Aging and the Arts
The Texas Aging & Longevity Center presents Aging and the Arts. The series explores how artistic works vary as artists grow older and how the arts enhance older adults’ lives. We seek to generate a two-way discussion of how physical changes, brain changes, and maturation shape younger and older adults’ experiences with the arts.
Upcoming Events
Tuesday, March 23, 5 pm- Grey is Good: Art, Creativity, and Aging Well
This event is in collaboration with Blanton Museum Curated Conversations.
Click here to register.
Come along as we explore past and present cultural attitudes toward aging, while looking closely at outstanding works created in later life by Alice Neel, El Anatsui, and Ellsworth Kelly. We’ll also offer a sneak peek at a soon-to-be-realized mural by centenarian artist Carmen Herrera, commissioned specifically for the Blanton’s new grounds initiative!
Join Veronica Roberts, curator of modern and contemporary art, and Ray Williams, director of education and academic affairs, in conversation with Dr. Karen Fingerman, director of UT Austin’s Texas Aging and Longevity Center.
Thursday, May 20, 7 pm- Creative Care: The Power of Meaning-Making and Community Building
MacArthur Genius Award winner Anne Basting winner present “Creative Care: The Power of Meaning-Making and Community Building” as part of our Texas Aging & Longevity Center’s Aging in the Arts Series.
Zoom: https://utexas.zoom.us/j/95574198898
Anne Basting (Ph.D.) is a scholar and artist whose work focuses on the potential for the arts and humanities to transform our lives as individuals and communities. For over 20 years, Basting has researched ways to infuse the arts into care settings with a particular focus on people with cognitive disabilities like dementia. She is author of numerous articles and four books, including her most recent: Creative Care: A Revolutionary Approach to Dementia and Elder Care (Harper One, 2020), Basting is also the recipient of an Ashoka Fellowship, Rockefeller Fellowship, a Brookdale National Fellowship, The Randy Martin Spirit Award, and numerous major grants across both the arts and social services. She is author and/or producer of nearly a dozen plays and public performances, including Wendy’s Neverland (2019), Slightly Bigger Women (2015) and Finding Penelope (2011), a play inspired by a year of intergenerational conversations about the myth of Penelope from Homer’s Odyssey, and professionally staged at a long term care community. In all her work, Basting is striving toward a moment when the arts are fully infused into care systems.
Past Events
Thursday, January 14, 2021: Composers Growing Older
Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ww2-cNZHGZI&feature=youtu.be
Topic: Please join us for an hour of music and conversation about how composers’ music evolved with the passage of time, and how their brains - and the brains of listeners - change with aging.
Rob Radmer
Balcones Community Orchestra, Central Texas Medical Orchestra
Founder and Music Director
Andrea Gore
The University of Texas at Austin
Department of Neuroscience
