‘Drawing the Line’

For many artists, creating images with pencil or charcoal, watercolor or pastel is often the starting point of a work, whether painting, sculpture, print or pottery. These drawings can be intimate, sometimes detailed, often spontaneous and frequently vivid.

The Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art highlights the craft of draftsmanship and the wide variety of drawings in its permanent collection in “Drawing the Line: 150 Years of European Artists on Paper,” opening Saturday, Jan. 20. Museum admission is free, Tuesday-Sunday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Works on display by European artists from the 19th to mid-20th century include “playful sketches, detailed landscapes that can still be identified today, portraits that capture the personality of the sitter, cartoons that lampoon old and young, rich and poor.”

Numerous 19th-century masters are represented, such as Eugène Delacroix, Edward Burne-Jones, and expatriates John Singer Sargent and James Abbott McNeill Whistler, as are 20th-century artists including Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Paul Klee and Egon Schiele. The works include finished drawings, drawings executed as preliminary to another work and line drawings on pages pulled from sketchbooks.

The exhibition was curated by Nancy E. Green, the Gale and Ira Drukier Curator of European and American Art, Prints & Drawings, 1800–1945.

The best of 2017 and 1982

Cornell Cinema reopens for the spring semester with a film rarely seen in theaters: “Blade Runner: The Final Cut,” director Ridley Scott’s definitive 2007 version of his 1982 sci-fi classic, screening Jan. 21 and 25 in Willard Straight Theatre.

Based on Philip K. Dick’s “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” (the 2010 New Student Reading Project selection at Cornell), the film is being presented in conjunction with “Blade Runner 2049,” Denis Villeneuve’s recent sequel also starring Harrison Ford, Jan. 26 and 28.

More releases from 2017 showing this week: “The Florida Project,” Jan. 23, 25 and 27, director Sam Baker’s acclaimed family drama with Willem Dafoe in a tale of “childlike wonder and adult desperation;” and “Professor Marston and the Wonder Women,” Jan. 22 and 24, beginning a “Women Scientists & Inventors” series of five recent films.

“The Battle of the Sexes,” screening Jan. 26 at 6:45 p.m. and free to all Cornell students with ID, is the true story of the infamous 1973 tennis match between Billie Jean King (Emma Stone) and Bobby Riggs (Steve Carell).

The upcoming schedule of screenings at Cornell Cinema is posted online.

Designing for climate change

Josh Cerra, associate professor of landscape architecture, will discuss the work of Cornell’s Climate-Adaptive Design (CAD) Studio in helping communities adapt to climate change, Jan. 24 at 5 p.m. at the Tompkins County Public Library, on the corner of Green and South Cayuga streets in downtown Ithaca.

CAD links Cornell students with Hudson River communities faced with extreme precipitation, flooding and sea level rise, to explore design alternatives for waterfront areas. Cerra will introduce concepts of resilience and share the studio’s process for inspiring awareness and action in preparation for the effects of changing climate.

Sponsored by the Paleontological Research Institution and Biophilia: ITHACA, Cerra’s talk is free and open to the public. Refreshments will be provided. For more information, email hnc24@cornell.edu or erin@ithacachildrensgarden.org.

Free performances

The Department of Music presents free concerts and recitals for the Cornell community and local residents throughout the academic year, including the Midday Music series, Thursdays in Lincoln Hall.

Faculty pianist Xak Bjerken opens the spring series, Jan. 25 in B20 Lincoln Hall, with a “dreamy and ethereal” program of music by Debussy, Zemlinsky and Jesse Jones.

Mike Cheng-Yu Lee, M.A. ’13, Ph.D. ’16, returns to campus for a recital of Beethoven and Schumann, Jan. 26 at 8 p.m. in Barnes Hall Auditorium.

Lee, a former graduate student in musicology, is now a lecturer of performance and director of the Australian National University Keyboard Institute.

The events are open to the public.

Employee Celebration

Tickets are on sale for Cornell’s 2018 Winter Employee Celebration, Saturday, Feb. 17. Discounted tickets are $5, available through Feb. 8 from the Athletic Department Ticket Office in Bartels Hall, open weekdays from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. or by calling 607-255-4347.

The event is for staff, faculty, retirees and family members, and features a Cornell Community Dinner, 3 to 5:30 p.m. in the Ramin Room of Bartels Hall. The menu includes chicken parmesan, vegetarian baked ziti and vegan and gluten-free options.

Tickets include dinner and admission to a variety of Big Red athletic events on campus Feb. 17, including women’s lacrosse, women’s and men’s basketball, and men’s polo.

Those with an Employee Celebration ticket can purchase (for an additional $5) tickets for the men’s ice hockey game vs. Yale. Family bowling also is available at Helen Newman Lanes from noon to 6 p.m. Games are $2 each, shoe rentals are $1 per person.