September Highlights

Hyde Park Jazz Festival
11 a.m. Saturday, Sept. 27 to 2 a.m. Sunday, Sept. 28

The second annual festival will begin at the DuSable Museum of African American History and end 14 hours later at International House. It will feature workshops, kid-friendly programs and performances from vocalist Dee Alexander, trumpeters Corey Wilkes and Orbert Davis, and percussionist Tony Carpenter. For more information, visit http://hydeparkjazzfestival.org.

Multiple locations throughout campus and Hyde Park

Renaissance Society
“Francis Alÿs”
Sunday, Sept. 28 to Sunday, Dec. 14

The first solo Midwest exhibition of Mexico City-based artist Francis Alÿs will feature work that addresses Latin America’s recurrent social, economic and political troubles. For his exhibition, Alÿs will present his animation, “Bolero,” along with the 511 graphite drawings from which the animation was made. He will also show “Politics of Rehearsal,” a 30-minute video that combines footage of a speech by President Harry Truman, narration by critic Cuauhtemoc Medina and a rehearsal of a striptease. Rehearsal parallels sociopolitical promise from Latin America with the tactics of a stripper—always leaving something to be desired. Alÿs will speak from 5 to 6 p.m. at an opening reception from 4 to 7 p.m. on Sunday, Sept. 28 in Cobb Hall, Room 307.

5811 S. Ellis Ave.

Smart Museum of Art
“Displacement: The Three Gorges Dam and Contemporary Art”
Thursday, Oct. 2 to Sunday, Jan. 25

The exhibition will present the work of four leading contemporary Chinese artists—Chen Quiulin, Yun-Fei Ji, Liu Xiaodong and Zhuang Hui—have created in response to the construction of the controversial Three Gorges Dam on the Yangzi River. The artists have engaged with the theme of displacement, responding to the movement of people, the demolition of old towns and construction of new cities and the changes of the local landscape. There will be an opening reception from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 2, with a lecture by exhibition curator Wu Hung, the Harrie A. Vanderstappen Distinguished Service Professor in Art History. A reception will follow.

5550 S. Greenwood Ave.

Special Collections Research Center
“Integrating the Life of the Mind: African Americans at the University of Chicago”
Through Friday, Feb. 27, 2009

The exhibition will examine the history of African Americans at the University, from the earliest students of the 19th century to some of the most significant figures in the early 1900s. Archival documents and published materials will be used to explore disparities between intellectual achievement and social experience and trace individual paths of adoption and adaptation, activism and despair, and institutionalization and radicalization.

Joseph Regenstein Library, 1100 E. 57th St.