A WORD FROM THE DIRECTOR

The Kreft Arts Program at Concordia University strives to stimulate the artistic, intellectual, and creative experiences of students and the community.  The series includes art exhibitions, concerts, lectures, dance performances, author appearances and theatrical productions by artists from around the world and by Concordia’s own students and faculty.

This year’s program incorporates a thematic approach, reflected in many of the events, that seeks to provide unity and coherence to the series. The 2011-2012 theme is “Mirror Images: Reflections on/of the Arts.” In an ancient but still potent metaphor, art “holds the mirror up to nature.” But if this is true even now, how do the arts reflect the world in which we live, and what kind of image do they give back to us? Do they distort or clarify? And when the arts are non-representational, what then is their relation to our lives? On another level, how do works of art “reflect” one another in terms of influence, echo and variation? And finally, how are the brain and the mind engaged when we “reflect,” in the sense of giving serious and thoughtful concentration to a subject?

The Kreft Arts Program at Concordia University will seek to give Concordia students multiple and varied opportunities to connect and work with artists at the highest level of their artistic field, and will attempt to link all arts events and visits to the curriculum. Kreft Arts aims to have a profound impact on students’ course of study, and to connect in a deliberate way with faculty in disciplines other than the arts, in order to undergird a broad cross-section of undergraduate and graduate curricula.

 

Professor of English
Concordia University Ann Arbor