David Tavárez

October 7, 2020

David Tavarez, Professor of Anthropology and Director of Latin American and Latino/a Studies, talks about the exhibition Miracles on the Border: Retablos of Mexican Migrants to the United States, on view at the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center September 5 - December 13, 2020.

Usually commissioned from local artists working anonymously, retablos feature a narrative that is both written and pictorial. First-person vignettes, dated and inscribed with the supplicants’ names, draw on a traditional vocabulary such as “doy infinitas gracias” (I give infinite thanks). In the luminous illustrations above the inscriptions, earthly figures share space with holy images and a dreamlike representation of the miracle. As they accumulate on church walls, both in Mexico and the United States, these votives become public records of private faith, fears, and familial attachments.
 

Amitava Kumar

January 29, 2020.

Vassar Professor of English on the Helen D. Lockwood Chair Amitava Kumar returns to the program to talk about his acclaimed novel Immigrant, Montana (Knopf, 2018). The novel was named one of the Best Books of 2018 by the New Yorker, was on the New York Times 100 Most Notable Books list of 2018, and on President Obama's Favorite Books list of the same year.  

"This is a deeply American novel, one that delves into the messiness of love (and sex!), and the meeting point between identity, character, place, and the constant cultural stuff floating around. . . . Kumar's novel is uproariously funny and deeply moving."
—David Means, author of Hystopia

"Amitava Kumar's Immigrant, Montana is a beguiling meditation on memory and migration, sex and politics, ideas and art, and race and ambiguity. Part novel, part memoir, this book is as sly, charming, and deceptive as its passionate protagonist, a writer writing himself into being."
—Viet Thanh Nguyen, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Sympathizer

Herman Eberhardt

Ayako Matsushita on her graduation day from Heart Mountain High School. Before the war she attended Marshall High School in Los Angeles.

Frank Hirahara 1944

October 25, 2017.

Herman Eberhardt, Supervisory Curator at the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum, discusses the Library and Museum in Hyde Park, New York, and his exhibition: Images of Internment: The Incarceration of Japanese Americans During World War II, on view in the Library's William J. vanden Heuvel Gallery through December 31, 2017.

Patricia Phagan and Peter van Alfen

February 15, 2017.

Patricia Phagan, Philip and Lynn Strauss Curator of Prints and Drawings at the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center and Peter van Alfen, Margaret Thompson Curator of Ancient Greek Coins at the American Numismatic Society in New York, discuss their exhibition: The Art of Devastation: Medals and Posters of the Great War, on view at the Loeb Center January 27 - April 9, 2017.


39:41 minutes.

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