For the past 13 years the Fall Arts Celebration has brought professional art to campus in a variety of forms. 

This year it will continue the tradition and by bringing Grand Valley State University art from an international arena.

Teri Losey, executive associate to the president and chair of the Fall Arts Celebration, said she hopes students take advantage of these opportunities to see such prestigious art.

“These are all events that you won’t see unless you are in a bigger city,” Losey said. “I would encourage people to go to one of the early events because then they’ll know the high quality and the excitement that they feel with an auditorium full of people and they’re going to want to go to more.”

The first event in the Fall Arts Celebration is the opening of the new exhibit “Dusk to Dusk: Unsettled, Unraveled, Unreal” in the Performing Art Center Art Gallery. The exhibit is now open to the public and will host an official exhibition reception at 5 p.m. on Sept. 10. The collection holds 32 works of art all from a private collection from The Netherlands called EKARD.

“The exhibition is composed of art by internationally recognized, major contemporary artists,” Henry Matthews said. “They are really works of art of outstanding quality and the kind of thing we don’t usually get to show at Grand Valley.”

At 7:30 p.m. on Sept. 21 in the Louis Armstrong Theatre, the celebration will continue with a performance put on by members of GVSU’s music faculty. The concert will include a performance from The Lighthouse Brass Quintet, a rendition of Professor Bill Ryan’s composition “Simple Lines,” and a performance from the Donald Sinta Quartet.

Poets Aimee Nezhukumatathil and Kwame Dawes will come to GVSU at 7 p.m. on Oct. 15 for a reading followed by a reception and book signing. Nezhukumatathil’s poetry book “Lucky Fish,” won the gold medal in poetry for the Independent Publisher’s Book Awards and the Hoffer Grand Prize for Prose and Independent Books. Dawes is the author of “Bob Marley: Lyrical Genius,” a study of the lyrics of Bob Marley, and has also published 16 collections of poetry.

“Every year if someone asks me that I’m not really sure what to say because we work really hard to make things interesting,” Losey said. “We just encourage students to partake in these award winning poets that are coming in.”

For the dance portion of the Fall Arts Celebration, Kun-Yang Lin/Dancers will present the show Meditations in Motion: Virtuosity and Imagination in Dance – Innovation and Modernity in Music at 7:30 p.m. on Nov. 2 Kun-Yang Lin/Dancers is a contemporary Asian-American dance company which performs internationally, creating dances that attempt to transcend cultural boundaries. While at GVSU, the company will work with GVSU New Music Ensemble to create a joint performance.

Bringing science and film together, theoretical physicist Kip Thorne will give a lecture at 7 p.m. on Nov. 16. on his work. Thorne worked on the films “Interstellar” and “Contact” to keep the science behind them accurate. He is also known for authoring “Black Holes and Time Warps: Einstein’s Outrageous Legacy” as well as the textbook “Gravitation.”

“Kip Thorne is going to be big draw this year,” Losey said. “I’m right in the middle of reading his book on Interstellar which explains a lot about the film and I think that’s going to be a big draw, the faculty that are working on that particular program are really excited.”

This year’s holiday celebration is called “Stille Nacht: A Celebration of Holiday Music from Europe” and will close out the Fall Arts Celebration at 7:30 p.m. on Dec. 7. Taking place at the Fountain Street Church, the event will include performance from the University Arts Chorale and the GVSU Varsity Men’s Chorus.

“A few years ago, we added the holiday celebration,” Losey said. “We really thought people in Grand Rapids would appreciate a holiday concert put on by our music faculty and they really love it.”