Soviet-Era Art Symposium
Visual and Performing Arts Symposium • January 13-15, 2026
Carthage will host the fourth annual symposium featuring art from the Samuel and Berry Shoen Soviet Art Collection.
“Borderlands and Crossroads: A Confluence of Art, Music, Film, and Everyday Life”
Hosted in collaboration with students, scholars, and educators, this interdisciplinary symposium uses the Samuel and Berry Shoen Soviet Art Collection to explore how creative expression intersected with daily life across the Soviet Union and its borderlands. Through exhibitions, performances, screenings, and dialogue, we invite audiences to consider how art, music, and film illuminate historical realities and resonate in human stories.
schedule of Events
Tuesday, Jan. 13
“From Fog to Factory: Soviet Animation and the Lives Between Dream and Labor”
1-2:30 p.m., Visual and Performing Arts Lab (VPAL)
See a curated screening of animated works by Yuri Norstein (“Hedgehog in the Fog,” 1975), Aleksandr Petrov (“The Cow,” 1989), Andrey Khrzhanovsky (“There Lived Kozyavin,” 1966), and Fyodor Khitruk (“The Story of a Crime,” 1962). These films reveal how Soviet animators balanced imagination, labor, and subtle social critique within a constrained political climate. Discussion and reception to follow.
Wednesday, Jan. 14
Roundtable Discussion “Women and Labor”
2-3 p.m., Visual and Performing Arts Lab (VPAL)
Guest participant Professor Christina Kiaer (Northwestern University) presents “Collective Women’s Labor at the Red Rose Silk Factory.” She will be joined by Carthage faculty James Richie, “Crossing Borders of Time, Language, and Culture: Translating Elena Guro;” Robin Holmes, “Solidarities: Labor and the Politics of Gender;” and Lisa Bigalke, “Women and Craft: Things I Wish I Learned in Art School.” Discussion and reception to follow.
Thursday, Jan. 15
Recital: Rachmaninov’s Sonata in G Minor for Cello and Piano, Op. 19 (1901)
Noon-1 p.m., H. F. Johnson Recital Hall
Enjoy a recital performed by Stefan Kartman, professor of cello and chamber music at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, and Jeannie Yu, pianist. This four-movement masterpiece showcases Rachmaninov’s lyrical depth, harmonic richness, and equal partnership between cello and piano.
Lecture: “Socialist Realism and the Lived Experience of Revolution”
2-3 p.m., Visual and Performing Arts Lab (VPAL)
Building on her recent book, “Collective Body: Aleksandr Deineka at the Limit of Socialist Realism” (Chicago, 2024), Professor Christina Kiaer (Northwestern University) reflects on how early Soviet art visually reimagined everyday life and bodily experience in the newly formed Soviet Union. Socialist Realism has long been dismissed as kitsch. But through a consideration of the works of artist Aleksandr Deineka and other major artists of that moment, in concert with paintings from the Samuel and Berry Shoen Collection of Soviet Art, Prof. Kiaer argues that, at its best, Socialist Realism was also an experimental aesthetic form that attempted to organize the lived experience of revolution toward collective ends. Discussion and reception to follow.
Special event: ‘Harvesting Light’ Exhibition Opening Reception
3:30-6:30 p.m., H. F. Johnson Gallery of Art and Visual and Performing Arts Lab (VPAL)
The opening reception for the exhibit “Harvesting Light: Soviet Women in Labor and Life” will feature a student presentation: “Milk Politics” by Jared Werner ’27 at 4:30 p.m.
Exhibition
Dec. 5-11, Jan. 7-17
Exhibition: “Harvesting Light: Soviet Women in Labor and Life”
Gallery hours: 1-6 p.m. Tuesday and Wednesday, 1-8 p.m. Thursday, 1-5 p.m. Friday, and 1-4 p.m. Saturday
H. F. Johnson Gallery of Art
A selection of paintings from the Samuel and Berry Shoen Collection of Soviet Art, the exhibition reflects on how women in the early Soviet Union were called to labor and nurture, simultaneously symbols of both progress and devotion. Their story is one of resilience, as they found light within the hard work of building and sustaining a new world. Please also attend the exhibit opening reception from 3:30 to 6:30 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 15. Download the exhibition catalog.