Students, faculty, and community members of all ages marched handcrafted costumes, puppets, and intricate floats through the streets of Oberlin on the morning of Saturday, May 4 as a part of the annual Big Parade. Since 2002, this celebration has showcased creative expression and community in downtown Oberlin. Paraders begin working on their floats and costumes months in advance of the parade. This year, community members led workshops in the Oberlin Public Library to teach origami, large-scale mask...

The Art History department hosted Dr. Ridha Moumni in Hallock Auditorium Tuesday, Oct. 2 for his presentation, “Art, Life, and Politics in Post-War and Postcolonial Tunisia.” Moumni’s presentation discussed how the aesthetic of Tunisian art was influenced over time by political actions in and around the country. Located in North Africa and bordered by the Mediterranean Sea, Tunisia gained its independence in 1956. Although the French never officially colonized Tunisia like they did neighboring Algeria, they established a protectorate in 1881. Although the governmental structure was preserved, Tunisian ministers were still appointed, and the bey remained the official monarch, supreme authority was passed to the...

Stephanie Wiles, currently the Richard J. Schwartz Director of the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University, has been appointed the Henry J. Heinz II Director of the Yale University Art Gallery, beginning in July. She has spent the last 20 years working at several university museums, including a stint as the director of Oberlin’s Allen Memorial Art Museum from 2004 to 2011. She is acclaimed for her expertise in old master drawings, prints, and British and American art, and has bro...

Douglas McKenna is a mathematician, computer scientist, and software engineer. On Tuesday afternoon, he gave a talk titled, “The Art of Hamiltonian Motifs: Generalized Hilbert Curves with Linear, Self-Similar, Fractal, or Space-Filling Boundaries.” McKenna received degrees from Yale University, and has been creating mathematical and fractal art both with a computer and by hand since the 1970s. He contributed illustrations to Benoit Mandelbrot’s book The Fractal Geometry of Nature, and his d...