Community Calendar

With an enormous range of genres and styles ranging from Bach to Beethoven, Pauline Viardot to Steve Reich, the repertoire for the piano is vast: 300 years and counting! Join musicologist Dr. Zaide Pixley, Kalamazoo College Professor Emerita, to explore some of the music to be heard at the 2026 Gilmore Festival and consider what it requires of the piano–and the pianist–to perform it well. The talk will be followed by a light reception.

The Stamelos Gallery Center is proud to present the special guest lecture American Studio Glass and Reflection on International Influence presented by renowned Detroit glass artist Herb Babcock. This lecture expands on the themes of the glass exhibition currently on display in the Stamelos Gallery Center: Infinite Variety: Selections from the UM- Dearborn Glass Collection.

In the early 1960’s, Harvey Littleton set out to make glass blowing a creative experience
for craftspeople and artists in a small studio environment. This was the beginning of the
American Studio Glass Movement that transformed glass from a factory-made product
into an independent art form created in private studios. Glass is a medium of transitions.
Most American participants were working in another medium before coming to work in
glass as a primary material, many times, adding it to the repertory of their total art
expression. As the movement grew, reaching out for international influence also
assisted the artists’ endeavors.

Herb Babcock is a sculptor working in glass, metal, stone and other materials. He is
Professor Emeritus from the College for Creative Studies in Detroit, Michigan. He was
Chair of the Glass Department and taught for 40 years until 2013. Babcock’s current
studio is in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

For further information and disability accommodation, please contact Laura Cotton, Art Curator and Gallery Manager at lacotton@umich.edu and check the website www.umdearborn.edu/stamelos.

Diego Rivera arrived in Detroit to undertake what would become the most defining mural cycle of his career. In just 11 months, he transformed the walls of the Detroit Institute of Arts into the extraordinary Detroit Industry Murals — a fresco series he later described as his “finest work.” Rivera completed this commission during the period he and his wife, Frida Kahlo, were living in the city, marking a significant chapter in both their lives.

How did the DIA secure one of the world’s most celebrated muralists? What made Detroit the setting for Rivera’s boldest artistic statement? And why do these murals continue to resonate as some of the most important public artworks in America?

In this richly illustrated Historical Speaker Series presentation, art historian Wendy Evans brings Rivera’s Detroit story to life — the industry, the artistry, and the lasting impact of a masterpiece created here in our city.

Join us Sunday, March 22nd from 1–2pm.
$5 for non-members, FREE for members.
Tickets: PackardProvingGrounds.org/Mar22-HSS-PPG

Diego Rivera arrived in Detroit to undertake what would become the most defining mural cycle of his career. In just 11 months, he transformed the walls of the Detroit Institute of Arts into the extraordinary Detroit Industry Murals — a fresco series he later described as his “finest work.” Rivera completed this commission during the period he and his wife, Frida Kahlo, were living in the city, marking a significant chapter in both their lives.

How did the DIA secure one of the world’s most celebrated muralists? What made Detroit the setting for Rivera’s boldest artistic statement? And why do these murals continue to resonate as some of the most important public artworks in America?

In this richly illustrated Historical Speaker Series presentation, art historian Wendy Evans brings Rivera’s Detroit story to life — the industry, the artistry, and the lasting impact of a masterpiece created here in our city.

Join us Sunday, March 22nd from 1–2pm.

$5 for non-members, FREE for members.

Tickets: PackardProvingGrounds.org/Mar22-HSS-PPG

Join Cranbrook Academy of Art at deSalle Auditorium for a free, public lecture with Noah Breuer on Wednesday, March 25, 2026, at 6pm. Please enter through the Cranbrook Academy of Art Library; Cranbrook Art Museum’s galleries close at 5pm.

In his lecture, “Republishing the Archive,” Breuer will discuss cultural legacy, authorship, the tension between appropriation and contemporary artistic production.

Noah Breuer is an American artist and Professor of Print Media at the University at Buffalo, SUNY. His practice occupies the intersection of traditional printmaking and 21st-century digital technology, utilizing this hybrid approach to examine themes of family identity, labor, and the Jewish diaspora.

Breuer’s current research focuses on the cultural legacy of early-20th-century Jewish-owned textile printing companies in Czech Bohemia. Through what he describes as a “reclamation project,” Breuer investigates his own family’s lost industrial history, resurrecting and reinterpreting archival designs to explore the tension between ancestral memory and contemporary artistic ownership.

Presented by Don La Barre
Historian for the Michigan History Center & Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary

Join historian Don La Barre as he examines the early to mid-20th century history of Rockport Quarry and Stone Plant, focusing on its growth and technical development.

La Barre will explore how the quarry operated during its most active decades, including the methods used to extract and process stone, the machinery and technology that powered production, and the innovations that improved efficiency and output. The presentation will also highlight how the plant adapted to changing industrial demands and economic conditions during this period. Through an overview of mining practices, changes in national trends, and operational milestones, the audience will gain insight into how Rockport Quarry functioned as a key industrial enterprise in its era.

Today, Rockport is a public recreation area that stretches along the Lake Huron and Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary coast and is managed by Michigan’s Department of Natural Resources. Its 4,237 acres offers hiking trails, sinkholes, mountain biking, and a boat launch to visitors. It is also a designated dark sky preserve.

Celebrate the pivotal moments of America's Bicentennial celebration through the eyes of President Gerald Ford, as recounted by Thomas DeFrank. As the only reporter still covering the White House today who also covered President Ford during the Bicentennial, DeFrank offers a unique, first-person perspective of America's 200th birthday commemoration.

Join us for personal stories from this celebrated journalist, who traveled with Ford during those momentous days and was privy to his thoughts, feelings, organizing principles and philosophy surrounding our country's historic July 4, 1976, milestone.

In Accommodating the Republic: Taverns in the Early United States, Kirsten Wood explores how Americans' use taverns in their pursuits of happiness helped flesh out the evolving meaning of citizenship in the young United States. In this talk, she looks at the years following the Revolutionary War, when Americans continued to use their neighborhood taverns as sites for gathering and political mobilization. The scope and significance of practices that had been so central to the revolutionary struggle shifted in the early republic, as Americans wrestled with the promise and problems of republican self-government. Although the mid-nineteenth-century temperance movement would soon frame tavern-going as the habit of dangerously shiftless men, in the republic's early decades, entrepreneurial, improvement-minded men—and some women!--went to taverns to raise capital, promote innovative businesses, practice genteel sociability, and put republican self-government into practice.

Piano Technician D Marie Jones will discuss the complex and fascinating process that goes into determining which of The Gilmore’s fleet of Steinway pianos is chosen for each performance and artist. Learn the specifics of how musical programming choices play one of the deep roles in pre-selection for the artists. The talk will be followed by a light reception.

Join us on April 11, 2026, at Cornerstone Theological Seminary for Cornerstone University’s 24th annual ESL Conference! Educators, ministry leaders, and volunteers are invited to explore how teaching English can be a powerful ministry of welcome, relationship, and gospel witness. This year’s theme highlights the role of language learning in building authentic community, fostering hospitality, and creating space for meaningful conversations that point to Christ. Together, we will consider practical strategies and relational approaches that equip us to serve our students not only as learners, but as neighbors and friends.