The Ashley Hall Mystery Treat Tradition
Everything you need to know about how to participate! Click HERE.
Carnival Information Sheet
How to register and what to expect. Click HERE.
Jill Muti
Ashley Hall celebrates the talent of its exceptional faculty and guest artists. This afternoon concert also pays tribute to outgoing Head of School Jill Muti as she takes the stage in her final Ashley Hall performance.
Ricard Bordas, countertenor | Faculty
Maggie Cook, soprano | Faculty
Aubrey Goio, cello | Faculty
Julia Harlow, harpsichord | Friend
Flora Nevarez, violin | Faculty
Laura Magnani, piano | Friend
Jill Muti, flute | Head of School
This classical program includes works by Chopin, Corigliano, Poulenc, and Quantz.
There is limited parking at 159 Rutledge Avenue. Best parking availability will be in Ashley Hall’s lot on Ogier Street.
Ashley Hall’s Writers Series returns this month with an exciting evening with Jed Perl, acclaimed art critic, writer, and author of Authority and Freedom. The event will take place on campus at 6:30 p.m. Monday, March 21, and is free and open for the public to attend.
Perl was the art critic for The New Republic for 20 years and a contributing editor to Vogue for a decade. He is currently a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books and is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship. Over his extraordinary career, Perl has published nine books, including Paris Without End, Antoine’s Alphabet, and New Art City: Manhattan at Mid-Century. His latest book, Authority and Freedom, is already receiving high industry praise.
During his evening on campus, Perl will be reading from his new book, and joined in conversation with Upper School faculty member Dr. Nick Bozanic. “I have come to expect any conversation with Jed to be challenging, insightful, informed by his vast erudition, and leavened by his generosity of spirit and expansive good humor,” says Bozanic. “I imagine our conversation here at Ashley Hall will be no different.”
Perl will also spend time visiting Ashley Hall classrooms during his time in Charleston. He will meet with AP English students who will be reading a chapter from Authority and Freedom prior to his arrival. They will be primed to ask questions about his working method as well as his point of view on contemporary art. AP Art students are also planned to meet with Perl to learn more about his conception of the “stand alone” value of art rather than its topical or socio-political relevance.
“Jed’s visit will afford students the opportunity to engage with one of the most prominent and – in his field – provocative public intellectuals of our time,” says Bozanic. “He’s an individual who has devoted – and I use that term deliberately – his life to investigating fundamental questions about the nature of art, its vital role in human affairs, the ways it can be used and abused for personal profit and propaganda, and the many ways in which art, properly understood, nourishes our lives as surely and as vitally as the food we eat in order to survive.”
“Jed’s book is a great and beautiful essay. It is great because it addresses a larger topic even than it claims to do….and he does so with an argument that is intended to address not just our moment, but the whole of the modern era in the arts. He does it effortlessly, too, and with a conversational air, a man at ease among the millennia, now in conversation with the Egyptian tomb painters, now with Aretha Franklin. Yes, a great and beautiful essay.” – Paul Berman, author of The Flight of the Intellectuals and Power and the Idealists
“Jed Perl reminds us of Auden’s famous dictum that ‘poetry makes nothing happen.’ Like Auden, Perl wants to argue that art fettered by a concern for ‘relevance,’ art that aims to be politically correct, is shrunken compared to art that is allowed a critical measure of ‘freedom’—that is, art in its imaginative essence.” – John McWhorter, a New York Times Columnist and Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University
“Taking his turn in the long, long chronicle of art criticism, Perl stands today as our generation’s most masterly re-maker of genius.” – Cynthia Ozick, novelist and critic whose many works include Antiquities and The Puttermesser Papers
“A thoughtful meditation on the transcendence of art.” – Kirkus Review
The storied tale of a shipwreck and the sorcery that ensues will be performed in the evening alfresco. Students performing Shakespeare at the Bear Cave is a tradition that dates back to the early days of Ashley Hall.
ORDER YOUR TICKETS BELOW
Looking for your next great read? As a part of Ashley Hall’s Lifelong Learning Series, faculty members are hosting an in-person book discussion on The Island of Sea Women on March 9, and we’re excited to invite current parents to join us. The event will be held on campus in the McBee Drawing Room.
“The Island of Sea Women is based on the lives of the Jeju Haenyeo, Korean women divers who harvest resources from the sea working in all-female collectives,” explains Assistant Head for Academic Affairs and discussion leader Carolyn Newton.
Written by New York Times bestselling author Lisa See, this book was chosen to specifically align with what’s happening on campus this year. As we celebrate the second half of our Year of Water, students are continuing to learn about global and local water conservation and protection. Water serves as an integral part of The Island of Sea Women, and it’s a great way to join in on the conversation.
“The Haenyeo are still diving today, carrying on the traditions, but they have embraced aspects of more modern technology,” says Newton. “The themes of the book are about how this culture has adapted to the resources of this location and how the women respond to the pressures in their lives, from being wives, mothers, friends, members of the collectives, and the breadwinners for their families, all set against the backdrop of how outside forces reshaped Korea in the 20th century.”
In our book discussion, we’ll dive into micro issues, including how women navigate personal relationships while also serving their communities, as well as macro issues of what it means to protect your culture and values in the face of competing global forces, explains Newton.
To join the book discussion, purchase a copy of the book and RSVP here:
Here’s what others are saying about the book:
“Lisa See excels at mining the intersection of family, friendship, and history, and in her newest novel, she reaches new depths exploring the matrifocal haenyeo society in Korea, caught between tradition and modernization. This novel spans wars and generations, but at its heart is a beautifully rendered story of two women whose individual choices become inextricably tangled.” – Jodi Picoult, author of A Spark of Light and Small Great Things
“I was spellbound the moment I entered the vivid and little-known world of the diving women of Jeju. Set amid sweeping historical events, The Island of Sea Women is the extraordinary story of Young-sook and Mi-ja, of women’s daring, heartbreak, strength, and forgiveness. No one writes about female friendship, the dark and the light of it, with more insight and depth than Lisa See.” – Sue Monk Kidd, author of The Secret Life of Bees and The Invention of Wings
“Compelling, heart-wrenching, and beautifully written, The Island of Sea Women will plunge you into a world and a story you’ve never read before and remind you how powerful women can and must be to survive.” –Kristin Hannah, author of The Nightingale and The Great Alone
This event is free and open to the public with registration kindly requested.
Ashley Hall is thrilled to welcome aquanaut, ocean conservationist, and documentary filmmaker Fabien Cousteau to campus. Cousteau is the grandson of legendary explorer Jacques-Yves Cousteau and continues to fulfill his family’s legacy of protecting and preserving the planet’s extensive and endangered marine inhabitants and habitats.
Through a compelling multi-media presentation, Cousteau takes his audience to places beneath the Ocean one can only imagine. We will learn about The Fabien Cousteau Ocean Learning Center Programs including Sea Turtle Restoration that supports female empowerment in coastal communities in Nicaragua. To learn more, click here. This is an evening not to be missed!
The event is part of a year-long campaign, Ashley Hall Celebrates a Year of Water, and new Take Action Globally (TAG) Program, which teaches students global citizenship with an emphasis on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
*Arrive at 6:00 p.m. to view student presentations inspired by the work of Fabien Cousteau and the UN Sustainable Development Goals, with a special focus on life below the sea.
Parking is available in Ashley Hall’s Smith Street lot, which is accessible via Warren Street. Please enter campus through the Smith Street Gate (133 Smith Street) and you will be checked in and directed to Davies Auditorium.