“Startrails,” a 2011 inkjet print by Yuichi Takasaka.

The headlining exhibition at the Bates College Museum of Art this summer, Starstruck: The Fine Art of Astrophotography is among the first major exhibitions examining astrophotography as an art genre.

Media note: Anthony Shostak, the organizer of Starstruck and the museum’s education coordinator, appears on the WCSH-TV news magazine “207″ to discuss the exhibition on Friday, Aug. 31. The program starts at 7 p.m. and airs on Channel 6 — don’t miss it!

Featuring 106 images by 35 artists from 11 countries across 5 continents, the exhibition opens with a reception and the lecture Drawing with Light by Weston Naef, a juror for the exhibition, at 3 p.m. Saturday, June 9. Starstruck runs through Dec. 15.

Starstruck events continue through fall 2012. Learn more.

The public is welcome to the exhibition and related events free of charge. The museum is located in the Olin Arts Center, 75 Russell St. For more information or to order the Starstruck catalog, please visit the museum’s exhibitions page.

The museum’s curator of education, Anthony Shostak, organized the exhibition, which, with its attendant catalog, will present new scholarship in the rapidly evolving field of astrophotography. Modern photographic technologies give artists immense freedom within the confines dictated by their celestial subjects.

An image from Alfred Stieglitz’s famous “Equivalent” series. Gelatin silver print, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., Alfred Stieglitz Collection.

“Their creations,” says Shostak, “are nothing less than overwhelming, depicting humbling, glorious delights that are often invisible to both the naked eye and even the telescope, and are revealed only through photographic means.”

Nine artists are included in Starstruck by invitation to them or institutions representing them: Michael Benson, Linda Connor, Robert Gendler, Sharon Harper, David Malin, Thomas Ruff, Hans-Christian Schink, Alfred Stieglitz and Jacqueline Woods.

The remaining artists were selected through a jury process. The distinguished jurors are Naef, curator emeritus of photography at the J. Paul Getty Museum; Dennis di Cicco, pioneer of CCD astrophotography and senior editor of Sky & Telescope Magazine; and Jerry T. Bonnell, co-editor and author of NASA’s Web feature, Astronomy Picture of the Day.

A 242-page color catalog will document the exhibition, illustrate each work in it and feature essays by the jurors and Eric Wollman, professor of physics at Bates.

The sun, the changing face of the moon and stars adrift on the night sky have inspired humankind since prehistoric times, driving our understanding of the universe and igniting countless creative imaginations. For millennia, a glimpse of stars in a dark sky has provoked a sense of wonder that has inspired cultural phenomena from ancient creation myths to current cinema.

The firmament’s splendor has also captured the eye of photographers from the earliest history of their medium. Today their creations are gaining attention. “Starstruck showcases the increasingly popular genre of astronomical imaging,” says Bonnell. “The photographs represent a cosmic confluence of scientific exploration and the artistic process.”

An archival inkjet print of the emission nebula IC5067 by Ken Crawford.

“When we began organizing Starstruck,” says Shostak, “we found no evidence of large exhibitions investigating this genre in the context of an art museum. During the intervening years, a small handful of exhibitions have touched upon astrophotography, but none with the scope of our project.”

“Starstruck is the perfect exhibition for an academic museum,” says Dan Mills, director of the Bates College Museum of Art. “Astronomy is a widely popular endeavor, linking people with the natural world and the quest to answer life’s ‘Big Questions.’

“At Bates, we investigate precisely those kinds of questions across the disciplines. Having an art exhibition serve as the nexus of that exploration is part of what makes us a different — and exciting — kind of museum.”

Starstruck will be accompanied by a wide variety of educational programs including lectures, workshops, guided star parties, concerts, theatrical performances and films.

It will also address environmental concerns. “Even as astrophotography enters a golden age of technological development and interest,” says Babak Tafreshi, artist and founder of The World at Night, “light pollution threatens to destroy humankind’s access to the starry sky.”

Acknowledging that the museum expects the exhibition to be extremely popular with a wide audience, Bonnell quips, “If you can’t find a good background for your laptop from this exhibition, you’re just not really trying.”

“Saturn,” a 2006 archival inkjet print by Damian Peach.

Two exhibitions that view cultural touchstones of centuries past through a contemporary lens open Oct. 8 at the Bates College Museum of Art, Olin Arts Center, 75 Russell St.

On display through Dec. 18 are the exhibits Les Femmes du Maroc: An Exhibition by Lalla Essaydi, featuring photographs based on 19th-century Orientalist paintings; and Metamorphoses: A Collaboration with Ovid by Wally Reinhardt, a collection of gouache paintings interpreting writings of the Roman poet.

Nick Capasso, curator of the Essaydi show and senior curator at the DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park of Lincoln, Mass., presents a gallery talk about Essaydi’s work at 3:30 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 9, in the museum. A reception follows.

Reinhardt discusses “Metamorphoses” at 6 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 13, Olin’s Room 104. Essaydi visits Bates to talk about her work at 7 p.m. Monday, Nov. 29, also in Room 104.

The museum is open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays. For more information, please call 207-786-6158 or visit the website.

“Both exhibitions will interest the public,” says museum curator William Low. “But they also link with the curriculum and interdisciplinary teaching at Bates in important ways — Essaydi due to the political and cultural elements in her artwork, and Reinhardt because of his reinterpretations of classical mythology.”

Born in Morocco and now living in New York, Essaydi has gained international prominence through timely and beautiful work exploring the condition of women in Islamic society, cross-cultural identity, and the history of art, particularly Orientalism — a popular 19th-century Western school of art that interpreted the cultures of North African and Western Asia.

“Essaydi’s striking, large-scale photographs subvert long held misconceptions of women’s roles and identities in the Arab world that were popularized by the romantic and exotic depictions by Western artists,” says Low. Depicting Moroccan women in staged narratives borrowed from Orientalist paintings, she retains the basic forms of the originals — but strips them of their color, removes male figures, erases cues to social status and covers all nudity.

Most distinctively, she incorporates her signature calligraphy throughout the images, writing directly on her models’ bodies, apparel and surroundings. “Her use of calligraphy, traditionally a male art form for the transcription of sacred texts, and henna, which is traditionally a women’s decorative and ritual art form, also raises the cultural distinctions between men and women within the Arab and Muslim world,” says Low.

Where Essaydi’s striking visual vocabulary serves to challenge longstanding traditions of cultural and gender imperialism, Reinhardt since the 1980s has brought a lively, colorful and playful spirit to his retelling of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. This literary masterpiece combines history and myth to tell the story of the world from creation until Julius Caesar’s deification.

Painting in gouache, a water-based medium that combines the luminescence of watercolor with a saturation of color that resembles oil paint, Reinhardt has used Ovid as the inspiration for his vivid depictions of favorite characters from classical mythology.

“Reinhardt’s vivid, very contemporary pictures bring to life subjects now thousands of years old, making them fresh and vibrant in a way that defies their age,” says Anthony Shostak, education curator at the museum.

“The classical stories retold by Ovid and interpreted visually by Reinhardt are fundamental to Western culture, and are taught at Bates and in our local public schools, making the exhibition as relevant as it is enjoyable. This is a show for everyone, young and old, who loves these stories and wants to reconnect with them in an exciting and fun way.”

Reinhardt’s work has been shown at such museums as the Carnegie Mellon Art Gallery, Boston’s Institute of Contemporary Art, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the James A. Michener Art Museum and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Les Femmes du Maroc is made possible by generous grants from the Lois and Richard England Family Foundation and the Davis Family Foundation. Reinhardt’s exhibition and visit to the Bates College campus are offered in co-sponsorship with the programs in classical and medieval studies and in interdisciplinary studies, and by the Division of Humanities.

A two-year, $50,000 grant recently received by the Museum of Art will support educational programming for 400 local middle school students at the museum.

The grant supports the museum’s Thousand Words Project. Launched in 1996, the project enhances not only students’ grasp of the visual arts but their writing skills. The museum’s key educational outreach program, the project integrates the museum into the middle schoolers’ curriculum — making it, in effect, an extension of the students’ own classrooms.

“The Thousand Words Project is very fulfilling, because students react so positively to it,” says education coordinator Anthony Shostak, who has overseen the the program since its inception. “They are simply excited to see original works of art in a museum setting, and they appreciate the challenge we give them to look at and think critically about the images.”

He says, “What we do is opposite to the spoon-feeding of images they are used to from TV and advertising.”

Through the project, students from middle schools in the Lewiston-Auburn region each make 10 visits to the museum. Working with Shostak, student interns and professional writers-in-residence, the visitors learn to look actively at the art on display, developing their critical responses and examining their emotional reactions to it.

Then they articulate these thoughts through writing assignments that progress from simple descriptions to more layered and creative work such as fiction, poetry or journalistic writing.

“With this program we underscore the importance of cultural and visual literacy by linking them to standard literacy,” explains Shostak. “Students experience the cross-fertilization that has historically occurred between the arts and other disciplines.”

“Part of the success of the Thousand Words Project stems from the fact that students are truly hungry for all of the art and art history training they can get,” Shostak adds. “Moreover, we don’t just offer something schools don’t provide, like some kind of field trip. The project is collaborative — fully integrated into the curricula of the schools — and thus assists in achieving Maine Learning Results standards.”

The Museum of Art was founded to preserve the nation’s largest repository of Marsden Hartley drawings and other items relating to this important American artist, a Lewiston native. Its other holdings include a robust print collection and notable works by Maine artists of national significance, such as Dahlov Ipcar, the late William Thon, Neil Welliver and Charles Hewitt.

The flagship museum for the Maine Art Museum Trail, the  Museum of Art is located in the Olin Arts Center, 75 Russell St. Admission is free. The museum is open 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday through Saturday and 1 p.m.-5 p.m. Sunday (closed major holidays). For additional information, please call 207-786-6158.

The artist for the Oct. 6 concert will be announced. Anthony Shostak, banjo, will perform Oct. 13. Bates applied music instructors Carol Furman, clarinet; Julia Adams, viola; and Mark Howard, piano, will perform works from Mozart Trio Oct 20. Pianist Brian Franck will perform works by Russian composer Alexander Scriabin Oct. 27.

Additional information about the Bates Noonday Concert Series is available by calling the Olin Arts Center at 207-786-6135.

A Litchfield resident, 18-year-old Lissa Schneckenburger is a champion fiddler, taking top awards at the Commonground Fair, Maine Festival and East Benton contests. She has played the fiddle from the age of six, much of that time under the tutelage of noted string teacher Greg Boardman of Auburn.

In recent years, Schneckenburger has studied with such national musicians as fiddler Jay Ungar, Scottish fiddler master Alasdaire Fraser and jazz artist Matt Glazer. She will begin classes in the fall as a music performance major at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston.

Often invited to perform at contradances throughout Maine, New Hampshire and Massachusetts, Schneckenburger joined with three musical colleagues last year to form the band Wake the Neighbors. The group, scheduled to appear the Lewiston’s upcoming Festival de Joie, has appeared at Bates, the Norland Living History Center, the Portland New Year’s festivities and the opening of the renovated Merrill Auditorium at Portland City Hall.

Joining Schneckenburger on stage for the July 26 concert will be band members John Cote on guitar and mandolin and Anthony Shostak on banjo. Cote performs on Schneckenburger’s new recording, The Mad Hatter.

The program includes many selections from the new recording, including Irish, Scottish and French Canadian jigs and reels as well as some original tunes. For more information, call 207-782-0386 or 207-268-4013.