"There was a time when our country was known as a world leader in art and culture. America was defined by the music of Leonard Bernstein, the painting of Jackson Pollock, the dance of Martha Graham and the plays of Arthur Miller," writes Office of the Arts Director Scott Edmiston in a recent essay featured in State of the Arts, a magazine published by that office. "Is it possible to reclaim that leadership again?"While any well-rounded program for a university's theater, music or visual arts department must pay homage to the European masters and to the artistic traditions of non-Western societies, this fall's artistic events in the American tradition seek to revive their heritage in a fierce, almost defiant way.

The Intercultural Center, along with the undergraduate club Martin Luther King Scholars and Friends, is currently presenting an exhibition of portraits of civil rights leaders by local artist Pamela Chatterton-Purdy. The portraits, painted in the style of religious icons, incorporate found objects and the artist's own paintings along with traditional gold leaf. The symmetrical style and head-on portraits of the people they memorialize are simultaneously traditional and "in your face," as Chatterton-Purdy says. The series memorializes such civil rights leaders as Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rosa Parks but also some figures whose names may be less familiar to students, such as Viola Gregg Liuzzo. Liuzzo, a white woman, was driving with a black man in her passenger seat when a carload of Ku Klux Klan members spotted and chased her. Eventually, the KKK members caught up with Liuzzo's car and shot the woman in the head. Liuzzo's death led to an investigation of the Klan, which ultimately brought to light many of the Klan's previous crimes.

One portrait may be of special interest to the Brandeis community - Chatterton-Purdy's portrait of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, a Polish Jew who escaped the turmoil in Germany in 1940 and marched with Dr. King to Selma. The artist created the painting specifically for the Brandeis exhibition.

Chatterton-Purdy is more than qualified to comment on the Civil Rights Movement in America. Her first job was as an art director in the early 1960s for Ebony Magazine, where she was one of two white employees at the 150-person company. She worked alongside her African-American colleagues to document the tragedies and triumphs of the Civil Rights Movement. From childhood, she remembered being struck by the absurdity of racism. Her father, while working for Allied Moving Vans, was hired by Jackie Robinson, the first black major-league baseball player.

"He received death threats," Chatterton-Purdy said in an interview last week. "It was like, 'What is this world coming to?'"

The idea for the icon series came to her many years ago, but it wasn't until late 2007 that circumstances allowed her to begin working on the paintings. She made 16 of the 17 paintings in only 3 1/2 months, working from dawn to dusk in her studio. When asked if she planned to add more to the series, she said, "I'll probably end up doing 50. I would like to find a permanent home" for the collection. With the earnings she would make from selling the collection, "half would go towards a scholarship or lecture series"-whatever the institution buying the collection thought was appropriate-"to fight racism or to give someone of color a chance."

The exhibition, currently open on level three of Goldfarb Library, runs through Sept. 30. On Sept. 3, the MLK Scholars and Friends will host a "Freedom Walk," which will take attendees around campus to observe locations that played a key role in Brandeis' own civil rights history. It will be followed by a talk by Chatterton-Purdy. The walk begins at 3 p.m. at Rapaporte Treasure Hall, and the artist's talk will begin at 4 p.m., also at Rapaporte Treasure Hall.

The Rose Art Museum's Sept. 26 opening is to include a focus on American works as well with "Project for a New American Century," an exhibition meant to highlight recent acquisitions from the realm of contemporary American art. That exhibition will debut alongside "Invisible Rays: The Surrealism Effect," which will include work by Salvador Daliacute;, Yves Tanguy and Jean Cocteau. "Drawing on Film," an exhibition of "direct film" - that is, film that has been directly altered through drawing or other physical changes to the film itself - will also be opening at the Museum.

The Music and Theater departments will also be contributing their own celebration of American art forms. Along with orchestral performances such as the Brandeis-Wellesley Orchestra's production of Sibelius' Symphony No. 1 (Nov. 22 at 8 p.m. in the Slosberg Recital Hall) and the Brandeis University Chorus' program of Bach's Cantata 21 (Dec. 7, also at 8 p.m. in Slosberg), the year-old Marquee Series continues with a concert the department says may include clogging. Kristen Andreassen, a singer, songwriter and dancer who has performed with the all-female bluegrass group Uncle Earl, will be singing, dancing and playing Nov. 7 in Slosberg at 8 p.m.

The Brandeis Theater Company's fall line-up is diverse indeed. The program includes a musical comedy by Stephen Sondheim that focuses on five Brooklyn youngsters dreaming of a more glamorous life and a dance interpretation of Edith Wharton's "House of Mirth." Eric Hill (THA) directs Sonheim's "Saturday Night," which will take place in the Laurie Theater beginning Oct. 16. "Tea and Flowers, Purity and Grace," Susan Dibble's interpretation of Wharton's turn-of-the-century novel about a young aspiring socialite's struggle against the rigidity of her social status, begins Nov. 20 on Spingold's main stage.

It is the Brandeis Music Department that will offer an international experience to complement the distinctly American works being presented this fall. The Lydian String Quartet is continuing its five-year project entitled "Around the World in a String Quartet," which leads the quartet to perform works by composers from countries all over the world. On Oct. 4 and Nov. 8, the quartet will bring music from the U.S., Peru, Germany, China and Austria to Slosberg, as well as music from France and Czechoslovakia in the spring. Additionally, the biannual MusicUnitesUS world music festival will feature Indian singer Shubha Mudgal this fall. Mudgal will be accompanied by Aneesh Pradhan on tabla, Sudhir Nayak on harmonium and Murad Ali on sarangi. The capstone concert of Mudgal's residency, which begins Oct. 16, will take place Saturday Oct. 18 at 8 p.m. in Slosberg.

Given the variety of the fall's Arts program across the board, it's hard to make a claim that any artistic style can truly "claim leadership" in the arts world, whether it is made up of distinctly American art forms, traditional European masterpieces or world music virtuosos. One thing is for sure: Somewhere in the program there is something to broaden the horizons of every member of the Brandeis community.