Johnson Museum

Works by (top) Robert Smithson, "Snapshots in Fine Rock Salt"; (center) Lucy+Jorge Orta, "OrtaWater—Fluvial Intervention Unit", and (bottom) Christian Houge, "Untitled 1, Norway" are featured in "beyond earth art" at the Johnson Museum, the subject of the 2014 Atkinson Symposium April 11.

On location in China

Cornell Cinema will not screen films from Saturday, March 29, through Tuesday, April 8; the schedule resumes Wednesday, April 9, with two films by assistant professor J.P. Sniadecki, who will introduce “Yumen” at 5 p.m. and “People’s Park” at 7 p.m.

An ethnographic documentary shot on film and made in collaboration with Chinese filmmakers, “Yumen” (2013) uses inventive vignettes and wandering characters to portray a ghost town in China’s northwest Gansu province, thriving and rich in oil 30 years ago, now derelict and depleted.

“People’s Park” (2012) is a 78-minute, real-time portrait of a bustling urban park in Chengdu, China. Sniadecki teaches media and film production in the Department of Performing and Media Arts.

Also, director Paul Verhoeven will visit Cornell to introduce the digital restoration of his 1990 cult science fiction classic “Total Recall,” Friday, April 11, at 7 p.m. Tickets are $12 general, $8 for students, available at CornellCinemaTickets.com

Design, health, sustainability

Researcher Beth Dunbar will discuss her work in sustainable strategies involving architectural design and public health in “Sustainable Housing,” April 9, 5 p.m. in 120 Physical Sciences. Free and open to the public.

Dunbar leads the research and evaluation team for MASS Design Group, which promotes buildings and infrastructure that address health, economic and social challenges.

An epidemiologist by training, Dunbar has worked on disease surveillance at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists. Most recently, she was part of the monitoring and evaluation team at Partners In Health in rural Malawi.

The biennial Glenn H. Beyer Memorial Lecture is hosted by the Department of Design and Environmental Analysis in the College of Human Ecology.

Teju Cole reading

Writer and photographer Teju Cole will read from his fiction Thursday, April 10, at 4:30 p.m. in Hollis E. Cornell Auditorium, Goldwin Smith Hall.

Free and open to the public, Cole’s reading is the last installment of the Spring 2014 Barbara and David Zalaznick Reading Series, presented by the Department of English Program in Creative Writing.

Born in the United States in 1975 and raised in Nigeria, Cole is author of the novella “Every Day is for the Thief” and a novel, “Open City.” Described by The Independent as “transfixing” and by Time as “a profoundly original work, intellectually stimulating and possessing of a style both engaging and seductive,” “Open City” (2011) won the PEN/Hemingway Award and the Internationaler Literaturpreis, and was nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award.

Cole is a contributor to The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Granta and several other magazines and is a contributing editor at The New Inquiry. He is distinguished writer in residence at Bard College and is working on a book-length nonfiction narrative of Lagos.

Information: creativewriting@cornell.edu or 607-255-7847.

Earth art symposium

The 2014 Atkinson Symposium, “beyond earth art,” will address environmental art and artists Friday, April 11, from 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art.

The symposium will explore topics found in “beyond earth art: contemporary artists and the environment” and “Food-Water-Life/Lucy+Jorge Orta,” both on display through June 8.

Participants will include artists Christian Houge and Lucy Orta; art historian and critic Suzaan Boettger; William L. Fox, director of the Center for Art + Environment at the Nevada Museum of Art; and curator Amy Lipton, co-director of ecoartspace, a bicoastal project dedicated to art, nature and environmental issues. See a complete schedule and more information.

Registration for the symposium is free but seating is limited; email eas8@cornell.edu or call 607-254-4642 by Friday, April 4, to reserve a space.

The program is funded by Cornell’s Atkinson Forum in American Studies Program. The museum is open Tuesday-Sunday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m.; admission is free.

For office professionals

The annual Jennie T. Farley Office Professionals Celebration is Wednesday, April 23, in Barton Hall.

Lunch is available at 11:30 a.m., followed by a one-hour program at noon, highlighting the importance of the role of office professionals at Cornell. The keynote speaker is Mary Opperman, vice president for human resources and safety services.
 
Reservations are accepted until April 15 at cornellofficeprofessionals.org

Now one of the largest workplace observances at Cornell, the celebration attracts more than 750 office professionals from across campus. It is named for Jennie T. Farley (1932-2002), who, with ILR colleague Alice B. Cook, organized the first Secretaries Day Symposium in 1988. A champion of women’s rights, Farley served on the ILR faculty, was a member of the Cornell Board of Trustees and co-founded the Women’s Studies Program.