This page features Columbia faculty and research related to the arts and humanities, and highlights cultural events happening at Columbia's four campuses.
The Anthropology Department at Columbia Has a New Chair
Rosalind Morris wants to build on the department’s impressive history by preparing its students for the future.
The executive producer, writer, and director shares her unusual path to the top.
Natalia Winkelman (’15CC), a film critic, podcast writer, and producer, pens several reviews per month for The New York Times and other outlets.
Recent Supreme Court rulings have hollowed out the landmark 1965 legislation, which sought to prevent racial discrimination in voting. Columbia experts weigh in on a massive legal shift.
Exhibitions
Selected Prints at the Harriman Institute Gallery presents a selection of Radomir Đukanović’s graphic works produced over the past two decades, offering an overview of an artistic practice that moves between abstraction, gesture, and symbolic suggestion. Đukanović (born 1978) is a Serbian visual artist whose practice encompasses painting, drawing, and printmaking.
School of the Arts presents We be the luminous blues… by Assistant Professor Adama Delphine Fawundu, whose 11 banners are installed in the lobby of the Lenfest Center for the Arts. The exhibition celebrates ancestors and alumni of Columbia who transformed the world in remarkable ways: anthropologist Ruth Benedict; biochemist Marie Maynard Daly; dentist Annie Elizabeth "Bessie" Delany and her sister, educator Sarah Louise "Sadie" Delany; cultural preservationist Ella Cara Deloria; folklorist, novelist, and writer Zora Neale Hurston; minister and suffragist Mabel Ping-Hua Lee; organizer and social worker Antonia Pantoja; actor and singer Paul Robeson; attorney and advocate Frederick Wells; and Jamaica, Cuffy, Prida, Caesar, Jenny, Betsy, Pompey, and Richard Jenkins—all of whom were enslaved by Samuel Bard and his family—as well as James, who escaped in 1776.
This exhibition at the Wallach Art Gallery is devoted to Fish Story by photographer, writer, and critic Allan Sekula (1951–2013), who was one of the most influential visual theorists of his generation. His work profoundly impacted conceptual uses of photography and challenged assumptions about the image's role in creating meanings. Conceived as both an exhibition and a book, the project comprises 105 photographs, two slide projections, and 26 accompanying texts written by the artist, which challenge and expand both the tradition of documentary photography and romantic notions of the sea. Until now, Fish Story has rarely been exhibited in its entirety.
More Arts News
The Anthropology Department at Columbia Has a New Chair
Rosalind Morris wants to build on the department’s impressive history by preparing its students for the future.
Lynn Nottage Joins Pulitzer Board
The 2009 and 2017 Pulitzer Prize Drama winner and School of the Arts Professor Lynn Nottage has joined the Pulitzer Board.
How Do Order and Collective Behavior Emerge From Chaos?
Venkat Venkatasubramanian explores this and related questions in his book, Emergence as Harmony.
