Archive for the ‘Art’ Category

Jesuit Father Gregory Waldrop is the new executive director of the Fordham University art collection.

Fr. Waldrop, a member of Fordham’s Art History and Music Department since 2009, is an expert in Italian art from 1400 to 1600, and his scholarly research and writing deal primarily with the religious culture and iconography of the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance in Italy, with a particular focus on 15th-century Sienese painting.

He was a Rome Prize Fellow at the American Academy in Rome in 2006-2008. He has taught in both the medieval and renaissance areas and will continue his association with the Art History and Music Department.

Fr. Waldrop earned his M.A. and Ph.D. in the history of art from the University of California, Berkeley and holds an M.S. in journalism from Northwestern University and a B.A. in English, magna cum laude with distinction from Yale University.

His credentials in theology include the S.T.B., magna cum laude, from the Pontificia Universitas Gregoriana in Rome and the Th.M., with honors, from Weston Jesuit School of Theology.

In his new role, Fr. Waldrop will work collaboratively with academic units spread across the University to enhance Fordham’s prominence and visibility within New York City’s richly diverse artistic communities and cultural institutions. He will also oversee an estimated 1,000 works of fine art spread across the University’s three campuses.

[Fordham Notes Newsblog]

Jesuit Ryan Duns picked up the Irish tin whistle when he was eight years old and never put it down. Duns, a teacher at Detroit Jesuit High School and Academy, instructs his students in Latin and Theology during the day, and in his free time provides tin whistle lessons to more 3 million viewers on YouTube. Using a webcam in his residence, Duns recorded this special video for National Jesuit News to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day. Enjoy!

If you want to hear more of Ryan Duns, SJ, please visit www.youtube.com/RyanDunsSJ

Jesuit Father Stephen Schloesser will discuss the early years of Olivier Messiaen, one of the most influential composers of the 20th century, when he delivers Fairfield University’s Bellarmine Lecture on Wednesday, February 1. This “concert lecture,” free and open to the public, will feature a gripping story of love and love lost, interspersed with songs for soprano and piano. Works to be performed include Messiaen’s “The Smile,” and “La Fiancee perdue,” from his “Three Melodies,” “Action de Grace,” and “Priere exaucee,” as well as two songs by his wife at the time, Claire Delbos.

The event, presented by the University’s Center for Catholic Studies, will take place in the Egan Chapel of St. Ignatius Loyola at 8 p.m.

In a talk entitled, “Olivier Messiaen: Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man,” Fr. Schloesser, associate professor of history at Loyola University Chicago, will chronicle the young life of this artist who was greatly inspired by his Catholic beliefs. He will start by exploring Messiaen’s parents, especially his mother Cecile Sauvage and her poetry, punctuating the talk with Messiaen’s compositions while emphasizing the evolution in his writing. The lecture will provide attendees with an intricate look at Messiaen, his mother, and his wife Claire, and how their relationships so deeply affected the composer’s early works.

Educated at Stanford, Fr. Schloesser has explored such intriguing subjects as Jazz Age Catholicism and Mystic Surrealism as Contemplative Voluptuousness. He was a faculty member of Boston College, a Bannan Fellow at Santa Clara University, and an adjunct professor in the Department of Church History at the Weston Jesuit School of Theology.

The Bellarmine Lecture series was set up to bring distinguished Jesuit Scholars in a variety of disciplines to Fairfield. For information on other Center for Catholic Studies events, visit http://www.fairfield.edu/cs/.

[Fairfield University]

Originally from Calcutta, Jesuit Father Saju George Moolamthuruthil is a dynamic and unique artist with a rare vision and passion for the art and culture of India and a dancer of the bharatanatyam style.  For over 15 years, he has shown a constant concern to conjugate his dancing with his Catholic faith and considers art as an effective means of spiritual integration and social transformation.

In recent years, Fr. Saju has given over 200 performances in India and worldwide and adopting both Hindu and Christian themes in his incorporation of images whether of Radha-Krishna and Shiva-Parvati or of the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ.

“I love dance, I love to dance, I love to teach, and I love to experience God and the sacred in and through dance,” says Fr. Saju.

According to the Saju, this art involves prayer and adoration, self-awareness and divine realization, social service, the promotion of interreligious peace and harmony and ecumenism.

The bharatanatyam is an elegant form of dance with a strong visual impact. Originating in the temples in Tamil Nadu, a state in southern India, literally thousands of years ago, this dance style is the oldest of the main forms of classical Indian dance. The dancers, through their choreographies, display gestures and movements representative of mythology, philosophy, epics, ancient stories, contemporary themes and other experiences of life.

Jesuit Father Antonio Spadaro,  the editor of the influential Jesuit journal Civilta Cattolica, U.S. Cardinal Donald W. Wuerl of Washington, a Portuguese poet, a Spanish architect, two astrophysicists, a Belgian journalist and a curator at the Vatican Museums were named by Pope Benedict XVI to help advise the Pontifical Council for Culture.

For the first time since 1993, religious and laymen — not just cardinals and bishops — were named full members of the council.

The new lay members are French philosopher and writer Jean-Luc Marion and Estonian classical composer Arvo Part. Eleven new consultors or advisers were named to the council, including Bruno Coppi, a professor of plasma physics and astrophysics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Others include: Father Jose Tolentino De Mendonca, a Portuguese theologian and poet; Santiago Calatrava, a Spanish architect; Piero Benvenuti, an Italian astrophysicist; Wolf Joachim Singer, a professor of neurology and head of the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research in Germany; Marguerite Peeters, a Belgian journalist; and Micol Forti, the curator of the Vatican Museums’ collection of contemporary art.

Blessed John Paul II created the Pontifical Council for Culture in 1982 with the aim of helping the world’s cultures encounter the message of the Gospel. In 1993, the late pope united the council with the council for dialogue with nonbelievers thus paving the way for using culture as a bridge for dialogue between people of faith and those who profess no religious beliefs.