Curb Center Press
Director’s Letter: Fall 2024
Curb Center Director Leah Lowe shares updates and plans for the new academic year.
Below is selected recent news from the Curb Center. View more here.
Examining Climate Change Through the Arts
The Nashville Scene has published a feature on Vanderbilt’s Eco-Grief Initiative, a collaboration between The Curb Center and Communication of Science and Technology that focuses on art as reaction to the emotions brought on by climate change: “We see the effects of climate change every day — extreme temperatures, severe storms, drought, raging wildfires. But beyond such obvious physical threats, there’s also an often overwhelming sense of distress or anxiety surrounding such issues. A professor at Vanderbilt University and director of The Curb Center for Art, Enterprise and Public Policy, Leah Lowe has seen this so-called climate anxiety — or “eco-grief” — in action.”
A FGLI Public Scholars Project is Now A Campus-Wide Phenomenon
“Open BookCollective means a great deal to me,” says Erica, who now heads the program on her own. “Being a first-generation, low-income (FGLI) student doesn’t end after earning a bachelor’s degree. In academia, especially at institutions like Vanderbilt, the presence of FGLI individuals compared to those from continuing-generation backgrounds is remarkably small. Building an FGLI network where we can share transparent insights across career stages and foster a sense of community is invaluable.”
Second weekend of Eco-Grief Performance Project showing Oct. 17–20
Another exciting weekend of performances exploring emotional responses to climate change will be the final event this semester sponsored by the Vanderbilt Eco-Grief Initiative.
First two plays of the Eco-Grief Performance Project showing this weekend, Sept. 26-29
Commissioned by the Eco-Grief Performance Project, a collaborative effort of the Science and Media Grand Challenge, the Theatre Department, and the Curb Center, two plays are being performed Sept. 26-19; these works are expressions of complex emotions brought on by living in a changing climate.
Extraction/Interaction, the Curb Center’s fall exhibition, opens Sept. 9
September 4, 2024
Acid mine drainage. Digitally printed legal documents. Drone photographs. Core samples. Appalachian bituminous coal. The artists represented in Extraction/Interaction—the Curb Center’s fall exhibition—use these and other materials to create bodies of work that galvanize responses and resistance to the climate crisis. Featuring the work of Will Wilson, Eliza Evans and John Sabraw, Extraction/Interaction considers how climate grief can transform artistic practice into a mechanism for positive environmental impact.
Curb Scholars Program welcomes five new scholars
August 19, 2024
The Curb Center for Art, Enterprise and Public Policy has selected three incoming first-year students and two rising sophomore students for the Curb Scholars Program in Creative Enterprise and Public Leadership.
Imagining Wholeness uplifts experiences of cancer and community through the expressive arts
May 20, 2024
Imagining Wholeness is a culminating showcase of works of expressive art created by participants in the Express Yourself writing workshops at Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center and in visual art workshops hosted collaboratively by the Curb Center and Gilda’s Club Middle Tennessee.
2023–24 Curb Scholars present their work in ‘Art as Protest’
March 27, 2024
The Curb Center for Art, Enterprise & Public Policy is pleased to announce Art as Protest, the culminating showcase of creative projects by this year’s cohort of Curb Scholars. On Monday, April 1, 7–9:30 p.m. at the Sarratt Student Center Cinema and Gallery, Curb Scholars will present work spanning visual art, dance, film, fiber arts and creative writing. Each piece offers a unique interpretation of “art as protest”—the theme they have been investigating throughout this academic year. Read More
Climate storytelling at Vanderbilt: Mary Annaïse Heglar highlights “The Highs and Lows of Climate Grief”
February 15, 2024
Heglar will offer a public lecture at Vanderbilt at 4:15 p.m. on Tuesday, Feb. 20, to kick off the Vanderbilt Eco-Grief Initiative, a yearlong interdisciplinary project that will use art to illustrate the emotions evoked by living through climate change. Read More
Photographer LeXander Bryant captures the legacy of Florence B. Price in the Curb Center’s latest exhibition
February 8, 2024
The exhibition, The Glory of the Day: LeXander Bryant Meets Florence B. Price, Bryant turned his attention to another kind of community: the communities of musicians and audiences that took shape around the performance of classical music composed by Florence Price. Read More
Curb Center launches Vanderbilt Eco-Grief Initiative
January 26, 2024
The Curb Center is pleased to announce the Vanderbilt Eco-Grief Initiative, a yearlong collaborative project that will use art as a tool to investigate the complex set of emotions—sorrow, guilt, terror, complicity and a range of others—that come to mind as we contemplate our changing climate and witness its effects on earthly life. By engaging artists working in a range of disciplines—theater, creative writing and the visual arts—the Curb Center aims to highlight creative work that confronts the emotional dimensions of climate change with the hope that true emotional reckoning might serve as an avenue to candid dialogue, innovation and lasting impact. Read More
Allison Orr, choreographer and founder of Forklift Danceworks, in residence at the Curb Center
October 9, 2023
Choreographer Allison Orr is visiting Vanderbilt for a weeklong residency at the Curb Center, during which she will be speaking to several classes and leading a community dance workshop in partnership with dance nonprofit New Dialect. Additionally, Orr will offer a public talk on her new book, DanceWorks: Stories of Creative Collaboration at Central Library on Thursday, Oct. 12 from 4:30 to 5:30 p.m. Read More
Performance artist Tim Miller brings the art of protest to the Curb Center
September 27, 2023
A showing of A BODY IN THE O is a part of performance artist Tim Miller’s residency at the Curb Center, and will take place Oct. 2 at 6:30 p.m. The event at the Seigenthaler Center is free and open to the public. Read More
Echoes of art reverberate through the Curb Center’s latest exhibition
September 8, 2023
Reverberations will feature National Geographic photographer Stephen Alvarez’s photographs of petroglyphs and pictographs from Europe and North America dating back as far as 35,000 years. The photographs are placed in dialogue with paintings and sculptures by Dustin Mater, who is a citizen of the Chickasaw Nation. The exhibition will be on view from Sept. 13 to Dec. 1. Read More