Events

At our outdoor community day, students in Experimental Archaeology will be showing off their amazing research projects, including but not limited to an illuminated manuscript, a bronze sword, ancient ales, and hand-sewn garments. Try out Medieval replica musical instruments, hear what the students learned from their new skills, and try your own hand at spinning, weaving, and pen-making. 

We Were Here - The Untold History of Black Africans in Renaissance Europe, exhibited in the Central Pavilion directed by Adriano Pedrosa at the 60ᵗʰ International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale, sheds light on the overlooked presence of African and Black individuals in Renaissance Europe, highlighting their depiction in masterpieces by some of the era’s most celebrated artists. How did they come to Europe? Why were they portrayed? Were they truly all servants or slaves? If the Black faces portrayed in these Renaissance masterpieces could speak, what would they tell us?

The film runs approximately 60 minutes, followed by a Q&A with the filmmaker.

Fred Kudjo Kuwornu is a multi-hyphenate socially engaged artist, filmmaker and scholar whose work is deeply influenced by his background as a person of African descent. Born and raised in Italy, Kuwornu is based in New York. His unique background is reflected in his triple citizenship, holding Italian, Ghanaian, and U.S. passports. By consistently bridging the past and present, the hegemonic and subaltern, the seen and unseen, Kuwornu's practice emerges as a vital contribution to contemporary visual culture, understanding the complex interplay between history, identity, race, and representation in our globalized world. Kuwornu's curatorial vision can be understood as a form of historical remixing in which he reconfigures archival materials and contemporary narratives to enlighten a rethinking of perspectives. His works have been exhibited at prestigious venues including the Central Pavilion at the Venice Art Biennale (2024), Museum of Moving Image in New York, Library of Congress, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, George Eastman Museum and numerous international film festivals.

More info: https://www.fredkuwornu.com and https://www.wewereherethefilm.com

On Sunday, December 8, Baroque band ACRONYM will be performing at Shriver Hall. MEMS has secured a block of free student tickets and reserved one of the CAHSS buses to transport students from UMBC to the concert. This is a fantastic opportunity to see an exciting group! Tickets are limited and first come, first served. Email Dr. Lindsay Johnson at lmjohnson@umbc.edu to reserve a student ticket and indicate if you plan to take the bus.

The bus will leave campus at 4pm and return around 8pm. The concert begins at 5:30pm and includes a 4:30pm pre-concert interview with the performers.

Four members of the Baroque band ACRONYM will lead an open discussion and workshop with UMBC's Collegium Musicum. They will speak about their performance process, which begins with finding pieces in archives and ends in performance. As their website says, the group "is dedicated to giving modern primers of the wild instrumental music of the seventeenth century." Come listen and learn something new about 17th-century music!

On Friday, November 22 at 7:30 in The Music Box, the Department of Music presents the UMBC Collegium Musicum in a concert entitled Phat Phancies and other English Ditties. The ensemble will perform a variety of short works in small consort groupings using viola da gamba, recorder, and drum.

UMBC Collegium Musicum is a performance ensemble dedicated to exploring and performing vocal and instrumental music from Medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque periods, sampling musical repertories created between 800 and 1750.