The Art of Listening Deeply
Headphones are provided to listen to Zuzu Black '25's original compositions. Photo provided by The Trout Gallery.
Interactive exhibition invites visitors to see, hear in new ways
by MaryAlice Bitts-Jackson
Air conditioning. Background music. Birdsong. Church tower chimes. Creaks. Crickets. Footfalls. Traffic. Wind in the trees. Each day brings an underappreciated symphony of sounds to those who can and do listen. An exhibition at Dickinson’s Trout Gallery invites us to pause, tune in to the music around us and revel in a truly multisensory experience of the world.
To Listen Deeply, on view through Dec. 14 at the Trout, opens with a reception on Sept. 5, 5–7 p.m. Curated by Sophy Nie ’25, it presents music- and sound-informed artworks from across cultures and eras and incorporates recordings of original compositions by Zuzu Black ’25. Nie, who earned an art history degree from Dickinson this past May, developed the exhibition last spring as a Trout Gallery curatorial intern. She titled it in tribute to experimental composer Pauline Oliveros, whose 1971 Sonic Meditations encouraged “deep listening” as an enriching and political act.
Enhanced listening came naturally to Russian master Vassily Kandinsky, who experienced synesthesia, seeing color when he heard music. His lithograph Composition IV (1911) makes jazz visible. Black’s accompanying composition, available through headphones, brings the artwork’s vividness to life in sound, interpreting and intensifying the layers and energy in Kandinsky’s work.
Black also composed music to accompany a 19th-century woodblock print by Utagawa Kunisada. Listening to the Sounds of Insects on an Autumn Evening evokes a full auditory scene—the hum of cicadas and conversation, a trickling stream, the clink of tea cups. “When we bring in school groups, we ask them to imagine the sounds—they love that,” says Maddy Hull '24, Trout Gallery post-bac fellow in education. Black deepens this experience with Resonation Chamber, a haunting piece of music with layers of otherworldly tones.
The exhibition also features visual depictions of music and musicians, such Lida Moser’s portrait of Charles Mingus and Manuel Álvarez Bravo’s photo of an instrument integral to the Indigenous Wixárika community. Two works incorporate sonic elements and echo Oliveros’ belief that sound can be a tool for protest and resistance. Lorna Simpson filmed mouths humming a culturally and personally meaningful song. Louise Lawler’s audio piece calls out the names of prominent male artists as birdcalls, critiquing patriarchy in the art world.
As new Dickinson graduates, Nie and Black are on to new projects. Black, a Nashville native, recently earned a fellowship in classical music programming with American Public Media Group and aspires to write for film, theatre and television. Nie, who grew up in China and minored in French & francophone studies, received the Florence Weller Fellowship and plans to study global exchanges in the early modern world in Florence, Italy, through Syracuse University’s Florence Graduate Program in Italian Renaissance Art.
Nie and Black will hold a virtual gallery talk about their experience via Zoom Nov. 11, 7-8 p.m. And on Oct. 16, Erin Woods-Burke, lecturer in theatre & dance, will lead a lunchtime discussion and guided meditation, putting Oliveros’ instructions into practice (RSVP required).
Nie hopes the exhibit will inspire visitors to find new and interesting ways to experience art, sound and the world: “In a world facing challenges and unrest, this exhibition invites a pause in our busy daily lives—a moment to listen to the world around us, to each other."
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Published August 21, 2025