Announcing Newberry Adult Education Classes for 2024

Please join us for the 2024 Newberry Adult Education Classes – online on Saturday mornings from 10:00 am to noon.

Evgeny Lanceray (1875-1946). Illustration for Hadji Murad.

This winter’s course, The North Caucasus through Literature: from Leo Tolstoy to Alisa Ganieva, begins on February 24, 2024 and ends on April 20, 2024. Seven weekly meetings will be held via Zoom. Click here for the complete course description.

Together we will take an armchair tour through the North Caucasus, primarily Chechnya and Dagestan, a crossroads of culturally diverse civilizations, examining the short works of Leo Tolstoy, Rasul Gamzatov’s lyrical poems, and short stories and a novel, Bride & Groom, by Alisa Ganieva.

The Russian Empire annexed this region as part of its colonial expansion during the 19th century through a series of brutal military campaigns, though conflicts resumed in the late 20th and early 21st centuries when Russia suppressed separatism in Chechnya.

Russian romantics exoticized the Caucasus as an Orient: lush, warm, adventurous but also foreign, savage, and violent. More than any other writer, Leo Tolstoy, deeply engaged with Caucasus cultures, challenged both romantic and official imperial narratives, in his early stories, The Cossacks, and his late masterpiece, Hadji Murad. Rasul Gamzatov and Alisa Ganieva are Dagestani writers who will help us avoid stereotypes while exploring the 20th and 21st century Dagestan through their nuanced emphatic vision.

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Kazimir Malevich. Black Square, 1923.Oil on canvas:106 × 106 cm. The Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.

What is Kazimir Malevich’s Black Square? Is it a fad, a black hole, a symbol of utopian aspirations, or a geometric module of abstraction?

Join us the first three Saturdays in May for Malevich’s Black Square: Negation of Art or A New Icon? We will investigate Malevich’s revolution in art through the prism of his groundbreaking work, The Black Square, first displayed in 1915 – a defining image of Modernism and a painting to which Malevich would return throughout his career, from Suprematism in art, architectural, graphic and industrial design to his later figurative works.

We will view Malevich not just as an innovative artist, but as a charismatic teacher, successful self-promoter, and revolutionary art theorist. The Black Square hung over his deathbed, and Malevich chose the black square to mark his funeral and grave; the artist and his invention became one. We will also investigate how The Black Square has changed the art world worldwide, bursting into contemporary design, architecture, and everyday life.

Click here for the complete course description.

Registration will take place on January 17, 2024. Please check the Newberry website for more information on how to register.