Buddhism is the state religion of Bhutan, and its institutions play a central role in society. Its monasteries are centers of continuing training. Buddhist ceremonial dances, choreographed over the centuries by religious leaders, serve not only spiritual functions but offer merit to all who observe. The visual arts, however beautiful, exist as expressions and enactments of Buddhist world-view, and as revelations of meaning for the initiate. Known as the “Land of the Thunder Dragon,” Bhutan has guarded its borders against much of twentieth-century development. With the acceptance by its king of a constitution in 2008, Bhutan may emerge as Asia’s newest democracy. However, access to the country remains strictly controlled, and its traditional Buddhist culture as yet yields little to modernity. American photographer Mark Tuschman seeks "to photograph people with compassion and dignity in the hope of communicating our interrelatedness." His images capture structures, rituals, arts, and individuals—young and old alike—that suggest the range of visual imagery associated with Buddhism in Bhutan. This exhibit has been arranged as a complement to the exhibition The Dragon’s Gift: The Sacred Arts of Bhutan at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco. On March 4, IEAS will host a colloquium on Buddhist Bhutan with Dragon’s Gift curator John Johnston and UC Berkeley Professor and Buddhism specialist Jacob Dalton.

Traje de la Vida: Maya Textiles of Guatemala is a new exhibition by the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley that explores weaving and artistry in Guatemala. Come explore the astonishing and beautiful styles of native dress in Guatemala, and the stories behind the Highland Mayan who wear them through hand woven huipils and dance and ceremonial costumes. Opening to the public on September 25, 2008, the spectacular works in this exhibit offer visitors a unique look into Maya culture through textiles collected over a hundred year period. Film footage by videographer Kathleen Mossman Vitale of Endangered Threads Documentaries is featured in the exhibition as well as photography by renowned documentarian, Jeffery Foxx. Through this exhibition, we hope to offer visitors a unique look into Maya culture, both traditional and contemporary. Rich colors and textures fill the galleries as visitors are treated to a visual cornucopia. Engaging hands-on activities for all ages and are interspersed throughout the exhibition. Learn to weave on a loom, or try on a colorful huipil and pantalones.

In Plug-In Pavilion, Davids and Medlin present their award-winning proposal to the 43rd Central Glass Architectural Design Competition, which called for “architecture coexisting with World Heritage Sites.” Their wind-powered plug-in pavilions are designed to sit atop Valparaiso’s unique hillside elevators, providing free electricity to the city’s residents while also promoting a twenty-first century urban revival. The modern architectural plans and digital conceptualizations of the pavilions, superimposed onto black and white photographs of Valparaiso, are both architecturally and aesthetically remarkable. Free and open to the public.

The Robbins Collection at Berkeley Law is currently presenting an exhibition of rare books on the Roman-Dutch legal tradition, including selections from the recent gift of books from Mrs. Elizabeth J. S. Scholtens Dalhuisen in honor of her father, Professor J. E. Scholtens. The development of the Roman-Dutch legal tradition was an important stepping stone in the early modern evolution of Western civil law systems from medieval Roman law scholarship. Influenced by French Humanism and the post-Reformation political and cultural transformation of Europe, Roman-Dutch law became foundational not only to modern legal practice in the Netherlands and its neighbors but, through Dutch colonial influence, to other continents as well. The current exhibit highlights fundamental works in Roman law, Dutch customary law and works from the great age of Dutch jurists such as Grotius, Voet, and Van Leeuwen, as well as volumes that highlight the diffusion of the Roman-Dutch tradition to South Africa and Sri Lanka during the colonial period and after. The exhibit is on display from 19 January - 15 March 2009 in the Law Library lobby, located in Boalt Hall. For more information about the Robbins Collection, please visit our website at: www.law.berkeley.edu/robbins.

Make it snow as part of this new exhibit, a hands-on exploration of “H2O from A to Z.” Visitors can create snow, rainbows, and clouds, as well as operate a model municipal water system and use hydraulics to lift 500 pounds. State-of-the-art multimedia presentations in the Water Theater highlight Earth’s water sources, the life cycle of water, and conservation. Image caption: Does your water footprint make a splash? These cylinders fill with the matching volume of water as you answer fifteen questions on your water usage in WaterWorks: Soak Up the Science. Also at LHS is Animal Grossology.

Adapted from the best-selling children’s series Grossology written by LHS alumna Sylvia Branzei, Animal Grossology brings to life all the gritty and gross facts on some of nature’s most "disgusting" critters.

This exhibition reveals the history of Greenwood Common, an enclave of eight distinct modernist houses, developed between 1951 and 1957 in the Berkeley hills by architect William W. Wurster. The development featured his idealistic sense of community coupled with a modernist aesthetic and an awareness of regional traditions. The purchasers of the lots, working with established architects and landscape architects, created homes showcasing a uniquely Californian lifestyle that reflected the mild climate, the distinctive geography, and the local environment. This small cluster of residences surrounding a shared open space combined a sense of the suburbs with the intimacy of a small town. As a result Greenwood Common has become an icon of regional mid-century modernism and continues to thrive as a well-maintained and comfortable community site—all as it was originally intended. Presented in conjunction with the publication Living Modern: A Biography of Greenwood Common, by Waverly Lowell. A Berkeley | Design | Book, published by William Stout Publishers, available spring 2009.

In 2009 the campus celebrates the American Cultures Center’s 20 years of curricular innovation and commitment to undergraduate education. As the only campus-wide undergraduate breadth requirement, the American Cultures curriculum is unique in touching every single Berkeley student, assuming the position of a signature Berkeley experience. This exhibit, “American Cultures: From Concept to Classroom,” highlights four courses that explore the intersection of race and ethnicity with biology, engineering, poetry and education, as well as the American Cultures Center’s current initiatives in the areas of service learning, pedagogical innovation, and groundbreaking scholarship. Some of the pioneering faculty and instructors featured in the exhibit will speak, along with Chancellor Robert Birgeneau, at the April 16 special event at the Free Speech Movement Café.

ATTENTION SENIORS! Now is the time to be a part of Berkeley history by taking your Senior Portrait for the Blue & Gold Yearbook. You can take your Senior Portrait from 2/17/09 to 3/7/09. It only costs FIVE BUCKS to have your photo included in our amazing publication. Sign up for your portrait sitting at http://yearbook.berkeley.edu

This exhibit showcases a 2008 winner of the Library Prize for Undergraduate Research, an honors thesis prepared by My Chau under the direction of Joanna Williams, Professor, History of Art. My Chau argues that patola textile has an international appeal across India and Indonesia. She highlights two distinctive textiles: Patola in Gujarat, India and geringsing in Bali, Indonesia from the perspective of "religious, economic and social systems." Her thesis further explores the preservation and the sacred and elite status of patola in various kinds of powder, temple, and palace paintings in Kerala, India. My Chau’s research was conducted through a visual analysis of a geringsing textile in the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris during her study abroad program in fall 2006 and the Gujarati patola textile in the Phoebe Hearst Museum as well as 48 illustrations cited in her thesis. To enrich her primary sources research, she followed up with scholars for more research inquiries in addition to checking out UCB library resources and requesting interlibrary loan items. The annual Library Prize attracts the very best undergraduate papers from courses taught in departments across the campus. It recognizes excellence in undergraduate research projects that show evidence of significant inquiry using the library, its resources, and collections, and learning about the research and information-gathering process itself. Textile image: "Bali Style" Patolu. Gujarat, India for the Indonesian Market. Silk; double ikat. 18th/19th century. Collection of Thomas Murray, Mill Valley, CA.

The genus Grimmia is the most diverse and abundant group of moss to inhabit the higher and dryer parts of western North America. Given California's diversity of such habitats, it is not surprising that the state has the highest species richness and the most endemic species of Grimmia anywhere in the world! Grimmia form an important component of the saxicolous bryoflora and their prevalence makes them difficult to ignore. However, Grimmia species have the reputation of being notoriously difficult to recognize. This is due, in part, to the use of microscopic features to identify species, and also because most species are distinguished by a suite of intergrading, relative characters. This makes dichotomous keys inappropriate tools for identifying species. This workshop will introduce a series of tables that can be used to identify species. When the genus is broken into four easily recognized subgenera, identification can be rapidly and reliably accomplished by comparing a diversity of characters with the tables. Through lectures and hands-on experience participants will learn the key characters of Grimmia that are critical to using the tables and dissecting techniques that will maximize the probability of correct identification.

The Townsend Center is pleased to have Ala Ebtekar’s striking diptych, “A Breath of Air” on display for the 2009 spring semester. Born in the United States to Iranian parents, Ebtekar was raised in both Iran and the U.S. As a young teenager he joined the K.O.S. (Kids of Survival), working with artist Tim Rollins on collaborative artworks involving groups of urban youth. He received his BA from the San Francisco Art Institute and in 2006 his MFA degree at Stanford. Ebtekar was a 2005 recipient of the San Francisco Foundation’s Murphy & Cadogan Fellowships in the Arts Award. His work is exhibited internationally and was recently featured in two prestigious exhibitions: “One Way or Another: Asian American Art Now,” a touring exhibition originating at the Asia Society, NYC, and the 2006 California Biennial at the Orange County Museum of Art. In 2007, Ebtekar’s work was featured in a solo exhibition at Gallery Paule Anglim in San Francisco and in “Under the Indigo Dome” at The Third Line in Dubai. In 2008, he was featured in Bay Area Now 5, at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. He is a visiting lecturer at UC Berkeley and Stanford University.

By investigating and reconstructing ephemeral histories of conceptual art, Mario García Torres finds new potential in old ideas and considers the functions of time and distance in our constructions of the past.

The constellation of works in "Galaxy: A Hundred or So Stars Visible to the Naked Eye," illuminates the Berkeley Art Museum collection and reflects its particular evolution. When the museum was founded in 1963, it inherited, among other things, several nineteenth-century landscapes by artists such as Albert Bierstadt and Théodore Rousseau that had belonged to the University for decades. Yet the museum’s founding was also made possible by the donation of forty-seven of his own canvases by the Abstract Expressionist painter Hans Hofmann. So, from the start, BAM/PFA’s collection expressed the interests and imperatives of diverse cultural moments. See interview with Lawrence Rinder, director of the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, who curated the show.

More than thirty important and beautiful objects from Tibet, Nepal, Kashmir, and India are presented in "Taking Refuge: Buddhist Art from the Land of White Clouds," an exhibition of art from the Himalayas. Sometimes referred to as the Land of White Clouds, the Himalayan region has served as a lasting home to Buddhism. In addition to acknowledging this name for the Himalayan region, the exhibition takes its name from a prayer common to all Buddhists: “I take refuge in the Buddha. I take refuge in the Dharma. I take refuge in the Sangha.” This simple prayer contains the essence of the Buddhist canon, referring to the three components of practice that constitute an active devotional life. Depictions of the Buddha, the Dharma (doctrine), and the Sangha (community) aid the believer in understanding, learning, and participating in Buddhist practice.

Recital. Gifted with “a light and outrageously beautiful” voice (The New York Times), soprano Nicole Cabell makes her Cal Performances’ debut at Hertz Hall. Program TBA.

Yek Shab or One Night is the story of a young girl who decides to spend the night walking around the streets of Tehran so her mother can have some privacy at home with a guest. She subsequently meets three men with different stories to tell. Presented by Iranian writer/director/actress, Niki Karimi

Director and actress Niki Karimi joins us on March 1 to present her films One Night and A Few Days Later. Well known for her portrayals of forceful, independent women in such films as Sara (1993), Two Women (1999), and The Hidden Half (2001), she also assisted Iranian master Abbas Kiarostami on The Wind Will Carry Us and ABC Africa before going on to direct her own films. In advocating for what she calls “the kind of cinema which describes reality and which gets close to people’s daily lives without making compromises,” she speaks for many of the courageous women whose works are presented here. Part of the PFA Series Women’s Cinema from Tangiers to Tehran.

Chand Rooz Ba’d or A Few Days Later explores the life of Shahrzad, a famous graphic designer living in Tehran who is consumed by her work and daily life. She is faced with a hard decision as she contemplates leaving her boyfriend with whom she is raising a disabled son. Presented by Iranian writer/director/actress, Niki Karimi

Director and actress Niki Karimi joins us on March 1 to present her films One Night and A Few Days Later. Well known for her portrayals of forceful, independent women in such films as Sara (1993), Two Women (1999), and The Hidden Half (2001), she also assisted Iranian master Abbas Kiarostami on The Wind Will Carry Us and ABC Africa before going on to direct her own films. In advocating for what she calls “the kind of cinema which describes reality and which gets close to people’s daily lives without making compromises,” she speaks for many of the courageous women whose works are presented here. Part of the PFA Series Women’s Cinema from Tangiers to Tehran.