Iowa's Diverse Cultures Explored

    The ethnic diversity of the heritage cultures of Iowa will be featured in museum exhibits and a number of performances at the University of Northern Iowa and in downtown Cedar Falls in October, 2011. The UNI Arts Consortium is hosting the fall regional conference for the Costume CostumeSociety Society of America during the entire month, with the conference on the weekend of October 13 – 15. This collaborative effort will bring a wide variety of programming to the Cedar Valley all month.
    Cedar Fall’s Hearts Center for the Arts will host Iowa Heritage Costume Invitational exhibit in their Mae Latta Gallery. Costumes will come many of Iowa’s heritage groups, including the Meskwaki Indian Tribe, Norwegian (Decorah), Dutch (Pella), and Bosnian (Waterloo). Visitors to the Museum will be able to see the costumes in detail as they walk around this beautiful gallery.
Dance will be featured in a concert at Cedar Falls Community theatre, the Oster Regent Theatre.: Dancing Through Time and Space. UNI OsterRegent International Dance Theatre will present Oceanna, telling the story of an Irish immigrant coming to this country in the early twentieth century through dance and narration. They will also host the local Bosnian dance group to perform.
    Lush textiles from the extensive collection of UNI Museums will be on exhibit during the fall.   Kim Taylor, museum collections curator, will give a gallery talk, Talking Textiles, on Friday, Oct. 14th. The colorful rugs, household items and clothing beautifully represent cultures from all over the world.
UNI Interpreters’ Theatre will host Carne Vive’ during the weekend of October 13-15. This original play share the stories of the Guatemalan women of Postville, Iowa and their struggles and triumphs after immigration raid in their town.
Frien Kamerick ds of the Rags can be seen in UNI Gallery of Art in Kammerick Art Building. This exhibit comes from the Indiana Art Museum. Curator Petra Slinkard will be a featured speaker, as well as Canadian artist Ingrid Mida. Her unique perspective of clothing and society can also be seen on the web site web.mac.com/ingridmida and her blog—fahionismymuse.blogspot.com.
The theme of the conference is Costume as Activism and Performance. Members of the region will also present a number of papers on the topic.
    The University of Northern Iowa Arts Consortium is a campus-wide planning group consisting of the Department of Theatre, the UNI Gallery of Art, UNI Museums, , the Dance Program, and the Textiles and Apparel Program. The Arts Consortium supports cross-discipline
projects in art, textiles and theatre with a collaborative focus on visual, tactile, and performing arts.
    The Consortium seeks to expose the UNI community and the Cedar Valley community to new and Interesting art forms from nationally known artists.
    Attached are a couple of the supplement materials for the grant application, there are images in each of them that you could capture and use. The two dance photos are actually UNI International Dance Theatre photos, the Bosnian slippers is my original for the Iowa Heritage Costume exhibit piece and then the Talking Textiles has some really cool photos of what is in the UNI Museum collection. All are colorful and some are quite striking. Have your pick!