Arts & Culture

Thanks to MTSU's Center for Popular Music and the James K. Polk Ancestral Home in Columbia, Tenn., the community can get a glimpse into the music of a former first lady — and a century — in two free public concerts.

At age 13, Murfreesboro native Sarah Childress Polk filled a notebook with her favorite popular songs and hymns, laboriously copying the lyrics and musical notations of "Blue Eyed Mary," "Last Adieu," "One Kind Kiss Before We Part," "Sigh Not for Love," "Tho' You Think to Vex Me" and more.

Dr. Charles Higgins will share his perspective of “The Cosmological Principle” during the MTSU Department of Physics and Astronomy’s next First Friday Star Party.

The event will be held starting at 5:30 p.m. Friday, Feb. 1, in Wiser-Patten Science Hall Room 102. Following Higgins’ 30- to 45-minute talk and weather permitting, attendees will go outside to utilize telescopes set up by the observatory. People should dress warmly; forecasted temperatures are expected to be 27 to 28 degrees.

An accomplished filmmaker and MTSU professor will share his knowledge of student filmmaking with the Nashville artistic community next month.

Dr. Bob Pondillo will address the “Push Play Filmmakers Showcase,” which is slated to start at 7 p.m. Monday, Feb. 4, in the Church of Scientology Celebrity Centre’s Community Hall, 1130 8th Ave. South in Nashville.

Pondillo, a professor of mass media history and American culture in the Department of Electronic Media Communication, will discuss the impact of student filmmakers on the local filmmaking scene.

The U.S. artists contributing to MTSU’s latest exhibit faced only one restriction on their works: no larger than one square foot.

Prepare to be amazed at the results. Art Department Chair Jean Nagy was.

“You have a piece made from Legos!” Nagy said of "12x12: A National Juried Exhibition of Small-Scale Works of Art," which opens today, Jan. 17, at MTSU’s Todd Art Gallery. It also features paintings, clay, etchings, drawings, wood, prints, photography, mousetraps and shirt collars. 

Decades of loveliness and elegance will be on display at Oaklands Historic House Museum in the “Wedding Dresses through the Decades” exhibit Jan. 13-March 3.

In partnership with MTSU’s Department of Human Sciences, Oaklands will fill Maney Hall with bridal fashions ranging from the brocade and satin of the 1870s to the sensible suits of wartime weddings in the 1940s.

The exhibit will begin with an open house from 2 to 4 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 13, for the regular museum admission price of $5 per person.