Cornell University Library

DJ Rich Medina ’92 will be part of a panel on early hip-hop culture June 6 in B20 Lincoln Hall. Medina is shown giving a lecture last fall in the university-level course "Hip Hop: Beats, Rhymes and Life."

Biotech Open House

The Cornell community is invited to attend a Biotech Open House, May 31, 9:30 a.m.-3 p.m. in 310 Biotechnology.

The open house offers visitors an overview of the Institute of Biotechnology, including the Biotechnology Resource Center and the Center for Advanced Technology, the Institute for Genomic Diversity and the McGovern Center for Venture Development in the Life Sciences.

There will be information on starting a biotech business and entrepreneurial activities, and tours of the McGovern Center’s bioincubator and of BRC core facilities, which support research with state-of-the-art technologies and services – including genomics, proteomics and mass spectrometry, imaging, bioinformatics, bio-IT and advanced technology assessment – available to investigators at Cornell and other institutions.

The event will include a poster session, pizza and door prizes.

Information: http://www.biotech.cornell.edu/news/biotech-open-house

Yoga with a view

The Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art offers an opportunity to take a midday break to learn about artworks in its collection and to practice yoga, from June 4 to Aug. 1.

Instructor Rachel VerValin will lead yoga sessions on the museum’s sixth floor overlooking Cayuga Lake. All skill levels are welcome, including beginners.

Sessions are Tuesdays and Thursdays from noon to 1 p.m., except June 18, June 20 and July 4. Call 607-255-6464 to register in advance for multiple sessions. The cost is 15 sessions for $105, 10 sessions for $80,
 eight sessions for $72 and 
five sessions for $45. Drop-in sessions are $12 each for the general public; $10 each for museum members, students and Cornell staff.

Gender and space

Vani Subraminian explores the gendered body – in spaces imagined by convention, inscribed with sexuality and activated by memory, in her exhibition “OPA|CITY,” an installation on display through June 28 in the Milstein Hall Gallery.

Subramanian is a Fulbright Fellow at Cornell in the Department of Performing and Media Arts, studying the gendered nature of cinematic spaces in popular Hindi films. A documentary filmmaker and feminist activist from India, she also has lectured in the College of Architecture, Art and Planning, which provided support for the installation.

Hip-hop history

A panel discussion on hip-hop culture, its origins and growth, and the importance of preserving its history will be held June 6 from 4:30-5:30 p.m. in B20 Lincoln Hall as part of Reunion 2013.

Panelists are Steven F. Pond, associate professor and chair of the Department of Music; DJ Rich Medina '92 and Ben Ortiz, assistant curator of Cornell's Hip Hop Collection.

The program includes a music demonstration of the art of the DJ. A reception will follow at 5:30 p.m. in Carl A. Kroch Library’s Hirshland Gallery, level 2B, where “Now Scream! The Cornell Hip Hop Collection Exhibition” is on display.

In 2007, Cornell University Library acquired a collection of artifacts from the first phase of hip-hop culture – including recordings, photographs, original party and event flyers, artwork and clothing from the 1970s and early 1980s. Over the past five years the collection has grown to include more than 50,000 items, making it the largest such archive in the world. 

The events are hosted by the library's Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections and the Cornell Hip Hop Collection.

Mushroom stories

Kathie T. Hodge, associate professor of mycology and director of Cornell's Plant Pathology Herbarium, will unravel some of the mysteries of mushrooms and fungal species, and the Cornellians who have shaped our understanding of fungi in all their forms, in “More Mushroom Alumni,” a Reunion 2013 lecture, Friday, June 7 at 10 a.m. in 160 Mann Library.

The lecture is held in conjunction with the exhibition “Focus on Fungus,” on display through June 29 at Mann Library.

Hodge’s topics will include a mushroom discovered on the Cornell campus in 1902, then never seen again; lost fungi collected during the 1896 Peary expedition to Greenland that involved several Cornell students; an odd little fungus that subverts the sex drive of a moss; the world's most poisonous mushroom, which was named at Cornell; and some exotic-seeming backyard fungi.

Information: http://mannlib.cornell.edu/events-exhibits