Rebecca Clark, Terrapin and Fly, Early Fall, 2011, graphite and colored pencil on paper, 30 x 22 in.

The Academy Art Museum in Easton, MD, is exhibiting, Anima Mundi: Drawings by Rebecca Clark, from April 28 through May 28, 2012. Rebecca Clark’s art focuses on the natural world, specifically that of the insects, animals, and plant life of her backyard which she sees as a microcosm symbolizing all of nature.

Clark believes we live in an era in which we suffer from what has been described as “nature deficit disorder” and her art is a call for a return to the garden, both figuratively and literally. The drawings she makes are highly detailed, intimate portraits of the inhabitants of this garden world, composed with a snapshot sensibility. A group of drawings in the Clark exhibition depicts bees. She seeks to raise consciousness about honeybees – their grace, their mystery, and the critical role they play in our own survival.

Clark’s influences include the art of the Northern Renaissance – in particular, Netherlandish devotional panel paintings, Albrecht Dürer’s plant and animal studies, and Joris Hoefnagel’s illuminations of flora and fauna – the Japanese wabi-sabi aesthetic (beauty of things imperfect), and nature mysticism as expressed through various forms of art, music, poetry, and prose.

She comments, “Human beings have deep evolutionary bonds with nature, both physical and metaphysical. I hope that my quiet drawings will remind us of our place on this planet and awaken our consciousness to the larger cosmos of which we are a part – an idea described by Plato as anima mundi, soul of the world.” Clark further explains, Plato writes, ‘This world is indeed a living being endowed with a soul and intelligence … a single visible entity containing all other living entities which, by their nature, are all related.’”

Rebecca Clark grew up in Annapolis, MD, and received her BA in Art History from Swarthmore College in 1983. She studied painting

Rebecca Clark, Bee 20 (the real work), 2011, graphite on paper, 30 x 22 in.

and drawing at the Maryland Institute College of Art and the Corcoran College of Art and Design, and landscape design at The George Washington University. Her work has been included in group and solo exhibitions, in publications, and in private collections. She has worked for 28 years as a registrar in the Washington, DC, fine arts community, including the Smithsonian American Art Museum, The Phillips Collection, The National Museum of Women in the Arts, and the US Department of State’s ART in Embassies Program.

The Academy Art Museum exhibition is sponsored by the Maryland State Arts Council and the Talbot County Arts Council. Admission to the Museum is $3 for non–members, children under 12 admitted free.

Open Monday and Friday, 10 a.m. – 4 p.m.
Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday from 10 a.m. – 8 p.m.
Saturday and Sunday hours are 10 a.m. – 4 p.m.

The First Friday of each month, the Museum is open until 7 p.m.

Academy Art Museum
106 South St.
Easton, MD, 21601.
410-822-ARTS (2787)

On Thursday, March 22, 2012, Dr. Christine Keiner will discuss her book, The Oyster Question: Scientists, Watermen, and the Maryland Chesapeake Bay since 1880, at 4:30 PM in Litrenta Lecture Hall at Washington College. Dr. Keiner’s outlook challenges standard interpretations of the local oyster fishery as the epitome of the “tragedy of the commons.” The lecture will be followed by a brief Q&A, and autographed copies of The Oyster Question will be available for sale.

Christine Keiner earned a B.A. in biology from McDaniel College and a Ph.D. in the history of science from Johns Hopkins University. She is an associate professor in the Science, Technology, and Society/Public Policy Department at Rochester Institute of Technology. Her book won the 2010 Forum for the History of Science in America Prize and co-won the Maryland Historical Trust’s Heritage Book Award, as well as Honorable Mention for the Frederick Jackson Turner Award from the Organization of American Historians.

For more information, please contact [email protected], visit www.ces.washcoll.edu or call 410-810-7162 .

Litrenta Lecture Hall is located in the Toll Science Building along Campus Avenue. Parking is available in the campus lot beside Goldstein Hall.

This event is sponsored by the Center for Environment & Society at Washington College.

Thursday, March 22, 2012
4:30 pm

Litrenta Lecture Hall
Toll Science Building
Washington College
300 Washington Ave
Chestertown, MD  21620

Jeffrey Rosen

Today, GPS monitors can track our every move, brain scans can see ideas forming in our heads before we are aware of them, and genetic engineering may soon allow parents to design their own children. These new technologies create challenges to the basic constitutional rights that our founding fathers could never have imagined.

Noted legal scholar and author Jeffrey Rosen will address these challenges in a lecture Monday, March 19, at 5 p.m in the Litrenta Lecture Hall of the Toll Science Center. His talk, “From GPS Tracking to Airport Body Scanners: The Future of Privacy in the Age of Facebook,” will include issues such as personal versus private space and freedom of speech in the midst of rapid technological advances and burgeoning social media.

In addition to teaching law at the George Washington University, Rosen serves as legal affairs editor of The New Republic. He is the author of several books, most recently The Supreme Court: The Personalities and Rivalries that Defined America. Rosen is a graduate of Harvard College, summa cum laude; Oxford University, where he was a Marshall Scholar; and Yale Law School. 
His essays and commentaries have appeared on NPR and in the New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic Monthly, and The New Yorker, where he has been a staff writer. The L.A. Times called him, “the nation’s most widely read and influential legal commentator.”

The talk is open to the public and all are cordially invited. A reception will follow.

Monday, March 19, 2012
5 p.m
Litrenta Lecture Hall of the Toll Science Center
Washington College
300 Washington Ave
Chestertown, MD 21620

James Hand at Apollo Command Module Guidance, Navigation and Control System Console: Computer at right hand, Optics joy stick at left hand, scanning telescope eyepiece at right side, sextant eyepiece at left. June 1970.

Alumnus James Hand ’60 will return to Washington College on Tuesday, March 20 to talk about his decade of work with NASA’s Project Apollo. The event will take place at 6 p.m. in Decker Theatre in the Daniel Z. Gibson Center for the Arts on the College campus, 300 Washington Avenue.

Hand’s presentation will address many aspects of the Apollo space missions, with a particular focus on the first manned lunar landing of July 1969. As a NASA scientist working first at Kollsman Instrument Corporation in New York, and then at the MIT/Instrumentation Laboratory in Cambridge, Mass., Hand helped develop guidance, navigation, and control systems for the Apollo Command and Lunar Modules. He participated in the first lunar landing mission as part of the engineering support center at Johnson Space Center in Houston.

Along with discussing his own experiences and contributions to the Project, he will talk about President John F. Kennedy’s vision for America’s space program, the astronauts and other key contributors, technology, and the importance of that era’s legacy for today. The talk will be accompanied by a slide show and video of the Apollo mission launch.

“I promise that no pop-quiz will be given,” says Hand of his talk. “But I may ask the audience to consider a few decisions, such as ‘Should I land in the lunar crater or fly over it, given the chance of running out of fuel and crashing?’ ”

Before and after the talk, guests will have the opportunity to look through a large collection of Hand’s Apollo memorabilia, such as documents containing the signatures of thousands of NASA employees, including Hand, that were carried to the moon on the first lunar landing mission.

Hand received his B.Sc. in physics from Washington College, an MBA in Management from Hofstra University, and a Master Certificate in Computer Programming from Boston University. He participated in the Apollo 11 mission as a scientist in the engineering support center at the Johnson Space Center, Houston, Tex.

The event is sponsored by Washington College’s C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience, the Office of Alumni Relations and the Department of Physics. A reception hosted by the 1782 Society will be held afterward in the Underwood Lobby. For more information: https://www.washcoll.edu.

Tuesday, March 20, 2012
6 pm
Decker Theatre, Daniel Z. Gibson Center for the Arts
Washington College
300 Washington Avenue
Chestertown, MD 21620

Marie Rutkoski, author of historical fantasy and young-adult fiction, will visit Washington College’s Rose O’Neill Literary House, 407 Washington Avenue, on Friday, March 9 at 4:30 p.m. In addition to reading a selection from her series The Kronos Chronicles, Rutkoski will share her insights into the world of children’s literature and talk about how she came to write for young readers.

Rutkoski’s debut novel, The Cabinet of Wonders (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2008), was named an Indie Next Kids’ List Great Read and a Bank Street Best Children’s Book of the Year. Her subsequent books The Celestial Globe (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2010) and The Jewel of the Kalderash (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2011) round out her Chronicles series.

The author studied at the University of Iowa as an undergraduate, taking the prestigious Writers’ Workshop classes, and received her Ph.D. from Harvard. She is currently a professor at Brooklyn College, where she teaches Renaissance drama, children’s literature, and creative writing. Rutkoski has received two Derek Bok Awards for Distinction in Teaching (2003 and 2006).

For more information, https://www.washcoll.edu. and https://www.marierutkoski.com/.

Friday, March 9, 2012
4:30 p.m.

Washington College’s Rose O’Neill Literary House
407 Washington Avenue
Chestertown, MD 21620