Dear Subscriber,
I hope this finds you enjoying the summer and eagerly anticipating another enriching year of academic and cultural programming at the Clark Library in 2024-25. This year I will be serving as the Director of the Center for 17th– & 18th–Century Studies and the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library while Bronwen Wilson is taking a long-overdue sabbatical. I look forward to enjoying the many opportunities the Clark offers and to seeing you at our events.
This summer, the Center has just wrapped up another successful Henry J. Bruman Summer Chamber Music Festival in Lani Hall on UCLA’s campus. Over two weeks in July and August, concertgoers enjoyed four free chamber music recitals featuring the work of talented musicians. You can read more about the artists and their programs here. In case you missed the festival or would like to enjoy the performances once again, you’re in luck—for just a few more days the concert videos are available to watch on our YouTube channel. We are immensely grateful for the work of Ambroise Aubrun, the festival’s Artistic Director and a UCLA graduate, whose expert curation consistently results in a remarkable festival.
Please read on to sample the events we have in store for you during our 2024-25 season. If you know someone who might enjoy our arts events, concerts, conferences, and lectures, please forward this email or encourage them to sign up for our mailing list. We’re continually updating the Events section of our website, so check back frequently for the latest details. If you’re on social media, we encourage you to follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and X for program announcements and latest news.
Along with my colleague Gabriel de Avilez Rocha (Brown University), I will be co-organizing the 2024-25 Core Program, Early Global Caribbean. This cycle of conferences and events will serve as an important catalyst for inter-disciplinary dialogue that will explore the earliest, understudied era of Caribbean history, an era when the region’s societies, cultures, ideas, and environments underwent drastic transformation. A period conventionally assumed to be insignificant in contrast to the later era of sugar and slavery will be seen in a different light with the help of historians, literary scholars, archeologists, and others.
To kick off our slate of programs this Fall, we invite you to our Clark Library Open House and Adopt-A-Book Fair on Saturday, September 28. At this event, you can explore the historic library building and grounds, view recent acquisitions and other highlights from the Clark Library’s collections, meet Center & Clark staff and learn more about what we do, and consider adopting one of the books on display. Donations of any amount will provide essential funding for the acquisition, preservation, and conservation of the library’s collections, and directly support the library’s work of caring for and sharing these resources with all who wish to use them.
On October 10, Professor Yinghui Wu (UCLA) and Kunqu Opera Society USA will present an Arts on the Grounds event, “Appreciation of Kunqu Opera Performance: Techniques and Characteristics.” Within Kunqu Opera, each role type has its own highly developed set of systematic movements and stylized techniques, which are crucial in portraying the disposition of characters and enhancing dramatic effects. This lecture and demonstration will feature performers from Kunqu Opera Society USA, who will present essential excerpts from the repertoire, offering the audience a chance to experience the elegance and sophistication of Kunqu Opera’s artistic style.
Johanna Drucker, Distinguished Professor and Breslauer Professor Emerita, Information Studies (UCLA), will present the Second Annual Spotlight Talk, on October 23. Entitled “Reading Paul Landacre’s Archive with the Clark Collections: California Landscape and the Erasure of Indigeneity,” the talk explores how images, particularly in California Hills (1931), Landacre’s first published work, relate to the longer traditions of representations of the “pristine” and “uninhabited” landscape, thus participating in an erasure of indigenous peoples that had been part of landscape painting. Professor Drucker’s talk reads Landacre’s archive in relation to the rich historical material in the Clark Library’s collection.
In November we are pleased to host the Nineteenth Kenneth Karmiole Lecture on the History of the Book Trade, presented by David Hunter (University of Texas at Austin). “Funding London’s Elite Music Scene through the Profits of Slavery in the 18th Century and Beyond: Bio-Bibliographical Work as Reparative History” draws attention to a wide range of printed, manuscript, and other sources for research, and identifies the myriad ways in which music-making in Britain (and by white enslavers in the colonies) was entangled in the slave trade and the pursuit of profits on plantations.
Resource extraction and the sophisticated use of renewables has a history that long predates the so-called Industrial Revolution. Few members of the public look to humanities research to facilitate new energy futures, a situation we hope to change with a slate of programming in 2025. We begin with the January 10 conference “Energy Transitions in Long Modernity,” organized by Robert N. Watson (UCLA), Tiffany Jo Werth (UC Davis), and Todd Andrew Borlik (University of Huddersfield). This important conference will break down barriers across academic disciplines, time periods, and national borders to forge a more complex and multi-faceted picture of the cultural drivers behind energy transition as well as the obstacles before it.
In the last few decades, debates stemming from the science and history “wars” have called attention to the ways in which cases are constructed and proven across disciplines. Questions about the nature and selection of evidence, the role of scale, and the function of narrative in “making” a case will be the focus of an event on March 14. “Cases and Scale in Historiography,” a conference organized by Michael Osman and Cristóbal Amunátegui (UCLA), builds on these examinations by scrutinizing the relationship between the case and one of its constitutive elements: scale. By pointing to the links between scale and the case, the conference invites us to explore the limits and possibilities of the historian as both expert and generalist.
In early May, we welcome you to join us for “The Art of Duo: A Journey through Europe to the USA from 1700 to 1930,” presented by Ambroise Aubrun (violin) and Steven Vanhauwaert (piano). This program explores the violin and piano duo’s rich history, and reflects the evolving styles and cultural influences that shaped the duo’s repertoire from the baroque era to the early 20th century. The performance is complemented by engaging presentations and discussions, offering a guide to a deeper understanding of this timeless repertoire. Later that month, we’ll be hosting “Bookish Biomes,” an event for all ages that brings together the Clark Library’s indoor and outdoor collections as we explore nature’s histories and its present. Attendees will learn about how people in the past studied and collected the natural world through the Clark Library’s collections, go on bird walks, participate in a BioBlitz to help expand our knowledge of the library’s outdoor collections, and take part in hands-on activities. Guests are welcome to bring a lunch and picnic on the grounds, and to explore the day’s activities at their own pace.
Some of the events listed here will be livestreamed, but please do try to join us in person at the Clark Library. Registration information, once available, can be found easily through our Year at a Glance page. This page also provides links to events and lectures on Zoom.
In 2024-25, Chamber Music at the Clark will be celebrating its 30th anniversary season. Thanks to the generous support of our Friends of the Clark Library, the series has presented over 175 concerts, featuring some of the world’s finest chamber ensembles, in the uniquely intimate Clark Library Drawing Room with its superb acoustics. This anniversary season, curated by Artistic Director Rogers Brubaker, will feature two special tributes. We will honor the late Peter Hanns Reill, who served for nearly two decades as Center and Clark Director, and who founded the series in 1994, and Bruce Whiteman, who served as Head Librarian of the Clark from 1996 until 2010, and who has written our wonderful program notes for a quarter of a century. We hope you will be able to join us for another splendid season of music-making!
We are introducing a new way to purchase concert tickets this season: all Chamber Music at the Clark tickets will be sold by the UCLA Central Ticket Office. Tickets for each concert will go on sale on Tuesdays at 12 noon approximately four weeks prior to the event date. Here is a list of the dates that tickets for each concert will go on sale during the 2024-25 season. Mark your calendars now!
Cuarteto Casals: October 1, 2024
Calidore String Quartet: October 15, 2024
Balourdet Quartet: November 12, 2024
Trio Bohémo: December 17, 2024
Ariel Quartet: February 4, 2025
Borromeo String Quartet: March 25, 2025
Miró Quartet with Masumi Per Rostad: April 15, 2025
There are three ways to purchase tickets:
Online: https://tickets.ucla.edu/
Telephone: (310) 825-2101
In person: Central Ticket Office windows located on the UCLA campus at 325 Westwood Plaza (ground level, across from Pauley Pavilion).
Ticket prices are $55 for general admission, $45 for seniors 55+, and $15 for UCLA students (a valid student ID is required for each ticket).
Because the concerts are held in an intimate space specifically designed to host chamber music, a limited number of tickets are available for each performance, and we anticipate that they will sell out in minutes. If any tickets for concerts remain unsold, they will be available for purchase at the Clark Library on the day of the event. Any available day-of tickets will be sold on a first-come, first-served basis by a Central Ticket Office representative beginning at 1:00 p.m., and payment will be accepted via credit card only. Please call or email the Central Ticket Office at (310) 825-2101 or cto@tickets.ucla.edu, Monday–Friday 10:00 a.m.–4:00 p.m. with any questions about concert tickets.
Please visit the links below to become a Friend of the Clark Library and to stay apprised of additional events that bring the Clark’s collections to life, celebrate the performing arts, and promote research.
Give to the Center & Clark
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With best wishes on behalf of all of us at the Center & Clark Library,
Carla Gardina Pestana
