University of Wisconsin–Madison
By Maggie Ginsberg, Division of the Arts The newly announced line-up for the 2026 Wisconsin Book Festival demonstrates UW–Madison’s continuing influence in shaping today’s literary culture. UW–Madison’s Creative Writing program is hardly a best-kept secret. Long considered among the best MFA programs in the country, the fully funded two-year program only admits six students each …
Down in the brightly lit basement workshop of the Chazen Museum of Art last fall, two fabricators set up a time-lapse camera to capture three weeks of a very special custom build. Chazen’s small but mighty preparatory staff is regularly tasked with making things like pedestals and plinths for galleries and exhibitions, but these components …
Marcelle Haddix Karen A. Falk Distinguished Chair of Education and Dean of the School of Education When Milwaukee-raised Marcelle Haddix became dean of the No. 1-ranked UW–Madison School of Education in 2024, it felt like coming home — her parents met as Badgers, and she was born here. “I was also drawn to our School of Education’s …
Design students weave together the state’s waterways, two cultural tours, and the Wisconsin Idea to create the textile gifts that keep on giving. By Maggie Ginsberg, Division of the Arts, with Lauren Goulette This is a story about water. Deep underground, thousands of years of glacial melt joined with thriving watersheds and steady rain to …
The Division of the Arts at UW–Madison, with the help of a cross-departmental panel of judges, has awarded more than $120,000 to a select a group of outstanding faculty, staff, and students — both graduate and undergraduate — as recipients of the 2026 Creative Arts Awards! Their work and research is spread across fourteen different areas of …
Dismantle tropes, illuminate exclusion, ‘See Memory’: Astria Suparak, Anila Agha and Viviane Silvera join a legacy of visiting artists to challenge and inspire UW–Madison students. By Maggie Ginsberg, Division of the Arts Have you ever struggled to make sense of cutting-edge research on traumatic memory? What if an artist could help you visualize it through paint dripping on …
Not all aspiring screenwriters can go to Hollywood. Luckily for UW–Madison, Communication Arts alum Jason Rothenberg (’89) is bringing the Hollywood TV Writer’s Room to them. By Maggie Ginsberg, Division of the Arts COLD OPEN, FADE IN: Hollywood, 2013. We’re inside the writer’s room — day one, season one, episode one — of a new post-apocalyptic Sci-Fi …
Why Wisconsin? UW–Madison’s vibrant, interdisciplinary campus arts culture attracts students and professors from around the world. But don’t just take our word for it. By Maggie Ginsberg, Division of the Arts They come for the lakes, and those starburst chairs coloring the Terrace at Memorial Union in John Deere green, Allis Chalmers orange, and sunshine yellow. They come …
From post-Soviet Siberia to Baroque castles to the Hamel Music Center in Madison, Taya König-Tarasevich is putting her futuristic touch on historical performance. By Maggie Ginsberg, Division of the Arts Imagine you are inside a German castle, surrounded by the renowned, world-class musicians of Verità Baroque. They don’t stand apart on a stage; instead, they form a circle …
Why is this Landscape Architecture class drawing students from all over campus? By Maggie Ginsberg and Aaron Granat, Division of the Arts Inside the sunny, corner classroom in Microbial Sciences that hosts Landscape Architecture 373: Mindfulness in Restorative Environments, jumbo windows stretch all the way to the ceiling. As soon as Teaching Faculty Nathan Larson enters, the first …