It’s been an interesting year for the arts at UMass Boston. The comings and goings have been as surprising and exciting as ever. The Performing Arts Department has seen the retirement of faculty member John Conlon, a twenty-nine year veteran of UMB. Conlon has taught in both the English Department and the former Theatre Arts Department and just directed “The Real Inspector Hound.”

Though hard-hit by budget cuts, the arts at UMB have remained resilient and, indeed, have managed to expand in spite of them. Arts on the Point, the sculpture park at UMB, will be welcoming sculptor Maya Lin, who will design a site-specific piece to complement the newly constructed Campus Center. Lin is responsible for designing the Vietnam War Memorial in 1982 at the age of 21 while only an undergraduate student at Yale. Lin will be visiting UMass Boston in the spring of 2004 to evaluate and plan an original sculpture around the finished Campus Center.

Besides modern-day Lin, an old world master makes an appearance in sculpture and spirit at UMB. Auguste Rodin’s “The Burghers of Calais” will be installed, possibly by the end of the fall 2003 semester. “Burghers” is based on an event that occurred during the Hundred Years’ War between England and France where the leading gentry, or burghers, offered themselves as hostages to Edward III of England in exchange for his ending of the siege of Calais. The pieces UMB would be receiving are two life-sized bronze sculptures of the same man, one nude and one clothed.

The Harbor Art Gallery, located on the first floor of McCormack, had a chance to play host to the works of Kathleen Bitetti, an artist who made students and faculty alike aware of the facts surrounding domestic violence, as well as UMB student Thomas Barker’s “Comic Yet Painful Situations,” a series of paintings and prints that are a throwback to the surrealist style. As well as showcasing the works of talented artists, the Harbor Art Gallery has changed hands for the first time in three years, with the arrival of art student and Director Tara McCauley.

University Health Services and the Alcohol and Addiction Center have also been party to the arts. Albert Brodsky’s exhibition on the dangers and consequences of alcohol abuse in the Healey Library was another one of the fruits of the Alcohol and Addiction Center’s efforts.

One of folk music’s major events, the WUMB Folk Festival, saw the lawns and buildings of the UMB campus filled for the sixth year in a row with an ever-widening sampling of genres ranging from jazz to Celtic to bluegrass. KoKo Taylor and her Blues Machine and Emmy Lou Harris were only two of the highlights of this year’s performance.

Most recently, artist and UMB video faculty member Ann Torke visited Amsterdam along with her assistant, UMB art student Jonathan Colon, to participate in the Da Balie Museum’s “How far can you go in 24 hours” art-a-thon. In the process, she built a live feed weathervane upon the roof of the Da Balie showcasing the panoramic views of the Netherlands.

UMB alumnus Kevin Hubbard came out with a classical guitar album, “Aspirations,” reflecting a background in folk, jazz, and rock built on foundations that include J.S. Bach as well as Hector Villa-Lobos. The Latin flavor of the album simmers with well-known composers like Fernando Sor and Manuel Ponce.

It’s been a jam-packed semester for the arts at UMB with more events next semester to come. In spite of the red ink outlining UMB’s budget, the university continues to struggle onward, still breaking ground and making headlines. Whether it’s the publication of The Watermark or the annual juried student show at the Harbor Art Gallery, one can only look with anticipation to what the promise of spring will bring.