Campus Carver celebration is Feb. 2

Iowa State's annual George Washington Carver Day celebration will be held Monday, Feb. 2 (5:30 p.m., doors open at 5 p.m., Memorial Union Great Hall). A reception featuring ISU Creamery ice cream will follow the hour-long program.

RSVPs are requested by Monday, Jan. 26.

Visual artist and architect Amanda Williams, Chicago, will give the keynote address. Williams' projects frequently use bright colors to comment on Black culture and history. Last year, working with chemistry undergraduates at the University of Chicago, she followed a Carver-patented process for creating a Prussian blue pigment from Alabama clay. She used the resulting paints in a set of paintings and on two buildings for New Orleans' triennial Prospect art event.

The program will include guests from Tuskegee University in Alabama, where Carver spent his career after completing bachelor's (1894) and master's (1896) degrees at Iowa State. University president Mark Brown will speak, and Tuskegee's Golden Voices Concert Choir will perform. 

Additionally, two Iowans who played a key role in establishing Feb. 1 as George Washington Carver Day in Iowa will comment on his legacy in a video presentation: Ambassador Kenneth Quinn, emeritus president of the World Food Prize Foundation; and Simon Estes, retired opera singer and F. Wendell Miller Distinguished Artist-In-Residence in the music and theatre department.

Dan Robison, dean of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS, the official home to the Carver Day observance), will provide opening and closing remarks. 

More music, second lecture on Tuesday

All four Iowa State choirs -- Iowa State Singers, Cantamus, Statesmen and Lyrica -- and Tuskegee University's Golden Voices Concert Choir will give a joint concert the next evening (7:30 p.m., Stephens Auditorium). The performance will open with an interactive lecture about spirituals by Golden Voices conductor Wayne Barr, with demonstrations from his choir. One, some or all of the ISU choirs will join the Golden Voices in the final three pieces of the concert.

This Golden Voices residency is sponsored by the LAS Dean's Artist in Residence program, CALS and Estes, and concert tickets are free with a good-will donation.

Williams will present a campus lecture, "Run Together and Look Ugly After the First Rain," on Tuesday (6 p.m., MU Great Hall).