News
Glenn Hubbard, dean of Columbia Business School, discusses the school's expansion on Columbia's new campus, Manhattanville.
Columbia’s Manhattanville campus is designed to bring together a diversity of academic disciplines to address the great questions facing our society while welcoming the wider community to experience a shared space for civic life.
School of the Arts Dean Carol Becker’s research interests range from feminist theory and American cultural history to the education of artists and social responsibility. Her many books include The Invisible Drama: Women and the Anxiety of Change, The Subversive Imagination: Artists, Society and Social Responsibility and Thinking in Place: Art, Action and Cultural Production. In her most recent work, Losing Helen, the cultural critic turns to one of the most personal subjects, coping with the death of her mother.
More: news.columbia.edu/content/5-Questions-School-of-the-Arts-Dean-Carol-Becker-on-her-Book-Losing-Helen
Dean of Columbia's School of the Arts Carol Becker discusses the new home for the school on the Manhattanville campus.
“Our goal is to create a welcoming venue where every space can be activated by the work of students, faculty and guest artists in film, theatre, writing and visual arts, opening our doors to new collaborations both across the University and our community, fostering connections to the always vibrant art scene in Harlem and beyond,” said Becker.
Lee C. Bollinger announces a new set of Columbia University Sustainability Principles that will serve as the cornerstone of an ongoing University-wide initiative that must involve our entire community.
Japanese-born, Harlem-based visual artist Tomo Mori has turned the Miller Theatre lobby into an immersive landscape, surrounding viewers with a waterfall of designs and digital images. Her site-specific work, Concerto Encircling, on view for the 2016-17 season, uses a cut-and-paint mosaic process. The artist has covered deep blue walls with transparent vinyl pieces and daubed paint-saturated sponges into designs to continue the colorful imagery across the lobby’s glass doors. Mori has created another work, Sakura Sanctuary, on the lobby’s southern wall, evoking the falling petals of cherry blossom trees.
This installation marks the fourth annual collaboration between Columbia’s Wallach Art Gallery and the Miller. “The transformation of our lobby has been a highlight of the last three seasons, as we—in partnership with the Wallach—have commissioned visual artists to use the lobby walls as their canvas,” said Melissa Smey, executive director of Miller.
Mori describes Concerto Encircling as a “journey through memory in time. It comes full circle and goes round and round. Aggregates of small bits of color create oblique, flowing forms similar to those found in nature, like waterfalls and trees, which are then filtered and disseminated through digital media.” Wallach Director and Chief Curator Deborah Cullen notes that “This is a moment to celebrate Mori’s unique work. Her labor-intensive, mosaic-like process reminds us of the designs that exist in both nature’s honeycombs as well as the digital realm.”
Mori’s work has been exhibited around the world. She has a forthcoming 2017 public art work, The Wheels on the Bus, commissioned by MTA Arts & Design, at the Manhattanville Bus Depot on West 132nd Street, near Columbia’s new campus.
Columbia University announced that Abigail Black Elbaum (CC’92, BUS’94) and Mark T. Gallogly (BUS’86) have been elected to its Board of Trustees. Their terms began September 6, 2016.
“We are very fortunate at Columbia to have a group of highly accomplished individuals who generously give their time, energy and considerable wisdom to the governance of the University by serving on its board as trustees,” said Chairman Jonathan Schiller (CC’69, LAW’73). “Abby and Mark precisely fit this description, and I am enormously excited that they will become part of our board. I am looking forward to working with each of them.”
“The board is going to benefit greatly from the contributions that Abby and Mark will make in the months and years ahead,” said Columbia President Lee C. Bollinger. “They each possess a combination of business acumen, concern for Columbia, and a demonstrated capacity for effective collaboration that makes them ideal additions to our board.”
Abigail (“Abby”) Black Elbaum is a business and civic leader in New York City who in past years has dedicated herself in a variety of ways to advancing Columbia’s mission. Elbaum is a principal at Ogden CAP Properties, a real estate concern that owns and manages commercial and residential properties in New York and Washington, D.C. She has served on the Real Estate Board of New York, the New York City Police Foundation, and in a variety of capacities at New York-Presbyterian Hospital. An alumna of Columbia College and Columbia Business School, Elbaum served on the College’s Board of Visitors and, in 2002, received the Columbia College Young Alumni Achievement Award. She was a 2015 recipient of John Jay Award at Columbia College for distinguished professional achievement. Elbaum was also nominated to the Board by the Alumni Trustee Nominating Committee.
Mark T. Gallogly is a cofounder and managing principal of the investment firm Centerbridge Partners. He previously was a senior managing director and the head of private equity at the Blackstone Group. Throughout his career, Gallogly has been involved in a broad spectrum of industries, businesses and investment cycles. Gallogly served on President Obama's Council on Jobs and Competitiveness from 2010 to 2012 and the President's Economic Recovery Advisory Board from 2008 to 2010. He currently serves on the Columbia Business School Board of Overseers, the board of trustees of The Economic Club of New York, as well as the advisory council of the Brookings Institution’s Hamilton Project. He is a partner of the Partnership for New York City and member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Gallogly graduated with honors from the University of Notre Dame and received his MBA from Columbia Business School in 1986.
When in June the Supreme Court issued a long-awaited ruling in Fisher v. University of Texas that upheld affirmative action in college admissions, the decision was widely hailed as a decisive victory recognizing the value of diversity in higher education. For Columbia President Lee C. Bollinger, who has been a highly visible public advocate for admission policies that recognize historically rooted inequality in American society, the decision provided an unexpectedly welcome result.
Fifteen years after terrorists attacked the World Trade Center, rebuilding the area known as Ground Zero is almost complete. Reflecting pools in the memorial plaza mirror the new One World Trade Center, which rises a symbolic 1,776 feet. There is also a museum and a transportation hub designed to look like a bird in flight.
A site-specific installation for Miller Theatre, Columbia University in collaboration with The Wallach Art Gallery
Harlem-based visual artist Tomo Mori will transform the Miller Theatre lobby into an immersive work surrounding viewers with a sponge-stamped waterfall of images, based on her cut and painted mosaic process, in which multi-color impressions will cover deep blue walls, while cut transparent vinyl pieces will continue the imagery across the lobby’s glass doors. In contrast to the ultramarine northern lobby, Mori will create “Sakura Sanctuary” on the southern wall, evoking the delicate falling petals of cherry blossom trees.
Tomo Mori considers “Concerto Encircling” as “a journey through memory in time. It comes full circle and goes round and round. Aggregates of small bits of colors create oblique, flowing forms similar to those found in nature, like waterfalls and trees, which are then filtered and disseminated through digital media.” Wallach Art Gallery Director and Chief Curator, Deborah Cullen, notes that “This is a moment to celebrate Mori’s unique work. Her labor-intensive, mosaic-like process reminds us that tessellation exists in both nature’s honeycombs as well as the digital realm.”
more: columbia.edu/cu/wallach/exhibitions/Concerto%20Encircling.html
Losing Helen: An Essay
By Carol Becker
Red Hen Press
In a slim, powerful memoir, Carol Becker, dean of The School of Arts, writes about the years and months leading up to the death of her 98-year-old mother and the mourning period that followed. Full of sadness, and laced with humor, the book is not structured chronologically, but by the four elements—fire, earth, water and air, each of which corresponds metaphorically to a different part of the end of her mother’s life. Faith plays a large role in Becker’s life and in her tribute to her mother, as she wrestles with the Judaism of her father and the lapsed Catholicism of her mother; invokes mysticism, Buddhism and Hinduism; and emphasizes the power of dreams and small miracles.
Black Hole Blues and Other Songs from Outer Space
By Janna Levin
Knopf
Astronomy Professor Janna Levin tells the story of the headline-making discovery of gravitational waves—the campaign to record the soundtrack of our universe. In 1916, Einstein predicted the existence of gravitational waves. What began as an amusing thought experiment, a mad idea, gradually grew to an international team of hundreds, including a number of Columbians. As the book draws to a close, the team races to intercept a wisp of a sound with two colossal machines, hoping to succeed in time for the centenary of Einstein’s most radical idea. The surprises, disappointments, achievements, and risks in this unfolding story offer a unique portrait of modern science. Read more about Columbia’s contributions to this discovery.
Reductionism in Art and Brain Science: Bridging the Two Cultures
By Eric Kandel
Columbia University Press
Drawing on his Nobel Prize-winning work on learning and memory, neuroscientist and University Professor Eric Kandel shows how reductionism—distillation of larger concepts into smaller, more manageable components—has been used by artists to refine their subjective world into color, form and light. Kandel demonstrates how science can explore the complexities of human perception. Reductionism, he shows, steered the transition from figurative to abstract art reflected in the works of Monet, Kandinsky and Mondrian. It allowed artists such as Pollock, de Kooning and Rothko to arrive at abstract expressionism and explains how Katz, Warhol and Close reimagined figurative and minimal art. The book features drawings of the brain alongside reproductions of modern art masterpieces, illustrating connections between science and art.
The Burger Court and the Rise of the Judicial Right
By Michael J. Graetz and Linda Greenhouse
Simon & Schuster
Michael J. Graetz, Columbia Alumni Professor of Tax Law, and his co-author, former New York Times Supreme Court reporter Linda Greenhouse, show that Warren Burger’s Court was not moderate or transitional, as often portrayed, but a conservative one that still defines the constitutional landscape. With Richard Nixon’s four appointments, including Burger as chief justice, the Court veered well to the right in such areas as criminal law, race and corporate power. Even while declaring a right to abortion in Roe v. Wade, it drew the line at government funding for poor women. The authors draw on the personal papers of the justices as well as other archives to reveal how the Court shaped its major decisions.
Family Poverty and Homelessness in New York City: The Poor Among Us
By Ralph da Costa Nunez and Ethan G. Sribnick
Palgrave Macmillan
Ralph da Costa Nunez is an adjunct professor at the School of International and Public Affairs and president of the Institute for Children, Poverty and Homelessness, a New York City-based think tank focused on the impact of public policies on poor and homeless children. With Ethan G. Sribnick, he explores the world of New York’s poor children and families, from the era of European settlements to the present day; their physical and social environments, the causes of their poverty, and the institutions and social movements that evolved to improve and regulate their lives. The book examines successes and failures of past efforts, providing historical context often lacking in contemporary policy debates.
How Russia Learned to Write: Literature and the Imperial Table of Ranks
By Irina Reyfman
University of Wisconsin Press
In the 18th century, as modern forms of literature began to emerge in Russia, most of the writers producing it were members of the nobility. But their literary pursuits competed with strictly enforced obligations to imperial state service. Aristocrats were expected to serve in the military, civil service or the court, and their status among peers depended on advancement in rank. A Table of Ranks was introduced by Emperor Peter the Great in 1722. Reyfman, professor of Slavic Languages, illuminates its effects on writers, their work and literary culture in Russia from Sumarokov and Derzhavin in the 18th century through Pushkin, Gogol and Dostoevsky in the 19th.
Power at Ground Zero: Politics, Money, and the Remaking of Lower Manhattan
By Lynne B. Sagalyn
Oxford University Press
In Power at Ground Zero, Lynne Sagalyn, Earle W. Kazis and Benjamin Schore Professor Emerita of Real Estate, offers the definitive account of one of the greatest reconstruction projects in modern history. Epic in scope and granular in detail, the book brings together the parade of New York and New Jersey governors involved in the project, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, various Port Authority leaders, real estate magnate Larry Silverstein, and architectural superstars like Santiago Calatrava and Daniel Libeskind. Sagalyn shows that while modern city building is often dismissed as coldhearted and detached from meaning, the opposite was true at Ground Zero. The emotional dimension of 9/11 made this large-scale rebuilding effort unique, supercharged with both sanctity and politics.
Roman Power: A Thousand Years of Empire
By William V. Harris
Cambridge University Press
The Roman Empire was one of the largest and most enduring in world history. In his new book, William V. Harris, William R. Shepherd Professor of History, sets out to explain, within an eclectic theoretical framework, the waxing and eventual waning of Roman imperial power, along with the Roman community’s internal power structures— political power, social power, gender power and economic power. Integrating analysis with narrative, Harris considers both the gradual rise of the Roman Empire and its demise in the 5th and 7th centuries A.D. He contends that comparing the Romans of these diverse periods sharply illuminates both the growth and the shrinkage of Roman power as well as the Empire’s extraordinary durability.
La-Verna Fountain, vice president for Facilities and Operations at Columbia University, discusses the job training and career opportunities the Manhattanville campus creates for the surrounding community.
Thomas M. Jessell, codirector, and Sarah Woolley, principal investigator at Columbia's Zuckerman Institute discuss how the Jerome L. Greene Science Center in the new Manhattanville campus was designed for discovery. The innovative space encourages exploring the complexities of mind, brain and behavior.