, protested a government decision to turn burial grounds into a private golf course. The documentary unpacks the centuries of abuse the Mohawk suffered at the hands of numerous world governments, demonstrating that this incident was one of many.

The film “is about truth and it is about reconciliation,” said Bird. “I’m using those words with a sense of the importance of those words because the story you’re about to see is not a happy story from Canada.”

After the film concluded, Muchnik-Benali interviewed Obomsawin, who said that despite the many injustices she has witnessed over her lifetime, she sees a new awareness of First Nations peoples in Canada.

“I don’t want you to leave thinking only about the bad stuff, because where we are now, we’re going someplace I know we’ve never been before,” she said. “Our people, our words, they’re heard, and they’re respected.”

Obomsawin shared stories about her childhood and the prejudice that she faced in school. The prevailing narrative in much of Canada was that Indigenous people were “savages,” she said. This view led to her being physically attacked many times.

“I began to understand that if children hear a different story, they wouldn’t beat me so much,” she said. “I knew our history and I thought, ‘they have to hear this story, not the story from the book.’ And that’s how I started.”

The Oka Crisis was a watershed moment for the Indigenous peoples of Canada, Obomsawin said. The Mohawk tribe, especially in Quebec, faced a tremendous amount of hate from the local white community for its actions. But the same actions brought the larger First Nations community together.

“In our communities across the country, it gave them the courage to stand for the land they have left, for the people,” she said.

In the end, the Canadian government spent more than $155 million attempting to defeat the protesters. While the episode is a dark one, Obomsawin chooses now to work with the government to tell stories like this.

“I want to say that there’s a lot of good people around in government, in places like this,” she said, gesturing to the audience in the auditorium. “I refuse to say it’s all dark. … We have a lot of things that we don’t like happening, but there’s an awful lot of good happening. It’s possible. And every one of you is important. You all have something to give. That’s the way I believe.”

“Historians generally don’t get these big grants,” she said. “It really was a thrill.”

Newell’s award was part of nearly $3 million in grants from the Mellon Foundation announced last month. Among them was a $1.9 million award to the Department of African American and African Studies.

The remainder supports Newell’s research on the civic engagement and voting rights of African Americans and Native Americans from 1780 to 1920 and a second project offering educational pathways for incarcerated students at the Ohio Reformatory for Women co-led by Mary Thomas, associate professor in the Department of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies, and Tiyi Morris, associate professor in the Department of African American and African Studies.

Newell will use the funds to create a history undergraduate research lab, something common in the sciences but much less so in the humanities.

“Students want lab experience. They want research experience,” Newell said. “The idea of working on collaborative original research at a high level, we grabbed that from the sciences. Historians also do research that is game-changing, so let’s use that concept, too.”

Undergraduate students will work with Newell and three other scholars who received their doctorates from Ohio State – Noël Voltz, John Bickers, and Deondre Smiles – to create biographies of African American and Native American activists who worked to secure or maintain civil rights before the modern Civil Rights movement in the United States.

“Battles for voting rights, battles for other civil rights, battles for Indigenous sovereignty, these are very relevant stories for today,” Newell said. “Many of the issues we talk about from the past, in terms of restrictions to the exercise of citizenship, are still being engaged today.”

This research model presents a special opportunity for students, Newell said. The subjects of the biographies are not well-known – so digging will be necessary.

“You’re a detective,” she said. “You are looking through material to make connections and figure out what was going on, figure out how one event moves on to the next. It’s surprising that some of these changes, these laws, go back to a single person’s petition. We want to teach students and get them excited about the art of historical detection and storytelling.”

After the lab’s first year, Newell hopes to invite students from Historically Black Colleges and Universities and tribal colleges to participate. If the lab is successful, she believes other institutions will follow Ohio State.

“I think the main reason we got the grant is this undergraduate lab,” she said. “I hope it will outlive the project and continue to be part of the history department here, and that other universities will see this model and adopt it.”

The other Mellon grant, of $480,000, will support the Liberation at the Margins Collective (LAM), a group composed of Ohio State faculty, staff and students and incarcerated people at the Ohio Reformatory for Women (ORW).

LAM is part of a larger project led by Thomas and Morris, the Ohio Prison Education Exchange Project (OPEEP), which began in 2019. The project, which is available across Ohio State’s multiple campuses, seeks to expand prison-based education.

Classes are currently taught at ORW, Southeastern Correctional Institution and Richland Correctional Institution. Ohio State faculty and students travel to their assigned prison for classes on-site. Each class is a mix of incarcerated and non-incarcerated individuals.

OPEEP has five areas of focus, said Morris: individual courses, the embedded degree program (which will allow incarcerated people at ORW to earn a degree while in prison), work on Ohio State’s campuses around justice-involved individuals, re-entry after incarceration, and research. 

“The LAM Collective fits under the embedded-degree program,” Morris said. “We want to do collaborative research with [incarcerated students]. We want to build and develop their research skills, both so they can support the research that Mary and I are doing, and so they can produce individual research projects.

“We also hope they will then serve as ambassadors and recruiters and build an internal leadership cohort in support of the embedded degree at ORW,” Morris added.

Ohio State is the only Big Ten school that teaches at women’s prisons, Thomas said.

“We’re members of the Big Ten Consortium for Higher Education in Prison. There are more men or people who identify as men in prison, but I don’t believe that number of programs is proportional. It’s a very small number.”

The grant money provides Thomas and Morris the resources they need to treat OPEEP as part of their current jobs, instead of a much-beloved side project.

“[Receiving these funds] is affirming,” Morris said. “You know you’re doing good work.”

“We’ve been doing really lonely work for the last year to build the program,” Thomas added. “Now we’re able to have the affirmation and the time to actually be able to put in the work.”

Demand for OPEEP programming has only grown, both professors agreed. The Mellon funds will allow for further expansion of course offerings.

“There’s a real hunger for a wide variety of courses to be offered,” Thomas said. “Being able to offer some science classes, in addition to humanities, is one of our goals.

“[Incarcerated individuals] don’t get a lot of choice, whether it’s what they’re able to eat or the programming they’re involved in,” she added. “So, having some course choices can be pretty impactful.”

In addition to the staff at CMA, Paulsen has some additional help: graduate students from her autumn 2022 class, “Exhibition Making at the CMA.”

“I hope this is a refreshing experience, to get to work on something that isn’t just between you and your professor,” Paulsen said of the collaboration between Ohio State and CMA. “This class and this project have different stakes. The work isn’t just for me to grade. It’s for the public, it’s going to have a lifespan.”

To support the artwork featured in an exhibition, wall labels and exhibition catalogs are used by curators to explain the themes of the show. These must be easily understood by the public, Paulsen said.

“There is a different kind of engagement with the work required, and a different kind of writing,” she said.

While the catalogue will feature essays from anthropologist Elizabeth Povinelli and geologist Kathryn Yusoff, the majority of the entries will be written by graduate students, who worked together to edit and polish their writings until they reached a suitable standard. These writing workshops have already proved valuable, said April Riddle, one of Paulsen’s students.

“The major takeaway for me is a stronger comfort level with giving and receiving edits,” she said.

Another benefit of the class was working with a living artist.

“We often think about artworks in museums, living forever on the same wall, or in pages of a book,” Paulsen said. Being able to speak with the artist is a “professional experience you don’t typically get in art history.”

“The conversation with Sarah [Rosalena] was really rewarding,” said Mia Kivel, another student of Paulsen’s. “Most art historians don’t get to talk with actual artists that frequently. We spent an hour and a half talking with Sarah; it was very productive.”

Both Riddle and Kivel will continue their work with Paulsen through the opening of the exhibition, despite the course lasting only a semester.

“It was exciting to take a class with [Paulsen],” Riddle said. “I didn’t have any major curatorial experience so I thought this would be a great opportunity.”

In addition to working with Rosalena, Paulsen and her students spoke often with Nicole Rome, chief registrar at CMA. This is the third Ohio State-curated exhibition at CMA. Rome thinks the partnership between the two institutions is of great benefit to both.

“If you’re an art historian, to be able to see real works of art in front of you is so different from seeing it on a screen or in a textbook,” she said. “A huge priority for the museum is to be a teaching space. To be able to work with such great faculty and students from Ohio State, who are engaged and excited, that’s exactly the kind of work we want to be doing.”

One of the key lessons Rome tried to impart: understanding an exhibit space. Students had the chance to model how they would arrange the exhibition, which will be held at the Pizzuti Collection of the Columbus Museum of Art in the Short North area of Columbus. A visit to the galleries allowed for greater understanding of the logistics behind an exhibition.

“We wanted them to think about the space and what works are going to be in the show,” Rome said.  “How will those works connect to each other physically and creatively?”

This type of work, the planning and modeling, the brainstorming, the writing, are all valuable for graduate students who wish to work in museums. But the writing gives students something just as valuable for budding educators: publishing credits.

“We’ll come away with something tangible, something that we can show potential employers,” Kivel said.

“The main project is the writing,” Paulsen said. “Students have produced all the cataloged entries; they’ll be published in the catalog. It will be the first writing credit that some of the students get, which is very important for aspiring academics to have. And not just for their resumes, but to go through the formal editing process: getting feedback, going through layers of copy, seeing through a final project.”

“It’s helpful,” Riddle said. “It leads to more opportunities.”

This collaborative exhibition has been made possible by a Global Arts + Humanities Discovery Theme Community Engagement Grant from The Ohio State University, a Craft Research Fund Exhibition Grant from the Center for Craft, a Ronald & Deborah Ratner Distinguished Teaching Award, and an Arts and Humanities Community Engagement Grant from The Ohio State University College of Arts and Sciences.

The university’s Department of Theatre, Film, and Media Arts is moving to a new building in the emerging Ohio State arts district later this year. The modern environment is a new opportunity to expand on the department’s core mission.

“The entire institution, to me, is extremely outward facing. It takes its land-grant mission very seriously. I think that if you’re going to address some of the most challenging problems we have in the world today, we’ve got to approach them interdisciplinarily,” said E.J. Westlake, chair and professor of theatre, film, and media arts. “The arts have to be a part of that. Creative thinking is the cornerstone of critical thinking. And so, I’m excited that… we’re preparing our students to … engage with real-world problems in really creative and effective ways.”

The new five-floor building includes classroom, performance, studio and office space. State-of-the-art performance spaces include a 450-seat theatre and a hybrid thrust/black box theatre.

The new building will include a New Works Lab for new and experimental productions, a lighting lab, a design studio and a costume shop.

“Here we actually teach the students how to sew the garments for the shows,” said Loren “Coco” Mayer, costume wardrobe supervisor. “[This] new generation is taking more care into finding out about the humanities, the arts – what is it? Can I sustain myself? Can I make a career at it? They really are investigating those possibilities.”

Spaces for students studying film, moving-image production and media arts will include two sound stages, editing suites, a sound lab and a screening room.

With the Timashev Family Music Building next door, the Theatre, Film and Media Arts Building creates a community for artistic, educational, social and commercial interchange.

“Theater is a form of living for me,” said Tyla Daniel, a theatre and communications major. “It lets you get to experience different walks of life, different aspects of life, thoughts, ideas, problems – some of which you would never originally even think or consider. And it makes you ponder things. It makes you question how you view the world around you. And even as you are portraying these characters, it makes you consider how you view yourself.”

“I come from a family where my parents thought that a good education required that you did some art,” said the new executive director of the Wexner Center for the Arts at The Ohio State University. “So, everybody played a musical instrument. I did ballet. I did some theater. There was a notion that a well-rounded education included the arts.”

This early exposure to the arts world would lead to a lifelong career as a champion of creativity.

Verna began her work at the Wexner Center in November. Before moving to Columbus, she lived in Toronto, spending 10 years as director and artistic director of the city’s Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery. Verna was also executive director and chief curator of the Musée d’art de Joliette, one of the largest art museums in Quebec, from 2006 to 2012. Previously, she was curator of the Foreman Art Gallery at Bishop’s University in Quebec, another university art center.

Working on a university campus, Verna said, is “the dream.” A research institution like Ohio State allows for a different kind of experience for artists.

“A center like the Wexner Center for the Arts, like many other [university-affiliated art institutions], has played a role galvanizing people, in being thought-provoking institutions. They are places of experimentation, places that nurture our future artists. It’s learning, it’s teaching, it’s experimenting.”

In addition, the size of Ohio State creates opportunities for the Wexner Center, Verna said.

“The reputation of Ohio State,” she said, “the fact that the Wexner Center is based in a university of 60,000 students – to me, that’s 60,000 minds that you can speak to, open their minds to the world of artists and entice to be lifelong learners through the work of artists.”

In 2022, the Wexner Center announced free gallery admission to better provide community access to its exhibitions. Verna believes accessibility to the arts is crucial.

“We want everyone to feel that artists are speaking to them, regardless of who they are,” she said. “We provide an opportunity for someone to walk in, see something, and then their heart stops.”

Verna is the fourth person to lead the institution. Being part of Ohio State and its robust arts and culture scene is something that excites Verna.

“The thing that’s beautiful is that we’re really at the center of it,” she said. “We can build bridges with each of these departments and that’s what the university wants to do.

“I think it’s very bold and smart of the university to focus on art as a catalyst for community, city building and as a real touchpoint that can ground people,” she added.

The Ohio State community continues to impress Verna. The passion she finds in her colleagues, both in and outside the Wexner Center, is remarkable, she said.

“It feels that everyone is at their top of their game and really invested in the job at hand,” she said. “They are interested in being at The Ohio State University. This is the feeling that I get from my new colleagues. Everybody has their eyes twinkling and being really excited about being here. That’s really encouraging.  

“There are people even on my team that have been here for 28 years and they’re still really passionate about the work they do. For me, that is an important factor: the passion that people can have for a place, a city, work that they do.”

As for another Ohio State passion, Verna looks forward to attending a Buckeye football game. She admits to not being as familiar with the American version of the sport as she is with soccer, hockey and volleyball. But recognizing what matters to a community is important, she said.

“If this university, if this city, their heart beats hard for their football team, then I need to pay attention to this because that’s part of building this community in the same way that I want the arts to be something important,” she said. “I’ll cheer. I’ll learn.”

Hill visited campus as the 2022 Joseph J. Kruzel Lecture speaker for the Mershon Center for International Security Studies. The series honors Joseph Kruzel, a Mershon associate who taught political science at Ohio State during an interval between Air Force, Defense Department, and diplomatic postings. In 1995, Kruzel died in an accident in Sarajevo, Bosnia, while heading the US team in the negotiations to end the Yugoslav wars. 

Executive Vice President and Provost Melissa L. Gilliam introduced Hill, officially naming her a Buckeye and sharing that the university was honored to host her. Kruzel represented the importance and power of education, Gilliam said, and Hill reflects that in her career.

Earlier in the day, Hill spoke to a Mershon-only audience about how scholarships and study-abroad opportunities enabled her to become one of the few children of her English mining community to attend university, and ultimately to get a PhD in history from Harvard and become a leading authority on Russian politics.

“We’re excited to hear from you,” Gilliam said. “You represent the best of what we try to do here at Ohio State, which is to change the lives of individuals. When we educate individuals, we change the life of a family, we change society.”

Hill is the Robert Bosch Senior Fellow at the Center on the United States and Europe in the Foreign Policy program at the Brookings Institution, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit that conducts research on local-, national- and global-level issues. From 2017 to 2019, she served under President Donald Trump as deputy assistant to the president and senior director for European and Russian Affairs on the National Security Council. She memorably testified at the former president’s impeachment hearing in 2019. Prior to that, she served as national intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasia at the National Intelligence Council from 2006-2009.

Hill was delighted to earn her honorary Buckeye title, saying that she had wanted to visit the university for a long time.

“I’ve been in the United States since 1989,” Hill said, “so this has been a long time getting here. And I hope that, now that I’m a Buckeye, I’ll come back again.”

Hill spent 90 minutes answering questions from the event’s moderator, Dorothy Noyes, director of the Mershon Center, and from the audience. The conversation focused on what is happening in Russia during the conflict in Ukraine: What is Russian President Vladimir Putin thinking? What do the Russian people think? How is this impacting the Russian economy?

Hill spoke of Putin’s adaptability, something that has allowed him to remain the central figure in his country’s political arena since the 1990s. However, she said, Putin has failed to account for what she called the “knock-on effects” of the war: the ripples that sanctions, military drafts and protests are having inside Russia.

“I don’t think Putin himself, or the people in the Kremlin, have a full picture of what’s happening,” she said.

Again and again, Hill returned to the danger of having one person so inextricably tied to a country’s decision making.

“What do you get out of too much fealty to one guy?” Hill asked the audience. “You get a horrific war, the largest military conflict in Europe since World War II. You get essentially a world war. All because one guy made a decision based on his own misconceptions.”

The United States can learn from this, what Hill called “the fetishization of the presidential executive power.”

“The preamble to the Constitution isn’t ‘I, the president.’ It’s ‘We, the people,’” Hill said. Instead of looking for a single leader who can solve the problems of a nation, we need to look to ourselves.

“How, in the United States, do you create a country that works for everyone? It won’t be one person, in the presidency,” Hill said. “We look too much to the presidency to be the be-all, the end-all, the champion. That’s how you get autocratic, authoritarian systems.”

“When I took the position, I knew [Ohio State] was a step up,” he said. “But I wasn’t expecting this much of a step up. The robustness of the staff, the leadership, the institutional support – I couldn’t be more impressed.”

A prime example of that institutional support is the Timashev Family Music Building, which was officially dedicated on Sunday. Celebrations for the new space included remarks from President Kristina M. Johnson and Ibrahim, as well as performances from four School of Music groups: the wind symphony, the symphony orchestra, the jazz ensemble and the university’s choirs.

The new building, Johnson said, is “an opportunity to rededicate this university to our community and to the mission of uplifting, empowering and connecting people across the state and all over the world.”

Made possible through a donation from Ratmir Timashev, who earned his master’s degree in chemical physics at Ohio State in 1996, and his wife, Angela, the Timashev Family Music Building will house the entire school over five floors. The couple donated $17 million to the university in 2020, the majority of which went toward the building’s construction costs. They previously donated an additional $5 million in 2016 for endowed faculty positions, fellowships, scholarships and research support in chemical physics and data analytics. 

“It’s my hope,” Timashev said at the dedication celebration, “that the Timashev Family Music Building inspires the next generation of students and this entire community to dream big and to achieve great things.”

The new building connects to Weigel Hall – which opened in the late 1970s – allowing both spaces to be used by the school. There are dedicated studios for jazz and percussion work, as well as practice rooms for students and a large ensemble rehearsal space. Ibrahim calls the acoustics in these new rooms “incredible.”

“If you have a singer in a room that echoes, that’s going to change how we hear sound. And, over the course of the four years a student is here, that’s going to affect how that student thinks about music, how they perform,” he said. “Acoustics are part of the instrument. Our halls are just stunning. They are musical spaces.”

The centerpiece of the building is the 195-seat recital hall, which is Ibrahim’s favorite space.

“You walk in and even the sound of your voice, just talking, is amazing,” he said. “It’s special.”

For a new leader, the opening of a new building presents an opportunity, Ibrahim said, echoing Johnson’s sentiment.

“There’s only a certain timeframe where things can be considered new,” he said. “One of the things we’re doing is inviting people into the building. We want to bring the community in and together.”

He has worked to make the space, which only opened this fall, a place for Ohio State and Columbus community members alike. Building connections between the other arts organizations in the area is vital to Ibrahim’s plans for the school. Collaborations with ProMusica Columbus, the Columbus Symphony, the Columbus Children’s Theatre and Opera Columbus have already been established.

“We’re looking to build more partnerships,” he said. “We’re excited to build our community while this is new.”

This community is represented in another one of the building’s special features: congregate spaces.

“The heart of it all is the open spaces where students, faculty and staff can meet and prepare for class,” Ibrahim said. “As we come out of the pandemic, to have spaces where people can be together, not huddled at home, that’s so powerful.”

Music, Johnson said at the dedication, is a great unifier.

“It can bring people together, bridge differences, create pathways of understanding,” she said, adding, “The Timashev Family Music Building transforms all of this energy into a physical form. It will host and help inspire countless creative works, collaborations and opportunities for musicians of all levels to hone their craft – and enable those of us who may not be musically gifted to enjoy the creations of those who are.”

Ibrahim sees this new building as a way to fully integrate the School of Music into the fabric of Ohio State and the communities it serves.

“Our new facility is a musical and artistic space for everyone.”