News Bureau

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - The causes of the foreclosure crisis seem obvious: Buyers purchased homes they couldn't afford, lured in part by lenders pushing subprime mortgages. Real estate values escalated, and when the bubble burst, buyers were left owing more than their homes were worth.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Music education and performance at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign will receive a significant boost from a $2.65 million gift to the School of Music and the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts from the Vernon K. and Marilyn Pflederer Zimmerman Foundation.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Like the swallows that migrate annually to a certain mission in California, flocks of budding young music-makers are once again congregating on the University of Illinois campus.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - She studies Wagner and opera. He studies mostly Mozart and Beethoven. Together, husband-and-wife musicologists Katherine Syer and William Kinderman have themselves been the subject of much prodding and research - by internationally acclaimed playwright and director Moisés Kaufman.

Krannert Art Museum will open several spring exhibitions on Jan. 26, including artwork created through the Works Progress Administration Federal Art Project, objects related to the history of land-grant universities and light sculpture.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - The heavenly sounds of harp music will be wafting through the air June 11-13, when the 2009 Summer Harp Class is in session at the University of Illinois.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Illinois Summer Youth Music is tuning up for its 61st year of camps for budding musicians, thespians and vocalists, and this summer's students will have even more opportunities for courting their muses.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - An eclectic mix of live music, a lecture-demonstration on Indian dance, and an academic symposium will signal the official grand opening of the Robert E. Brown Center for World Music at the University of Illinois April 18-20.

Krannert Art Museum and Krannert Center for the Performing Arts will screen short films addressing the HIV/AIDS epidemic to commemorate World AIDS Day.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -The work of a cosmopolitan collection of artists will be featured in a new exhibition on view Feb. 8 through March 22 at I space, the Chicago gallery of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Two new exhibitions by contemporary artists will be on view April 28 through May 27 at I space, UIUC's Chicago gallery.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - The Smart Energy Design Assistance Center, administered through the University of Illinois School of Architecture, will present seven workshops around the state to teach facilities managers, construction contractors and consultants how to achieve energy efficiency in new construction or existing buildings.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - More than 7,000 years ago, indigenous peoples in Mexico domesticated corn. What was once a commodity for barter among indigenous tribes and empires is now one of the most important crops in the world. On March 27 (Tuesday), the Center for Advanced Study will host Corn and Indigenous Communities in the Americas, a daylong workshop examining the ancient relationship between indigenous cultures and maize, as well as the modern challenges of GMO cultivation, NAFTA and global price pressures now facing indigenous farming communities.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Central Illinois-based artists Roger Blakley and Harold Boyd will exhibit their latest work in two new shows on view Oct. 15 through Nov. 20 at I space, the Chicago gallery of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Two shows – a solo exhibition of drawings and paintings by emerging artist Maria Lux and a collection of lifestyle products designed by University of Illinois art students as a study in community-based entrepreneurship – will open Dec. 10 at Figure One, the School of Art + Design’s exhibition space in downtown Champaign.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - The most brilliant display of fall color to be found this season may be indoors - at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign's Krannert Art Museum.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - The boundaries of human duality are expanded and examined in an exhibition on view Nov. 21 through Dec. 20 at I space, the Chicago gallery of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign:

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - A new exhibition originating at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign's Krannert Art Museum seeks to reintroduce the public to the work of self-taught African-American artists Bill Traylor and William Edmondson by emancipating them from their "outsider" status and placing their art back in the context in which it was first discovered and acknowledged more than a half century ago.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - A tiny nest made of fingernail clippings. A necklace made of sugar. A molded polyethylene baby crib designed to help prevent Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. These are some of the works of art that will be on display when the Master of Fine Arts Exhibition opens Saturday (April 16) at Krannert Art Museum, 500 E. Peabody Drive, Champaign.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Recent work by six graduates of the master of fine arts program at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is on view Friday (July 18) through Aug. 13 at I space, the university's Chicago gallery.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. Artwork by four ceramics students in the University of Illinois School of Art and Design has been selected for inclusion in a juried exhibition.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. This country's most comprehensive museum exhibition of early works by Louise Bourgeois is among four new shows opening at the University of Illinois' Krannert Art Museum in the coming weeks.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Scientific visualization artist-wizard Donna Cox is among a select, eclectic group of visionaries from a broad range of disciplines whose work will be spotlighted in a major new exhibition opening this week at Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry.

A two-piece glass sculpture by Marvin Lipofsky, a significant glass artist and University of Illinois alumnus, will be part of Krannert Art Museum’s Petals & Paintings event during U. of I. Moms Weekend in April.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - University of Illinois dance student Darrin Wright is among a select group of choreographers whose dances will be performed at the National College Dance Festival Gala May 19-21 at the University of Maryland at College Park.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - The work of young artists in the Champaign-Urbana area will be showcased during an exhibition hosted by Krannert Art Museum and the School of Art + Design, a unit in the College of Fine and Applied Arts at the University of Illinois.

University of Illinois dance student Krystal Collins choreographed a dance that celebrates black girlhood. It was performed at the National College Dance Festival in June.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - The artistic process - that mysterious zone between creative thinking and doing - will be explored in a new exhibition on view April 25 through May 31 at I space, the Chicago gallery of the College of Fine and Applied Arts at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Work by University of Illinois art and design graduate students is on view July 13 through Aug. 11 at I space, the Chicago gallery of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - The films will run from the strikingly visual to hard luck reality at the 11th annual Roger Ebert's Film Festival, April 22-26 in Champaign-Urbana.

Kevin Kelly has four jobs, and they're all about making noise. He hosts "Live and Local" on WILL-FM (90.9), and directs three distinctly different musical groups - the East Central Illinois Youth Orchestra, the choir at Emmanuel Memorial Episcopal Church and The Prairie Ensemble - a small orchestra known for its quirky programming and unstuffy presentation.

Summer is normally a season for blockbusters, but movie theaters will have special challenges this year, starting with a gamble on a few July releases. Derek Long, a professor of media and cinema studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, looks at the present and future of the business.

Social media companies are experimenting with hiding metrics on their platforms – something University of Illinois art professor Ben Grosser has been exploring since 2012 with his Demetricator projects.

Very tall buildings are attractive options in cities where land is at a premium, but they come with construction challenges, said University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign architecture professor Abbas Aminmansour.

A Minute With™... professor Donna Buchanan, who specializes in Russian and Balkan music

“Oppenheimer” examines the process of building an organization of unprecedented scale and wrestles with how to see one individual’s decisions as relevant in the face of such a massive system, says Kevin Hamilton, the dean of the College of Fine and Applied Arts and the co-author of a book about the film studio that documented nuclear testing for the U.S. government.

Amanda Gorman’s performance at the Super Bowl will give poetry an enormous audience – one that is “unfathomable” for most poets, said poet and Illinois English professor Ángel García.

Lynne M. Thomas, the incoming head of the Illinois' Rare Book and Manuscript Library, says one thing has been consistent about 'Doctor Who' – it keeps changing with the times

Illinois students created dress designs on a mannequin in the virtual world.

Graduates from the School of Art and Design will exhibit their work virtually this spring.

The study is the first to look at how perceptions of artists in local communities affect opinions toward public funding for artists.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Like most musicians, Erin Gee - a composition professor at the University of Illinois - experiments incessantly with her instrument, trying to coax it into delivering an increasingly wider range of intriguing sounds. In Gee's case, her instrument is simply her mouth, but what she does with it defies conventional categorization. It's not singing, or scatting, or even beat-boxing. Instead, she has created her own musical toolbox - a collection of clicks, hums, pops, sighs, trills, whispers and whistles that composer Martin Brody has described as "new vocal molecules created by recombining the atomic elements of speech."

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Antonya Nelson and Robert Boswell, who have 11 novels, nine short-story collections, a fiction-writing guide and a mantel full of awards between them - will open the Fall 2012 Carr Reading Series on Sept. 19 (Wednesday) at Author's Corner in the Illini Union Bookstore. Nelson and Boswell, who are married, share the Cullen Chair in Creative Writing at the University of Houston.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Students in the School of Art+Design at the University of Illinois took three of the top six prizes at the 17th Annual Student Design Competition sponsored by the International Housewares Association, based in Rosemont, Ill. A fourth Illinois student also earned honorable mention.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Collaborative paintings, photographs, drawings and installation are part of the rich mix of work on view in three exhibitions March 3 through April 1 at I space, the Chicago gallery of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign:

Using a laptop negates the benefits that nature offers in recovering from mental fatigue, according to research from the University of Illinois.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill.- Six students at the University of Illinois are wearing white gloves in class this semester. They're learning to handle issues of age and fragility with aplomb and to make excellent first impressions.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - When University of Illinois School of Music director Karl Kramer learned that the National Association of Schools of Music was holding its annual meeting in Chicago this fall, it was music to his ears.

The University of Illinois Symphony Orchestra will perform some of Mozart’s best-loved works and less familiar pieces in celebration of the composer’s Jan. 27 birthday.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - A voice student in the School of Music at the University of Illinois won first place in the Metropolitan Opera National Council Central Region finals in Evanston, Ill., on Sunday (Nov. 7).