“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.”

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.”

“[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.”

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.”

“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

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.”

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.

“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.”

“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.”

“There are meaning-making practices embedded in art-making,” Wibbelsman said. “Once we started researching that with our students, it introduced us to a variety of new methods and different theoretical perspectives we can potentially derive from this work.”

The masks, along with photographs by photojournalist Leonardo Carrizo, tell the story of Latin American festival traditions known as diabladas (devils dances), which exist in many different forms throughout Latin America. All are on display this semester at the Barnett Center for Integrated Arts and Enterprise in Sullivant Hall on the Columbus campus.

Masks at the heart of the exhibition are intricate objects, typically made of papier mâché, animal horns and teeth, and other embellishments. They take many forms: animals, men, women, historical figures.

Wibbelsman and a team of nine graduate and undergraduate students from the Kawsay Ukhunchay Andean and Amazonian Indigenous Art and Cultural Artifacts Research Collection at Ohio State  along with special collections librarians curated “Dancing with Devils” as a research, teaching and community outreach resource at the Barnett Center, which was established to prepare students for successful careers in the arts and related fields.

“We delight in hosting the ‘Dancing with Devils’ exhibition in the Barnett Center Collaboratory this semester,” said Scott A. Jones, director of the center. “The multidisciplinary spirit of exhibition content – inclusive of music, dance, art, photography and narrative – in addition to rich interactions with campus, local and global communities honor an important part of our mission. We look forward to the possibility of similar partnerships with others in the near future.”

Wibbelsman is adamant that the exhibition would not be the success it is without the work of her interdisciplinary team of student collaborators.

“This isn’t a class. The students often don’t get any course credit. They don’t get any grades,” she said. “They’re not required to show up. But they keep showing up and they’ve produced more than any students in any class I’ve ever taught.”

The nine students come from differing backgrounds, she said. Some have museum and exhibition backgrounds while others are focused more on research and bibliographic work. One is a biochemistry major who took a class with Wibbelsman as an incoming freshman and fell in love with the project.

“The collection is a resource,” Wibbelsman said. “If student projects connect to it and they benefit from participating, that’s fantastic.”

“Dancing with Devils” includes work by artists from Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Venezuela and Ecuador and features three residency artists: Fernando Endara, Italo Espín Haro and Leonardo Carrizo. Endara and Espín Haro hail from Ecuador, one of many Latin American countries that celebrates the annual festival of the diablada with music, dancing in the streets, processions and performances by masked characters.

Espín Haro is a well-known mask maker from the town of Píllaro. One of his masks is featured in the exhibition. Endara is an anthropologist at the Technological Indo-American University in Ambato, Ecuador who has published work on the Diablada Pillareña (Devils dances of the community of Píllaro) and participates in the festival regularly as a diablada dancer.

Carrizo is a Columbus-based photojournalist originally from Argentina and a multimedia journalism lecturer in the School of Communications at Ohio State. He specializes in visual storytelling and has documented the Diablada Pillareña over the course of many years in the community of Píllaro.

It was essential, Wibbelsman said, to invite the people who are from the region and most familiar with the cultures that hold this celebration, to tell its story.

“We were emphatic about bringing the artists. If you don’t activate the collection with the people who made this art, what is the collection for?”

Wibbelsman hopes that this approach to the exhibition, one which prioritizes the cultures, the artwork on display and the participation of residency artists, will have a meaningful impact on audience members.

“This is not an exhibition that goes up and comes down,” she said. “This is something that stays up for the entire semester with programming that draws people in and prompts them to ask questions.”

A physical example of this programming is a window cling installation that decorates the Barnett Center. It depicts a diablada mask and allows visitors to step into the mask. Wibbelsman said the goal is for people to consider what wearing such a mask means.

“What qualities do you need to put on a mask?” she asked. “What features would you have not noticed had you not been wearing it yourself and looking through its eyes? How does the mask invite you to look at the world from a different perspective?”

The first, said Suchland, also an associate professor in the Department of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies at The Ohio State University, is a legal interpretation. It refers to the lawyers, the judges and the parole boards, all of whom need to see beyond an individual’s guilt to ensure excessive punishment – which includes over-sentencing and over-punishment – does not occur.

The second refers to the individuals themselves, she said.

“This blew me away,” Suchland said. “Through their stories, I learned that folks also wrestled with how to see themselves beyond their guilty charge. And they have to reckon with a criminal legal system that has over-sentenced or over-punished them.”

In 2019, the Ohio Justice & Policy Center (OJPC) launched Beyond Guilt, a statewide program that advocates for the over-sentenced and over-punished. It seeks early release for individuals who have served significant portions of their sentences and can demonstrate rehabilitation. It also elevates the stories of those impacted by excessive punishment to educate the public about this problem.

This fall, thanks to a partnership between OJPC, Ohio State, the Mellon Foundation and the American Council of Learned Societies, Beyond Guilt is able to share the stories of six storytellers, the first released through the program, at the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center.

The “Beyond Guilt” exhibition, on display through Nov. 27, features photographs taken by Cincinnati-based artist and activist Harriet Kaufman. Each photo is accompanied by quotations from the photographed individual taken from hours of dialogues performed by Suchland’s graduate assistant Jessica Tjiu, who said the experience was a remarkable one.

“Part of the experience was just to listen. I tried to really savor the moment, this intimate moment with someone I had met just that day,” she said. “I was very honored that these individuals were willing to share their stories with me.”

It was important to Tjiu and Suchland that the vignettes feature the full lives of the storytellers and not just the incarceration experience.”  “We don’t want to put their experiences as formerly incarcerated up on a pedestal,” Tjiu said. “I talked to them about how they see themselves, how they are making and remaking their own identity.”

Both women described the sense of intimacy they felt with the project collaborators. Suchland in particular worried about the ethical questions this raised for her work.

“You have to listen for what they want to share,” she said. “I can’t let my own sentimentality dictate what we choose to include. I strove for a balance of opening myself up and listening to what’s being said, not what I thought was most important.”

Letting those impacted by excessive punishment speak for themselves is key to the exhibition, Suchland said.

“Excessive punishment is a problem, and we are trying to communicate that to the public,” Suchland said. “But, it’s not just a problem. It is a lived experience, and that personal experience should be the voice leading social change.” 

“Stories matter, multiple perspectives on an issue matter,” Tjiu said. “Does this exhibit dispel misconceptions people may have? For me, it’s all about listening and seeing people beyond their criminal record.”

Suchland and Tjiu are adamant that this exhibition could not have happened without relationships across multiple institutions.

“Mariame Kaba, she’s a famous activist, organizer, educator – her father told her once that everything worthwhile is done with other people. My engagement with this project is a materialization of that,” Suchland said.

Beyond that, it is through relationships that we can right the wrongs of over-sentencing, she said.

“If we’re not building relationships within and across communities, then the profound structural change we need is likely not going to happen.” 

This is one of the writing prompts that Kari Gunter-Seymour recently gave the student participants in the Wexner Center for the Arts’ Pages program. Pages is a free program that allows high school students in central Ohio to work with educators and artists from the Wexner Center for the Arts at The Ohio State University for an entire school year. Gunter-Seymour, Ohio’s poet laureate and Wexner Center artist-in-residence, was a participating artist in 2021 and is returning to work with this year’s cohort.

Five schools – South-Western Career Academy, Whitehall-Yearling High School, West Liberty-Salem High School, Walnut Ridge High School and Columbus Downtown High School – are sending around 150 students to the Wexner Center for this year’s program. It is vital to the program’s success that the mix of students is just right, said Dionne Custer Edwards, Pages program founder and director of learning & public practice.

“How do we bring together students who might not otherwise be together in a learning context?” Custer Edwards said. “You might come across each other in extracurricular activities but when do you get to learn beyond the walls of your school? When do you get to build community and have experiences that are not in your school community?”

The program launched in 2005 with the goal of showing students the value of writing as a creative outlet and as a vehicle for engaging with other types of art.

“We don’t always talk about the ‘arts’ part of ‘language arts,’” said Custer Edwards, who is a writer herself.

Throughout the year, students meet in person and virtually to discuss readings and writing. They compose work of their own as well and can share it whenever they feel comfortable, including at an open mic night at the program’s end. The group also watches films and visits the Wexner Center’s galleries to view artwork up close.

The cost of these trips is entirely covered by the program. Custer Edwards is proud that the Wexner Center can provide field trips to students who may not have many opportunities for experiential learning.

During these trips, Gunter-Seymour encourages students to think beyond their usual notions of what writing should be. She asks them to make up words if they can’t find one that fits their needs and advocates for doodling.

“I encourage people to include hand art because when you can’t think of something to write down, your hand will doodle it,” she said. “When you come back to that doodle, it’ll trigger that thought in a second.”

These exercises help students think beyond their anxieties, Gunter-Seymour said. Teenagers can be self-conscious, especially about how they look.

“Sometimes we don’t like our bodies, especially as teenagers,” she said. “Being able to step outside our bodies gives us the freedom to go crazy and be as creative as we’d ever, ever hope to be.”

The teachers that accompany their students also reap benefits from Pages, said Sarah Robison, teaching, learning and interpretation manager.

“Although they’re all from very different schools, and sometimes teach different subjects,” she said, “they make connections. They get a support system of other people in their field.”

These support systems are the heart of Pages, Gunter-Seymour said. All the students have faced challenges: the pandemic or bullying or instability at home. They find a community that helps them navigate these stressors.

“These are the things we go through, and we talk about. Even the most confident person will tell you they’ve been made to feel less than. So, they’ve taken steps to overcome that, and they’ll share those steps with their fellow students,” she said.

“We band together, and we help each other. We build community. That’s what we’re doing with the Pages program.”

Church bells. Public proselytizing. Calls to prayer. Tantric chanting. What does religion sound like, and how can we learn new truths about the diversity of religion in the United States when we listen?

Isaac Weiner, associate professor in the Department of Comparative Studies at Ohio State, has been probing these questions with the American Religious Sounds Project (ARSP). Through hundreds of field recordings nationwide that capture the sounds of religion at places such as homes, churches, temples, public protests and community events, the ARSP constructs a tangible sonic record that maps and contextualizes religion in profound and innovative ways.

Now, after eight years of research and hundreds of audio recordings, the ARSP is culminating in Religious Soundscapes, a reflective exhibition at the Urban Arts Space that features a series of thematic audio essays and invites visitors to experience religion as an audibly complex social, spatial, political and embodied phenomenon. The interactive, immersive exhibit opens with a reception from 5-7 p.m. on Tuesday, May 24, and runs through July 16.

“Religion sounds different depending on the space where it’s practiced,” said Weiner, who co-founded and co-directs the ARSP with Amy DeRogatis, chair and professor of religion and American culture in the Department of Religious Studies at Michigan State University. “Institutional spaces like churches, synagogues and mosques might feature formal worship and formal liturgy. Homes and domestic spaces are much more intimate and family-based. So, we organized the exhibit not by discrete, bounded religious traditions, but by commonalities across traditions based on the different spaces in which religion is practiced. It’s a wonderful insight into thinking about what religion sounds like.”

Co-curators Alison Furlong, ARSP project coordinator, and Lauren Pond, ARSP content producer, as well as Vicki Brennan of the University of Vermont and Ely Lyonblum of the University of Toronto, listened to hours of field recordings and identified the importance of place as a central theme around which to curate the exhibit.

The project includes over 100 recordings from central Ohio — from worship music inside a Methodist church and a singing bowl circle at Whetstone Park to ritualistic Buddhist chanting at a home in Worthington and a ceremonial Druid invocation at ComFest in Goodale Park. Religious Soundscapes captures the spatial, cultural and linguistic diversity of religion elucidated by the ARSP and presents it to a broad audience. The exhibit also invites the communities recorded, students who produced recordings, and colleagues and scholars who collaborated on the project.

“When you pay attention to sound, it allows one to think about religious practices in ways that get beyond texts and institutions,” DeRogatis said. “Tuning into this different sensation allows us to explore questions as big and simple as ‘What is religion and religious practice?’ … It’s a question that really engages the public because people like to think about the sounds of their own traditions, and they like to talk about how hearing sounds that are not from their religious traditions affects them.”

The ARSP team is also partnering with the Smithsonian Institution to create a traveling exhibit that uses interactive posters to give users a visual and auditory experience of religious life. Each poster includes a QR code, and when scanned with a smartphone or tablet, viewers can listen to field recordings associated with each poster. Community centers, libraries and schools will be able to request printed copies of the posters from the Smithsonian for free. Weiner said it is the first time the Smithsonian has created a traveling poster exhibit that features a sound component.

 “The work Isaac and I have done has built bridges and has been an example for these two institutions about how sharing resources and collaboration can be done to the benefit of everyone,” DeRogatis said.

For Weiner and DeRogatis, the Religious Soundscapes exhibition marks the end of a long, fruitful journey that has redefined their approaches to scholarship. Starting as a classroom exercise, the ARSP evolved into a large-scale collaborative initiative that inspired spinoff research projects, engaged community partners and informed new pedagogical methodologies for religious studies.

“I look back and just express tremendous pride in all we’ve accomplished,” Weiner said. “The actual products we’ve created, as well as the networks of collaboration among faculty, students and community we fostered, this is a moment to celebrate that work.”

The American Religious Sounds Project is supported by funding to Ohio State’s Center for the Study of Religion from the Henry Luce Foundation. Other support has been provided by the Humanities Without Walls Consortium, based at the Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Material support is also provided by Michigan State and Ohio State.

“We are delighted to announce a transformational new initiative intended to allow for greater access to the center itself,” said Kelly Stevelt, the center’s co-interim executive director. “Starting with our summer platform…, we are thrilled to be leading the way for museums in Ohio by offering free gallery admission all year-round to everyone.”

Executive Vice President and Provost Melissa L. Gilliam spoke to an assembled crowd about the Wexner Center’s upcoming events and how they fit into the larger picture of Ohio State as an arts destination.

“The Wex really anchors the university’s commitment to the arts and links us to the larger community and to the state and to the world,” Gilliam said. “It’s extraordinary and unique among its peers.”

Gilliam said the free admission policy reflects the university’s priorities.

“One of the things the Wex does so beautifully, with the help of many of you, is to focus on issues of equity and also access and affordability, really trying to make our galleries free and open and the work that we do that much more accessible,” she said.

jaamil olawale kosoko, guest curator of “Portal For(e),” introduced the summer-long exhibition. Their role as curator is part of the artist’s three-year collaboration with the institution as an Artist Residency Award recipient. The exhibition provides interconnected events that invite visitors to ruminate on Black feminism and queer theory, as well as intimacy and wellness. In addition to works by kosoko, “Portal For(e)” features pieces from nora chipaumire, Jennifer Harge and Devin Drake, Dana Michele, Jasmine Murrell and Keioui Keijaun Thomas.

“Through sharing space alongside each other, the artists featured in ‘Portal For(e)’ pronounced an otherwise unpronounced critical interpretation,” kosoko said. “We’re re-worlding a world anew during this time of heightened global violence and perpetual pandemics.”

Free gallery admission is made in possible in part through a partnership with the American Electric Power Foundation and other supporters in the community. Another benefit available to Wexner Center guests this summer is discounted parking for film and video and performing arts events thanks to a partnership with CampusParc. Those events will require paid admission.

“Please mark your calendars,” Stevelt said. “We hope to see you regularly and often here at the Wex.”  

“Portal For(e)” kicks off on Thursday, June 9, with a preview party and a dub reggae night at the Wex. A week of opening celebrations will follow.

The exhibition, on view at The Print Center and various public locations in Philadelphia through July 16 of this year, was made possible through a nearly $250,000 grant from the Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, said curator Ksenia Nouril.

“That is a transformational amount of money for an organization like The Print Center,” she said.

Founded in 1915, the gallery was one of only a few in the country that focused on prints. Since then, The Print Center has expanded its attention to print materials of all kinds, including photography, and has exhibited works from Albrecht Dürer, Pablo Picasso, Louise Bourgeois, Kerry James Marshall and Ohio State’s own Ann Hamilton.

Nouril went on to say that the size of the grant allowed the organization and Winant, the Roy Lichtenstein Endowed Chair of Studio Art, to build a show that wasn’t restricted to a single location. In addition to the physical exhibition, Winant is working on a companion book and The Print Center is making a short film about the construction of the project.

Additionally, and perhaps most visibly, Winant created interventions for public bus shelters throughout the city. The shelters feature posters of photographs Winant took of t-shirts from a Clothesline Project event organized in the 1990s by Women in Transition (WIT), a Philadelphia service provider for those struggling with domestic violence and substance abuse.

Through the Clothesline Project, an international and ongoing endeavor, survivors decorate t-shirts with messages and drawings that reflect their paths to safety and recovery. The title of the exhibition comes from one such shirt. Winant found them to be deeply moving.

“When I saw the shirts, I thought, ‘This is the show. This is the whole show,’” she said. “They are the most expressive instruments that I found in [WIT’s] archive. They are first-person; they are in the present tense. For the most part, they talk about things like being reborn or coming back to themselves, but in some cases, they are just brutal and brutalizing.”

Winant was given access to WIT’s archives as well as those of the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence (NCADV) for the project. Research has always been part of her practice as an artist, she said. It wasn’t until she began working at Ohio State, however, that she saw how beneficial formal academic research could be to her work.

“I didn’t realize what sort of opportunities research afforded me,” she said. “I’ve learned how to research at Ohio State in ways that I maybe never would have understood before, by talking to colleagues, by collaborating with folks, by meeting with students, by using our resources.”

This spirit of collaboration has been echoed in The Print Center show, Nouril said.

“It’s built on the generosity of everyone involved,” she said, referring to the “unique synergy” between Winant, WIT, NCADV and the gallery.

Nouril speaks highly of Winant. The subject matter of the show requires a high level of deftness and empathy, she said, and Winant has both.

“I’ve always wanted to do a project with her,” said Nouril. “A project like this, with an artist like Carmen, is very true to our mission at The Print Center.”

Despite the confidence of people like Nouril, Winant struggled with telling these stories. Winant does not consider herself to be a survivor of domestic violence, she said. In fact, she wondered many times if she was an appropriate person to shepherd these stories into the public eye.

“I don’t identify as a survivor,” she said. “From the beginning I’ve asked myself, ‘What is my place here?’ ‘Am I the person to be telling stories like this?’ I do think it’s the charge of art to reach towards experiences that we don’t understand all the way.”

It is this notion, of reaching to understand the unfamiliar, that Winant wants audiences to take from her work.

“One thing I hope folks take away from the show is the ubiquity of gender violence,” she said. “A big part of the project was to demonstrate that this is happening all around us. Women are murdered or lose everything, so often. Bringing visibility to that is enormous.”

The show traces the history of the University Gallery of Fine Art and its collection, which became the arts hub for the Ohio State University community in the ’70s and ’80s. In fact, the gallery became so prominent that its final exhibition was the largest institutional show in the country addressing the HIV/AIDS crisis.

It was this foundation that led to the creation of the Wexner for the Arts, which in turn led to this meaningful retrospective. Many pieces in the show have not been on view since the ’90s and, as a result, require extra care. Collings, who served as the first director of the University Gallery, is one of the dozens of artists represented in the exhibit.

When it opened in 1989, the Wexner Center was already drawing interest for its architectural design. Peter Eisenman and Richard Trott’s submission to the Center for the Visual Arts design competition was selected in part because it echoed the university’s history – the building contains references to the Armory, which stood where the center now sits – and it gave visitors a suggestion for what the future might look like, with its soaring white grids. Additionally, the interior of the building was meant to be dynamic, with galleries of different shapes and sizes. Flooring shifts from wood to tile and back again. A wall of enormous windows allows natural light to flood the space far more than in a traditional art gallery.

Such a design could present obstacles when curating and installing a show. Instead, the staff at the Wexner Center find it exciting.

“The challenge is getting through the space and understanding what’s going on,” said David Dickas, installation manager and exhibition designer. “There are always people who are up for the challenge of Eisenman’s style. It becomes a bit of a game. You’re able to overcome the irregularities of the space and the artwork is able to come forth.”

Dickas and his team worked closely with the To Begin, Again exhibition’s curator Daniel Marcus to find the best location for each piece.

“For this show, a lot of crucial decisions were made looking at models, either physical ones or digitally in SketchUp [a type of modeling software],” Marcus said. “I have a model of the gallery and rudimentary cutouts of things that I use to figure out what grouping of pieces work. I think about this as a spatial experience – how many things can I have in this space before it starts to feel like too many?”

“We take time to kick ideas back and forth,” Dickas added. “We treat approaches as not too precious. ‘What if we did this?’ And sometimes we improvise. If we can’t work it out in models, we need to go up into the space and see what works.”

The placement of Collings’ piece is a good example of this collaboration. According to Dickas, there were a few locations in the models in which the piece would fit, each with its own benefits and drawbacks.

“This is one that was more fun,” he said. “It inflates quickly, it deflates quickly, so if we want to try it in 20 places, we can do that.”

It turns out that one of the Wexner Center’s special attributes, the varied flooring throughout, made the final choice an easy one. Dickas suggested that the piece might look best on a wooden portion of the floor.

“That really made all the difference,” Marcus said. “So much of the attitude toward the Wex is ‘it’s a difficult building, it’s a difficult space,’ but then you realize there are things here that can help you, that there are things here that other buildings don’t have. In this case, Eisenman articulated these different spatial zones with the changes in flooring. Otherwise,the space would just flatten out. It’s very helpful.”

Marcus and Dickas’ hard work is on view throughout To Begin, Again, where objects like a 36-foot-long painting by Futura2000, a massive aluminum relief sculpture by Frank Stella, and neon screen prints by Ohio State alumnus Michael Keyes join Collings’ inflatable. Marcus was quick to praise Dickas’ crew for their attention to detail.

“There’s an extra layer of care in dealing with objects that come from our own collection. We’re responsible for them – not just making them look good on the walls but also for their longevity. They have to physically endure and we’re responsible for that.”

The Jan. 19 session, “Art, Climate Sciences and the Social Condition,” kicked off the Spring 2022 Digital Dialogues and Graduate Workshop Series presented by the Office of Academic Affairs’ Global Arts and Humanities Society of Fellows.

Centered on the theme “Extinction/Imagination,” the Digital Dialogue series brings together scholars, community activists, artists and archivists working in a range of disciplines, said Professor of English Wendy Hesford.

“The ‘Extinction/Imagination’ theme is an interdisciplinary theme that invites us to consider extinction broadly, that is as a range of threats to ecosystems, languages, species, cultures, populations and life ways,” Hesford said in her introduction. The theme also explores “the role of the imagination in crafting sustainable responses to these threats and just responses to systemic inequalities.”

Panelists included Amy Fairchild, dean of the College of Public Health and a historian; Hope Ginsburg, an artist in residence at the Wexner Center for the Arts; Smitha Rao, an assistant professor in the College of Social Work; and Sa’dia Rehman, Wexner Center for the Arts artist in residence and a lecturer in the College of Arts and Sciences. Dionne Custer Edwards, director of learning and public practice at the Wexner Center for the Arts, moderated the discussion.

Each of the panelists shared her perspectives on how art can raise awareness of the complex issues that contribute to climate change. Visual art can underscore the urgency of the crisis – even if it’s as simple as a television news infographic, Fairchild said.

“As an individual, unless I see a graphic, the summer doesn’t feel hotter to me than it did when I was 3 years old, (although) I know rationally that that has happened,” she said. “Because of the longer time frame that it happens over, it doesn’t grasp us as the crisis, it doesn’t give us that wringing our hands moment – ‘What’s to be done about this?’”

Art can not only provide perspective on crises that have taken shape over long periods of time, but can also offer a glimpse of future events, Rao said. She noted that the late science fiction author Octavia E. Butler’s 1993 “Parable of the Sower” novel depicts climate change and economic chaos in the early 2020s.

“If you read it today, it feels prophetic. She’s talking about climate change, she’s talking about racism,” Rao said. “If you read the ‘Parable’ series right now, she has imagined the world that we are living in today, and it feels really spooky that she kind of foretold the future.”

Rather than detached observers, artists who write about issues like climate change are often passionate about the issue and actively involved in trying to effect positive change, Rehman said.

“These are people participating in the movement and then they’re using their tools, their art practice to meditate on the destruction,” she said. “They’ve participated in and produced work in service of building those other worlds.”  

Ginsburg said as part of her current Wexner Center for the Arts project, she and a small film crew embark on deep-sea dives to document coral reefs. She said the project will be featured in an upcoming Wexner Center “indoor ocean” exhibit in which oversized screens will show gallery goers how marine life is impacted by climate change.

Ginsburg said in her work, she strives to convey “the role of art in terms of showing people something to which they can emotionally resonate, which may move someone from a supporter to someone who becomes active, or maybe show someone something that moves them from being a denier to a supporter.”

Upcoming Digital Dialogue sessions:

Feb. 2 - “Earth Works Rising: Native Art and Literature,” featuring Chad Allen, Russel F. Stark University Professor and associate vice provost for Faculty Advancement, Department of Information, University of Washington.

March 9 - “Black Futures/Black Technopoetics,” featuring Stephanie Dinkins, Kusama Professor of Art, Stony Brook University; and Louis Chude-Soki, professor of English and George and Joyce Wein Chair in African American Studies, Boston University.

Registration and more information.

“Some of the big issues we work on as public health professionals – like inequities, racism, poverty, violence against women – artists are also working on in a different way. But the end goal for both of us is to improve community health and well-being,” said Amy Ferketich, professor of epidemiology.

Students will explore how these themes cross disciplines through a new minor in public health and the arts.

The interdisciplinary minor, available in the upcoming spring semester, combines courses across the College of Public Health and more than a dozen units in the College of Arts and Sciences. Enrolled students will take 15 credit hours, including two foundational courses, a critical thinking course and a practice or performance-based course.

“My hope is that students will have that matrix moment that the arts and public health are as natural a pair as peanut butter and jelly – that they will be able to see new ways of doing public health,” said Julia Nelson Hawkins, an associate professor of classics in the College of Arts and Sciences.

The arts have a way of reaching people on a deeper level than traditional public health messages, Nelson Hawkins said. She recalled the famous street mural “Crack Is Wack,” painted by artist Keith Haring in Harlem in the 1980s, noting that many people found this anti-drug message more powerful than Nancy Reagan’s “Just Say No” campaign of the era. Located near a highway, the “Crack is Wack” mural was “at the intersection of the community, the street; the place representing the people,” she said.

And when it came to changing the culture around tobacco in the mid-to-late 20th century, arts also played a large role, said Jared Gardner, Joseph V. Denney Designated Professor of English and director of the Humanities Institute.

“It was never smoking bans or taxes alone. It was never any scientific paper alone. It was a combination of those things with public health experts using a wide range of art and popular culture to change the ways people think about their own responsibilities – to themselves, to others, to future generations,” Gardner said.

As Ohio State implements a new General Education curriculum that encourages interdisciplinary learning designed to prepare students to be active, engaged and adaptable citizens, the new minor’s timing, Gardner and Nelson Hawkins said, couldn’t be better. They hope that as the minor gains traction, it will inspire collaborations that cross academic disciplines and defy conventional institutional barriers.

“Sciences, humanities and arts are coming closer and closer together,” Nelson Hawkins said. “This is the only way to approach the future.”

With classes in English, art history and even opera (such as “Figaro Meets Florence Nightingale: the Marriage of Opera and Public Health”), students in the public health and arts minor will discover the natural and historic ties between the fields. 

In addition to learning about various forms of art and modern public health issues, the minor allows students to see how art has shifted along with society’s understanding of public health over time, Ferketich said.

“It’s a partnership that’s always been implicit, and we’re really excited to see it become more explicitly articulated at the university,” Gardner said.

But it wasn’t just the art itself that made an impression – it was the label that described the artwork.

The work, “Untitled” (USA Today), 1990, by the artist Felix Gonzalez-Torres, consisted of candies individually wrapped in red, silver and blue cellophane, arranged on the floor. Gallery visitors were encouraged to take the candies, which were then replenished by museum staff.

What struck Rub was the notation on the label that said the artwork was from “The Museum of Modern Art, New York, gift of the Dannheisser Foundation, 1996.”

“As someone who studies copyright and intellectual property law, that language fascinated me,” said Rub, who is a professor at the Moritz College of Law at The Ohio State University.

“In what sense was this art from MoMA? What did they own? The candies didn’t come from the Museum of Modern Art. The artist himself, who died in 1996, never touched the work that was displayed. It raised so many questions.”

The questions aren’t just academic.

In November 2015, the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas, announced that it acquired a similar artwork by Gonzalez-Torres called “Untitled” (L.A.), 1991. In this piece, “small, green candies wrapped in cellophane are spread across the gallery floor, so that viewers may touch, take, and consume the work, which can be endlessly replenished,” the museum announced on its website.

The Wall Street Journal reported that the museum paid $7.8 million for the piece. But what exactly did the museum get for that multimillion-dollar price?

Questions like that, and his own experience at The Jewish Museum, inspired Rub to interview 13 art industry insiders, including curators, collection managers, and senior administrators at museums and galleries, about the legal issues of ownership in the art world. He reviewed legal documents, such as contracts, published interviews with industry insiders and studied industry publications and websites. He published his findings last year in the BYU Law Review.

In the article, Rub concluded that conceptual art challenges core notions and hidden assumptions in the law in ways that other forms of art don’t. If you buy a painting by Van Gogh, you know exactly what you’re getting. You’re getting a physical object that can be transferred from one owner to another. Only one true version of that painting exists.

But conceptual art – like the works of Gonzalez-Torres – are different. In these works, the idea behind the work is more important than the actual art object itself.

The problem, though, is that ideas can’t be legally protected by copyright. Ideas can’t be owned (with few exceptions). But museums still buy and sell works of conceptual art for millions of dollars and use terms like “copyright” in ways that the law doesn’t recognize, Rub said.

“Nobody can seriously claim that copyright law protects the notion of placing green candies on a gallery floor for viewers to take,” Rub said.

So what exactly did the Crystal Bridges Museum get when it bought “Untitled” (L.A.), 1991 for $7.8 million?

“From a legal perspective, absolutely nothing,” Rub said. “When the Crystal Bridges Museum bought this piece, they bought something that the law does not recognize. It is owning nothingness.”

No law prevents any museum or gallery from buying 175 pounds of individually wrapped candies in cellophane and presenting them as a work of art, he said. The work could be visually identical to the Felix Gonzalez-Torres installation that the Crystal Bridges Museum paid $7.8 million for. Rub asks: Why wouldn’t such a work be as authentic and identical in all respects to the work that the Crystal Bridges Museum “owns”?

The reason that no museums do this is because of the very powerful social norms of the industry, Rub said. The law may not back up their claims of ownership and copyright, but that hardly matters.

“The truly crucial aspect of this norm is that the people I interviewed stressed over and over that they would never present an installation of a work like that of Felix Gonzalez-Torres without receiving permission of the pseudo-owner,” Rub said.

“When I asked people why they wouldn’t consider doing this, most of them could barely understand the question. In one way or another, they all told me it would be presenting a forgery, which I found fascinating. How can it be a forgery when there is no original?”

Social norms are one thing. But why do museums and galleries use legal terms like “copyright” when they are in these cases, as Rub says, “legal nothingness?”

Rub said he tried to explore with museum and industry officials whether they knew there was a gap between copyright law and their use of copyright terminology and copyright notices. He said their answers were often unsatisfactory and vague.

Officials said things like they “didn’t think about this before” or that using copyright terminology was “something that the [artist] wanted us to do.”

In the end, the use of legal terminology may be less about the law than it appears.

“This inaccurate use of legal terms might be a way for the industry to give even greater legitimacy to its norms,” he said. “It gives them legal cover, even if it doesn’t mean what it says.”

The disconnect between law and the social norms of the art industry doesn’t end when a piece of conceptual art is sold, Rub said.

Normally, when an object is sold, the connection between the seller and buyer is over, at least legally.

“But conceptual artists routinely exercise post-sale control over their sold works. The artists often can control how their work is shown and even who is involved in creating the presentation,” he said.

“Owners of the work are often incredibly deferential to the artists they purchased it from.”

Rub said that while the current system of ownership of conceptual art doesn’t provide the legal protections to owners that they may think it does, it doesn’t matter.

The system works because the art industry needs it. It is a community of insiders that want creativity to be rewarded. The norms of the art industry ensure that artists like Felix Gonzalez-Torres can make a living, Rub said.

The norms are strong enough to protect all involved.

“It wouldn’t be the end of the world if some small gallery created an exhibition of Felix Gonzalez-Torres’ work that is not authorized. They would, however, be shunned by the rest of the art community and find it hard to continue to operate,” Rub said.

“But we need to explore ways for how the law might develop to account for richer understandings of ownership including what it means to own some kinds of art.”

In a public discussion moderated by U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown at Mershon Auditorium, Reichert and Frazier shared the inspiration and stories behind their recent film and photography projects – and celebrated the middle-class working Americans featured in their work.

In an interview with Ohio State News, Reichert shared her advice for students who aspire to be filmmakers. 

Frazier’s photography and audiovisual exhibition The Last Cruze, based on her collaboration with members of UAW Local 1112 and their families to record their stories as they faced the closure of the General Motors plant in Lordstown, Ohio, is on view at the Wexner Center for the Arts through April 26.

Reichert’s Oscar-winning film American Factory shot with her partner, Steven Bognar, also examines American labor, detailing the events that followed the opening of a Chinese billionaire-owned factory in an abandoned western Ohio GM plant. The film is part of the touring Wex-organized retrospective “Julia Reichert: 50 Years in Film.”

Frazier and Reichert appeared as part of the Wexner Center’s Lambert Family Lecture Series, which features experts who explore global issues in art and contemporary culture with the region’s diverse audiences.

The full conversation is archived here: https://wexarts.org/read-watch-listen/replay-2020-lambert-family-lecture 

1. The artist, Roy Lichtenstein, is an Ohio State alumnus.

Lichtenstein went on to be one of the most influential and innovative artists of the second half of the 20th century and a leading figure in the 1960s Pop Art movement. His first fully achieved paintings were inspired by comic strips and advertisements and rendered in a style mimicking the crude printing processes of newspaper reproduction (“Whaam!" and "Drowning Girl" are two of the most famous). These paintings reinvigorated the American art scene and altered the history of modern art. After his initial triumph in the early 1960s, he went on to create more than 5,000 paintings, prints, drawings, sculptures, murals and other objects celebrated for their wit and invention.

2. Lichtenstein first created this specific Modern Head sculptural form in 1969.

As a student of art history, Lichtenstein surely knew about the thousands of years of artworks depicting flat profile heads and portraits. He started using “head” forms himself in his late 1960s “Modern Series” paintings and prints. With his characteristic mix of curiosity, historical admiration and irony, he was particularly evoking previous 20th century International Art Deco and Art Moderne styles. The specific sculptural form seen in Ohio State’s Modern Head first came to life in 1969 for a small brass multiple edition of 75, produced in 1970 by Gemini, GEL in Los Angeles.

3. The first monumental Modern Head was conceived in 1973.

Lichtenstein was commissioned by the owners of the Westfield Santa Anita shopping mall (formerly Santa Anita Fashion Park) in Arcadia, California. Fabricated in 1974 by Tomkins Tool in Gardena, California, this initial version was a blue tinted polyurethane on wood over a metal armature and built for placement inside the mall. After this version had degraded, it was removed from the mall and its parts were acquired by two New York gallery owners. In 1989, Lichtenstein agreed with them to produce a second edition of two brushed, stainless steel casts, plus an artist’s proof. He also agreed to an additional unique cast in blue painted stainless steel. With new interest in contemporary public sculpture, all were fabricated for outdoor placement.

4. These Modern Heads, each produced in 1989, are now located around the world.

The casts — all 31 feet tall and made in painted or unpainted stainless steel — can be found at:

• Matsumoto Dental University in Shiojiri, Nagano, Japan
• Yale University
• The Israel Museum, Jerusalem (now on loan to Daniel Park, Jerusalem)
• The Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C. (home of the unique blue version)

5. Ohio State’s is the only sculpture in the Modern Head series that was fabricated after Lichtenstein’s death in 1997.

Other monumental sculptures — mostly “Brushstroke Sculptures” — designed by the artist have been authorized and fabricated posthumously by the Lichtenstein family and the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation. These large-scale sculptures are in the collections of major museums and private owners in Europe and America.

The Modern Head at Ohio State was considered most appropriate as a work for the university. This selection by the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation came in response to the special request of Ohio State’s Arts and Memorials Committee in partnership with the Ohio Percent for Art program (administered by the Ohio Arts Council). This final, special "hors commerce" (not for sale) version’s fabrication costs were offset by Ohio Percent for Art, with the remaining value being a gift of the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation in memory of Roy Lichtenstein.

6. Ohio State's Modern Head was fabricated by Amaral Custom Fabrication.

Modern Head was fabricated by Amaral Custom Fabrication in Providence, Rhode Island, in collaboration with Lippincott, LLC in North Haven, Connecticut, and the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation in New York City. Lippincott, the original fabricator of the 1989 Modern Heads, is no longer fabricating, but agreed to share its original engineering blueprints and design expertise.

Although the other Modern Heads came to life between 1969 and 1989, the newly created piece for Ohio State was made following the same processes as the others and using the artist’s personally chosen successor fabricator, Amaral Custom Fabrication. Lichtenstein’s lifetime sculpture assistant was directly involved in the making of each Modern Head from 1989 up to this final version.

7. The Roy Lichtenstein Foundation also recently funded two endowed chairs at Ohio State.

In 2017, Dorothy Lichtenstein and the Board of the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation announced a $6 million gift to the university to permanently endow two high-level named chairs: the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation Endowed Chair of Art History and the Roy Lichtenstein Endowed Chair of Studio Art. Carmen Winant was selected as the inaugural Roy Lichtenstein Chair of Studio Art last July, and a successful search for the endowed chair of art history was completed this spring, with a public announcement forthcoming.

Join Ohio State and the College of Arts and Sciences for a public dedication of Modern Head at 12:45 p.m. on Wednesday, Sept. 11, 2019, on 18th Avenue between Smith and McPherson Laboratories.

Intros that averaged more than 20 seconds in the mid-80s are now only about 5 seconds long, the study found.

Depending on what rocks your musical world, the popularity of streaming services might be to thank or to curse for a move away from the instrumental intro, said Hubert Léveillé Gauvin, a doctoral student in music theory at The Ohio State University. His study appears in the journal Musicae Scientiae.

And Léveillé Gauvin discovered that singers of the most recent successful songs hardly waste any time before mentioning the song title in the lyrics. Another change he found: Song names today are shorter than they used to be – often just a single word.Léveillé Gauvin spent a couple months listening to and analyzing songs that hit the top 10 from 1986 to 2015 and found a dramatic shift away from long intros. He also documented a marked increase in tempo.

This evolution is likely driven by what Léveillé Gauvin calls the “attention economy” of modern-day pop. And that means that artists get to the musical point more quickly in the interest of grabbing a fickle listening audience, many of whom tune in on Spotify, Pandora and other skippable services.

“It’s survival-of-the-fittest: Songs that manage to grab and sustain listeners’ attention get played and others get skipped. There’s always another song,” Léveillé Gauvin said. “If people can skip so easily and at no cost, you have to do something to grab their attention.”

Rather than looking for direct income on streaming services, artists are looking for something else –to drive listeners to their concerts or to other products they sell, he said.

“Artists and producers are shifting from having their songs as cultural products to having their songs as advertisements for themselves. Your product isn’t necessarily your song, it’s your personal brand,” Léveillé Gauvin said.

“We’re operating in an ‘attention economy,’ and attention is scarce and valuable.”

Léveillé Gauvin measured the tempo of 303 top-10 singles and found a clear trend toward faster-paced pop music in the last three decades. The average tempo increased roughly 8 percent. He compared the number of words in song titles and found more and more “one-word wonders” as the years passed.

When he analyzed how long it took for the lyrics to start, Léveillé Gauvin found that intros lasting an average of more than 20 seconds in the mid-80s have given way to intros that average 5 seconds today. And once the lyrics started, it took less time (by about 18 percent) for the first “hook,” which he defined as the song’s title.

“The really striking thing was the disappearance of the intro,” he said. “There was a 78 percent drop. That’s insane, but it makes sense. The voice is one of the most attention-grabbing things there is in music.”

To see the difference, look to 1987’s “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now” by Starship and compare it to Maroon 5’s 2015 pop hit “Sugar.”

Starship takes about 22 seconds to reach the first lyrics of its mid-tempo song and doesn’t get to the hook until after Grace Slick’s voice enters the duet that Mickey Thomas started. The listener has heard well over a minute of music before learning that Starship will not be stopped.

“It’s also super 80s,” Léveillé Gauvin said.

Maroon 5, in contrast, gets to the point quickly in its one-word-titled up-tempo hit. The intro is half as long as Starship’s and Adam Levine is singing the hook “Sugar” within 40 seconds.

There are exceptions to the trend. Take Gotye’s “Somebody That I Used To Know.” The 2012 earworm has a title almost three times longer than other chart toppers that same year. Its 20-second instrumental introduction was four times longer than average. And a listener waits two full minutes before the hook.

A fifth measure didn’t reveal any scientifically significant changes during the 30 years of music. Léveillé Gauvin thought it was possible that today’s songs would include more self-focused lyrics, but he did not see a pattern.

In a second study, Léveillé Gauvin evaluated data provided by Spotify to see if popular songs by a given artist were more likely to fit the attention-grabbing trend than less-popular songs released by the same artist. For the study, he looked at the most-streamed songs on Spotify and compared those to the least-streamed songs by the same artist.

He found no evidence of the “attention economy” hypothesis in that study.

Music continually evolves, driven by a variety of factors, and there’s no way to explain away all the changes Léveillé Gauvin saw based on streaming services and the “skip” button alone, he said.

But he believes they are certainly contributing.

“If you look back historically, technological changes have likely shaped the way people compose and listen to music for a long time,” he said, adding that the compact disc brought along an ease of skipping that was leaps and bounds ahead of vinyl or cassette tapes.

So, is this attention-driven shift a bad thing for pop music?

“It’s very easy to see this in a cynical way. It’s not necessarily a negative thing; it’s just the nature of the beast,” Léveillé Gauvin said.