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David C. Driskell Center
The David C. Driskell Center for the Study of the Visual Arts and Culture of African Americans and the African Diaspora at the University of Maryland preserves the rich heritage of African American visual art and culture. The center is committed to collecting, documenting and presenting African American art as well as replenishing and expanding the field. Explore The Center
Herman Maril Gallery
The Herman Maril Gallery is the University of Maryland Department of Art’s student-run exhibition space. The primary mission of the gallery is to serve the students of the University of Maryland, continuing the legacy of long-time UMD professor of art Herman Maril. Explore the Gallery
Michelle Smith Performing Arts Library
The Michelle Smith Performing Arts Library’s gallery is housed in the University of Maryland’s central location for music, theatre and dance scholarly materials. The 2019-20 gallery exhibit provides a window into The Muppets’ creator Jim Henson’s experiences on campus, both in the classroom and in extra-curricular activities, and their impact on his creative and professional development. See Jim Henson’s Legacy
University of Maryland Art Gallery
The University of Maryland Art Gallery houses nearly 3,000 pieces collected over the past five decades. Masterpieces from the collection include works by John Baldessari, Lee Krasner, Honoré Daumier, Paul Reed, Rembrandt van Rijin, Maurice de Vlaminck, Andy Warhol and many artists from Africa, Asia and South America. Browse Collections & Exhibitions
Stills from Our Archive
For Your Collection: Enjoy works by UMD students, faculty and alumni
With Fire on High
With Fire on High
Elizabeth Acevedo ‘16
Department of English
From the New York Times bestselling author of the National Book Award-winning title The Poet X comes a dazzling novel in prose about a girl with talent, pride and a drive to feed the soul that keeps her fire burning bright. Ever since she got pregnant freshman year, Emoni Santiago’s life has been about making the tough decisions – doing what has to be done for her daughter and her abuela. The one place she can let all that go is in the kitchen, where she adds a little something magical to everything she cooks, turning her food into straight-up goodness.
Even though she dreams of working as a chef after she graduates, Emoni knows that it’s not worth her time to pursue the impossible. Yet despite the rules she thinks she has to play by, once Emoni starts cooking, her only choice is to let her talent break free.
Clap When You Land
Clap When You Land
Elizabeth Acevedo ‘16
Department of English
In a novel-in-verse that brims with grief and love, National Book Award-winning and New York Times-bestselling author Elizabeth Acevedo writes about the devastation of loss, the difficulty of forgiveness and the bittersweet bonds that shape our lives. Camino Rios lives for the summers when her father visits her in the Dominican Republic. But this time, on the day when his plane is supposed to land, Camino arrives at the airport to see crowds of crying people.
In New York City, Yahaira Rios is called to the principal’s office, where her mother is waiting to tell her that her father, her hero, has died in a plane crash. Separated by distance – and Papi’s secrets – the two girls are forced to face a new reality in which their father is dead and their lives are forever altered. And then, when it seems like they’ve lost everything of their father, they learn of each other.
Felon Poems
Felon Poems
Reginald Dwayne Betts ‘09
Department of English
Winner of the 2019 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work in Poetry
Finalist for the 2019 Los Angeles Times Book Prize in Poetry
A searing volume by a poet whose work conveys "the visceral effect that prison has on identity" (Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times). Felon tells the story of the effects of incarceration in fierce, dazzling poems – canvassing a wide range of emotions and experiences through homelessness, underemployment, love, drug abuse, domestic violence, fatherhood and grace – and, in doing so, creates a travelogue for an imagined life. Reginald Dwayne Betts confronts the funk of postincarceration existence and examines prison not as a static space, but as a force that enacts pressure throughout a person’s life.
The poems move between traditional and newfound forms with power and agility – from revolutionary found poems created by redacting court documents to the astonishing crown of sonnets that serves as the volume’s radiant conclusion. Drawing inspiration from lawsuits filed on behalf of the incarcerated, the redaction poems focus on the ways we exploit and erase the poor and imprisoned from public consciousness. Traditionally, redaction erases what is top secret; in Felon, Betts redacts what is superfluous, bringing into focus the profound failures of the criminal justice system and the inadequacy of the labels it generates.
The Art of Mystery: The Search for Questions
The Art of Mystery: The Search for Questions
Maud Casey, professor
Department of English
A sensitive and nuanced exploration of a seldom-discussed subject by an acclaimed novelist.
The fourteenth volume in the “Art of” series conjures an ethereal subject: the idea of mystery in fiction. Mystery is not often discussed – apart from the genre – because, as Maud Casey says, “It’s not easy to talk about something that is a whispered invitation, a siren song, a flickering light in the distance.” Casey, the author of several critically acclaimed novels, reaches beyond the usual tool kit of fictional elements to ask the question: Where does mystery reside in a work of fiction? She takes us into the Land of Un – a space of uncertainty and unknowing – to find out and looks at the variety of ways mystery is created through character, image, structure and haunted texts, including the novels of Shirley Jackson, Paul Yoon, J. M. Coetzee and more. Casey’s wide-ranging discussion encompasses spirit photography, the radical nature of empathy and contradictory characters, as she searches for questions rather than answers. The Art of Mystery is a striking and vibrant addition to the much-loved Art of series.
My Bishop and Other Poems
My Bishop and Other Poems
Michael Collier, professor
Department of English
Think of a time when you’ve feigned courage to make a friend, feigned forgiveness to keep one or feigned indifference to simply stay out of it. What does it mean for our intimacies to fail us when we need them most?
The poems of this collection explore such everyday dualities – how the human need for attachment is as much a source of pain as of vitality and how our longing for transcendence often leads to sinister complicities. The title poem tells the conflicted and devastating story of the poet’s friendship with the now-disgraced Bishop of Phoenix, AZ, interweaving fragments of his parents’ funerals, which the Bishop concelebrated, with memories of his childhood spiritual leanings and how they were disrupted by a pedophilic priest the Bishop failed to protect him from.
This meditation on spiritual life, physical death and betrayal is joined by an array of poised, short lyrics and expansive prose poems exploring how the terror and unpredictability of our era intrudes on our most intimate moments. Whether Michael Collier is writing about an airline disaster, Huey Newton’s trial, Thomas Jefferson’s bees, a piano in the woods or his own fraught friendship with the disgraced Catholic Bishop, his syntactic verve, scrupulously observed detail and flawless ear bring the felt – and sometimes frightening – dimensions of the mundane to life. Throughout, this collection pursues a quiet but ferocious need to get to the bottom of things.
Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You
Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You
Jason Reynolds ‘05
Department of English
The #1 New York Times bestseller and a USAToday bestseller
A timely, crucial, and empowering exploration of racism – and antiracism – in America.
This is NOT a history book.
This is a book about the here and now.
A book to help us better understand why we are where we are.
A book about race
The construct of race has always been used to gain and keep power, to create dynamics that separate and silence. This remarkable reimagining of Dr. Ibram X. Kendi's National Book Award-winning Stamped from the Beginning reveals the history of racist ideas in America and inspires hope for an antiracist future. It takes you on a race journey from then to now, shows you why we feel how we feel and why the poison of racism lingers. It also proves that while racist ideas have always been easy to fabricate and distribute, they can also be discredited.
Through a gripping, fast-paced and energizing narrative written by beloved award-winner Jason Reynolds, this book shines a light on the many insidious forms of racist ideas – and on ways readers can identify and stamp out racist thoughts in their daily lives.
Unnatural Narratology: Extensions, Revisions, and Challenge
Unnatural Narratology: Extensions, Revisions, and Challenge
Brian Richardson, professor
Department of English
Unnatural Narratology: Extensions, Revisions, and Challenges offers a number of developments, refinements and defenses of key aspects of unnatural narrative studies. The first section applies unnatural narrative theory and analysis to ideologically charged areas such as feminism, postcolonial studies, cultural alterity and subaltern discourse. The book goes on to engage with and intervene in theoretical debates in several areas of both critical theory and narrative theory, including affect studies, immersion, narration, character theory, frames and theories of reception and interpretation. Antimimetic perspectives are also extended to additional fields, including autobiography, graphic narratives, drama and film, performance studies and interactive gamebooks. Written by an international assemblage of distinguished and emerging narrative scholars and theorists, this collection promises to greatly enhance the study of narrative and further advance the frontiers of narrative theory.
The World Doesn’t Require You
The World Doesn’t Require You
Rion Amilcar Scott, visiting assistant professor
Department of English
Finalist • PEN / Jean Stein Book Award
Longlisted • Aspen Words Literary Prize
Best Books of the Year: Washington Post, NPR, Buzzfeed and Entropy Best Short Story Collections of the Year: Kirkus Reviews, Library Journal, the New York Public Library and Electric Literature
The World Doesn’t Require You announces the arrival of a generational talent, as Rion Amilcar Scott shatters rigid genre lines to explore larger themes of religion, violence and love – all told with sly humor and a dash of magical realism.
Established by the leaders of the country’s only successful slave revolt in the mid-19th century, Cross River still evokes the fierce rhythms of its founding. In lyrical prose and singular dialect, a saga beats forward that echoes the fables carried down for generations – like the screecher birds who swoop down for their periodic sacrifice and the water women who lure men to wet deaths.
Among its residents – wildly spanning decades, perspectives and species – are David Sherman, a struggling musician who just happens to be God’s last son, Tyrone, a ruthless PhD candidate, whose dissertation about a childhood game ignites mayhem in the once-segregated town of Port Yooga and Jim, an all-too-obedient robot who serves his Master. As the book builds to its finish with Special Topics in Loneliness Studies, a fully-realized novella, two unhinged professors grapple with hugely different ambitions and the reader comes to appreciate the intricacy of the world Scott has created – one where fantasy and reality are eternally at war.
Contemporary and essential, The World Doesn’t Require You is a “leap into a blazing new level of brilliance” (Lauren Groff) that affirms Rion Amilcar Scott as a writer whose storytelling gifts the world very much requires.
Berlin Notebook
Berlin Notebook
Joshua Weiner, professor
Department of English
The chronicle of a fall and spring in Berlin during the peak influx of refugees into Europe in 2015-16, Joshua Weiner's Berlin Notebook opens a new view on German society's attempt to cope with an impossible situation: millions of people displaced by the Syrian civil war, fleeing violence and seeking safety and the possibilities of a new life in the west.
As some Germans, feeling the burden of the nation's dark past, try to aid and shelter desperate asylum seekers, others are skeptical of the government's ability to contain the growing numbers. They feel the danger of hostile strangers and the threat to the nation's culture and identity. Unlike other contemporary reports on the situation in Europe, Weiner's sui generis writing includes interviews not only with refugees from the east, but also everyday Berliners, natives and ex-pats – musicians, poets, shopkeepers, students, activists, rabbis, museum guides, artists, intellectuals and those, too, who have joined the rising far-right Alternative for Germany party and the Pegida movement against immigration. Intermixed with interviews, reportage and meditations on life in Europe's fastest growing capital city, Weiner thinks about the language and literature of the country, weaving together strands of its ancient and more recent history with meditations on Goethe, Brecht, Arendt, Heidegger, Joseph Roth and others that inflect our thinking about refugees, nationhood and our ethical connection to strangers.
Corigliano, Copland, Torke
Corigliano, Copland, Torke
National Orchestral Institute + Festival
The Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center
David Alan Miller, conductor
Richard Scerbo, director and producer
Phil Rowlands, producer
Antonino D'Urzo, engineer
This album’s all-American program, which was recorded during the 2015 festival, features Albany Symphony Music Director David Alan Miller conducting Michael Torke’s Bright Blue Music, Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring and John Corigliano’s Symphony No. 1.
The University of Maryland’s National Orchestral Institute + Festival brings together aspiring orchestral musicians from across the country for a month of dynamic music-making and professional exploration. Chosen through a rigorous, cross-country audition process, these young artists present passionate and awe-inspiring performances of adventuresome repertoire at The Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center and in the College Park, MD community. In 2019, conductor David Alan Miller and the NOI+F Philharmonic received a Grammy nomination in the “Best Orchestral Performance” category for their Naxos recording Ruggles, Stucky, Harbison.
Barber, Thompson, Adams
Barber, Thompson, Adams
National Orchestral Institute + Festival
The Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center
James Ross, conductor
Richard Scerbo, director and producer
Phil Rowlands, engineer and producer
Antonino D'Urzo, engineer
This all-American program, conducted by James Ross, features Samuel Barber’s Symphony No. 1, Randall Thompson’s Symphony No. 2 and Samuel Adams’ Drift and Providence. Inspired by his own move from the West Coast to the East Coast of America, Drift and Providence incorporates subtle electronic textural enhancements to its percussion parts, which Adams mixed live during the concert and recording of his piece.
The University of Maryland’s National Orchestral Institute + Festival brings together aspiring orchestral musicians from across the country for a month of dynamic music-making and professional exploration. Chosen through a rigorous, cross-country audition process, these young artists present passionate and awe-inspiring performances of adventuresome repertoire at The Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center and in the College Park, MD community. In 2019, conductor David Alan Miller and the NOI+F Philharmonic received a Grammy nomination in the “Best Orchestral Performance” category for their Naxos recording Ruggles, Stucky, Harbison.
Ruggles, Stucky, Harbison
Ruggles, Stucky, Harbison
National Orchestral Institute + Festival
The Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center
2019 Grammy Nomination: “Best Orchestral Performance”
David Alan Miller, conductor
Richard Scerbo, director and producer
Phil Rowlands, engineer and producer
Antonino D'Urzo, assistant engineer
A study in dramatic contrasts, Carl Ruggles’ Sun-Treader is an overwhelming, granite-hued tone poem by one of New England’s most original and uncompromising composers. Steven Stucky’s luminous Pulitzer Prize-winning Second Concerto for Orchestra is a riveting exploration of sonority and soundpainting while John Harbison’s Fourth Symphony is a big, bold, jazz-imbued work by one of America’s most important living symphonists
The University of Maryland’s National Orchestral Institute + Festival brings together aspiring orchestral musicians from across the country for a month of dynamic music-making and professional exploration. Chosen through a rigorous, cross-country audition process, these young artists present passionate and awe-inspiring performances of adventuresome repertoire at The Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center and in the College Park, MD community.
Bernstein, Gershwin and Copland
Bernstein, Gershwin and Copland
National Orchestral Institute + Festival
The Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center
James Judd, conductor
Richard Scerbo, director and producer
Phil Rowlands, engineer and producer
Antonino D'Urzo, assistant engineer
A study in dramatic contrasts, Carl Ruggles’ Sun-Treader is an overwhelming, granite-hued tone poem by one of New England’s most original and uncompromising composers. Steven Stucky’s luminous Pulitzer Prize-winning Second Concerto for Orchestra is a riveting exploration of sonority and soundpainting while John Harbison’s Fourth Symphony is a big, bold, jazz-imbued work by one of America’s most important living symphonists
The University of Maryland’s National Orchestral Institute + Festival brings together aspiring orchestral musicians from across the country for a month of dynamic music-making and professional exploration. Chosen through a rigorous, cross-country audition process, these young artists present passionate and awe-inspiring performances of adventuresome repertoire at The Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center and in the College Park, MD community.
Podcasts by ARHU Terps
A Dose of Your Future: Jennifer R. Sherman ’14, founder and chief strategist of the consulting firm the Influencer Collective, interviews executives and thought leaders who have social impact-driven missions.
Daughters of Lorraine Podcast: Doctoral students Jordan Ealey ’19 and Leticia Ridley ’17 who call themselves “your friendly neighborhood black feminists,” explore black theater in the D.C./Baltimore area through production reviews, academic discussions, script recommendations and artist interviews.
Diet Starts Monday: Azsaneé Truss ’15, Maya Dawit ’15 and Brandon Schatt ’15 acknowledge navigating life can be tough as a recent grad. In this podcast, the trio tries to figure it out with the help of 20-somethings who have found success.
Pop Off, Sis: Lydia Parker ’20 and Margot Trouvé ’20 “pop off” about pop culture, media and quirks from their own lives, with episodes touching on Taylor Swift, the Super Bowl, “The Bachelor” and more.
Radio Rumi: Fatemeh Keshavarz, published poet and professor and director, Roshan Institute for Persian Studies, discusses and reflects on the works of Jalal al-Din Rumi, the influential 13th century Persian poet.
The District Channel: Yeny Villalta Villatoro ’19 and Arvin Reyes Villalta Villatoro, support arts and culture in the DMV with guests like singers, chefs and more!