Ken Ono is the Chairman of the Department of Mathematics at the University of Virginia and
former Vice President of the American Mathematical Society. He holds two endowed professorships;
he is the Thomas Jefferson Professor of Mathematics, and the Marvin Rosenblum Professor
of Mathematics. He is presently the Chair of Mathematics in the American Association
for the Advancement of Science. He is also a film producer and member of the board
of the Infinity Arts Foundation.
Gabrielle Foreman holds the Paterno Chair of Liberal Arts and is Professor of English, African American
Studies, and History at Penn State University. Professor Foreman is a poet's daughter
and interdisciplinary scholar raised between the South Side of Chicago and Venice
Beach, California. She is the founding faculty director of the award-winning Colored
Conventions Project which is housed in Penn State's Center for Digital Black Research/#DigBlk,
which she launched and co-directs with Shirley Moody-Turner. #DigBlk is made up of
undergraduate researchers, graduate student leaders, librarians, satellite faculty,
and arts and community partners who bring the buried history of early Black organizing
to digital life. Dr. Foreman was recently announced as a 2022 MacArthur Foundation
Fellow.
Public Lecture: His Page Was Clay: How an Enslaved Potter and Poet Became a Museum Superstar
6:00pm, McKissick Museum
TBD
Past Visits
Adriana Zavala, February 24-25, 2022
Adriana Zavala is a jointly appointed Associate Professor in the Department of History of Art and
Architecture and Department of Studies in Race, Colonialism, and Diaspora at Tufts
University.
1:15-2:30: Visit to ARTH class "Twentieth Century Art: Art and Justice in the 20th
Century" (McMaster 214) “Latinx Art, History, and Institutions” In this workshop, I introduce students to some of my favorite contemporary artists.
We explore their cultural background and art, while also discussing Latinx art’s cultural
and political specificity and its flux in history and in relation to other art historical
categories like “American” art or “Latin American” art, as well as more specific group
identities like Chicana/o/x, Diasporican, Cuban-American, etc.
4:30-5:45: Public lecture: “Of bodies and borders”, McKissick Museum Theater This lecture examines works by Latin American-descended visual artists living in the
United States, that is to say Latinx artists, whose lives have been marked by and
whose works explore the violence of colonialism, empire, and the ongoing politicization
of borders. Through a reading of art works by Adriana Corral, Teresita Fernández,
Guadalupe Maravilla, Carlos Martiel, Sandy Rodriguez, and Juan Sánchez, I explore
how racialization as a violent form of social differentiation cannot be separated
from the critical study of geopolitical power. As a scholar of both Mexican and U.S.
Latinx art and visual culture, I will address the necessity of intersectional scholarship
and praxis, and the importance of generosity, care, and witnessing in these troubled
times. *Note: because of the topic of this lecture, some of the works presented can
be challenging for some audiences.
9:40-10:30am: Visit to GEOG 210 class “People, Places, and Environment” (Callcott
011) “Resurrecting Mexico-Tenochtitlan, 1521-2021” Modern-day Mexico City sits atop the ruins of the Aztec capital city of Tenochtitlan,
which was founded in 1325, overthrown by Spanish invaders in 1521 and demolished in
1523. While fragments, or spolia, of Tenochtitlan’s physical remains had been present
within the city’s urban fabric since the sixteenth century, new archaeological findings
at the turn of the 20th century—such as the definitive identification of the site
of great teocalli (temple pyramid), captivated the minds and imaginations of some
of the country’s most prominent nationalist thinkers from author and statesman Alfonso
Reyes, to anthropologist Manuel Gamio, architect Ignacio Marquina, and visual artists
Diego Rivera and Juan O’Gorman. This lecture will explore key moments and articulations
of the modern “resurrection” of Tenochtitlan and will invite the public to reflect
on what lessons the 2021 quincentennial of Tenochtitlan’s capture and destruction
offer for us today.
Noon: Lunch and Q&A at Carolina International House at Maxcy College (advance registration
required) Talk and Q&A on Frida Kahlo’s Creativity: Staging Art, Staging Life In this lecture I explore Mexican artist Frida Kahlo’s creativity in the context of
the cultural renaissance that followed the Mexican Revolution. Springing from the
exhibition Frida Kahlo: Art Garden Life, which I curated at the New York Botanical
Garden (2015), I offer a close examination of several of the artist’s most important
paintings to explain how Kahlo’s self-adornment and the artful arrangement of her
home and garden were equally important modes of creative expression. The presentation
concludes by touching upon the ways that other artists, ranging from Diego Rivera
to photographers like Nickolas Muray and Lola Álvarez Bravo, collaborated with Kahlo
to facilitate the promotion of her art, her cultural politics, and her image.
We gratefully acknowledge the support of the many partners:
