Arts & Events

By Evan Welsh In America’s current political climate, films elevating voices of the marginalized have become more and more necessary with every passing day. For the past eight years, a group at Tacoma Community College (TCC) has given a platform for films of this nature with the Diversity Film Festival. This year it has focused on curating films that ask the question of what it means to be an American. The theme for this year’s festival is “Defining America,” a perfect example of what the festival strives to be. “TCC’s...

By Matthew Gulick Currently on display at the Washington State History Museum is a giant dollhouse with smaller dollhouses inside. The playset recursion is part of the “Toytopia” exhibit on view through June 10. Showcasing toys from the past hundred years, “Toytopia” takes visitors on a tour through the evolution of play, dealing in nostalgia and wonder along the way. This interactive display is a sure trip down memory lane as it covers a broad range of capitalization on children’s play. From an old wooden rocking horse that seems to...

By Parker Barry “Are you scared of death? Great, let’s talk about that. Are you intrigued by death? Great, let’s talk about that! There is no agenda at a Death Cafe. All voices are welcome. There will likely be laughter and there might be tears. But there will definitely be cake!” the T-Town Death Cafe website says. Death is a subject we tend to draw a curtain over, often using humor or silence to avoid it. This can sometimes feel a bit ironic given the fact that the one thing...

By Brynn Svenningsen “I didn’t come out of the womb thinking I was going to be a professional feminist,” Loretta Ross said as she addressed the crowded Kilworth Chapel last Friday. Ross, a gender studies professor visiting from Hampshire College, presented a speech on reproductive justice and intersectional feminism. She spoke of reproductive justice from the heart and shared her related personal experiences in a thought-provoking hour-long speech. An event on reproductive justice and intersectional feminism holds a lot of weight. Walking into an event like this can be quite...

By Parker Barry Our team name was “Heidegger says we should spend more time in graveyards because death is the ONLY promise in life.” Heidegger is a 20th-century German existentialist philosopher. I was feeling existential and decided to make everyone at trivia night (every other Thursday at 6 p.m. in Wyatt 101) jump on the death-is-the-only-promise-in-life train. The mood at trivia night last Thursday was a bit bleak. It seemed that all of the students just wanted to get in, answer the questions, and get out. The just-get-it-done attitude was...

By Evan Welsh It is difficult to review a cultural moment, especially when that cultural moment does not really involve you. As a white male, I cannot speak for how black communities have responded to the phenomenon that is “Black Panther” or how well the film represents their communities. However, I can say I personally appreciate how fresh and relevant “Black Panther” feels as a film. The breakaway from many of the conventions seen in the last decade of superhero films and director Ryan Coogler’s choice to focus on large,...

By Matthew Gulick To mark the occasion of Leonard Berstein’s would-be 100th year on earth, the University of Puget Sound Symphony Orchestra performed “Polyglot: Celebrating the Legacy of Leonard Bernstein in Contemporary Music.” The 67-piece orchestra played six pieces written by contemporary composers. Conductor and assistant professor Anna Wittstruck introduced the event after the orchestra’s first piece. The former Interim Music Director and Conductor of the Stanford Symphony Orchestra and Stanford Philharmonia, Wittstruck has conducted across the globe with sold-out concerts in Mexico City and Havana, Cuba. Wittstruck began at...

By Parker Barry “You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive” — James Baldwin. “Everything I Needed to Know I learned from Fiction,” the title of African American studies professor Renee Simms’ Feb. 27 lecture, seemed to ring true. She took the audience through her life and...

By Brynn Svenningsen Placed at the center of the gallery, paper cutouts of rock climbers, ladders, and a cheetah-human hybrid all sat suspended in resin and glass. In artist Dustin Yellin’s extremely detailed art piece titled “Migration in Four Parts,” layers of resin with small paper figures work collaboratively to create a scene too chaotic for the viewer to look away from. Yellin’s piece is part of a new exhibit that has recently arrived at the Tacoma Art Museum (TAM). The exhibit is called “Immigrant Artists and the American West”...