[Brazil@Harvard] May 4 - "Brazil, 1978" & avant-garde art

See below for details on two talks on Brazil this Wednesday evening by two outstanding DRCLAS visiting scholars (both, regrettably, will take place at 6pm.) ------ DRCLAS's Boston Area Workshop for Latin American History presents: "Brazil, 1978: The Dictatorship Dismantled" A work-in-progress portrait of the last months of the political opening under the presidency of General Ernesto Geisel, from the October 1977 firing of Army Minister Silvio Frota to General João Figueiredo's March 1979 presidential inauguration. 1978 was the year in which two words reappeared in the Brazilian political vocabulary: strike and amnesty. Along with them emerged a new figure: Lula. ELIO GASPARI is the Lemann Visiting Scholar for Spring 2005 at Harvard University's David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies. Gaspari is one of Brazil's most respected journalists and historians, currently writing weekly columns for the leading newspapers Folha de São Paulo and O Globo (and syndicated in ten other newspapers). He has been widely acclaimed for his four-volume history of the Brazilian military dictatorship and its transition to democracy, based on extensive interviews and special access to military archives: The Dictatorship Ashamed, The Dictatorship Unmasked, The Dictatorship Defeated, and The Dictatorship Cornered. The first and second volumes were awarded the Brazilian Academy of Letter's award in the essay category in 2003. For the forthcoming fifth and final volume--tentatively titled The Dictatorship Dismantled and covering the 1978-1979 period--he is currently engaged in archival research at the Harvard libraries. This talk will feature a sneak-preview into this eagerly awaited book. Wednesday, May 4 6:00 - 7:30pm DRCLAS - 61 Kirkland St., Cambridge - Conference Room (2nd floor) http://drclas.fas.harvard.edu/about/directions ------ The Sackler Museum's M. Victor Leventritt Lecture Series presents: "Ancient Symbols, Modern Visions: Latin American Visual Languages" "Infinite Space and Today's News" (formerly entitled "Carnival of Perception") With certain digressions, Guy Brett's lecture will explore the combination of a cosmic longing with social consciousness in mid-20th century Brazilian avant-garde art. GUY BRETT is the Peggy Rockefeller Visiting Scholar for Spring Term 2005 at Harvard University's David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies. Internationally recognized as one of the most influential writers and thinkers on contemporary art, Brett occupies a distinctive position as an independent curator and critical historian of the visual arts. He has championed artists regularly left out of the “international surveys,” particularly artists from Latin America, whose importance within the history of modern art is now being fully acknowledged. During his stay at Harvard, he will develop a project investigating the notion of the "void" in the work of Lygia Clark, Hélio Oiticica, Mira Schendel and other Brazilian and Latin American artists. His research will also explore the role played by the box-format and book-format in Brazilian avant-garde art from 1960, and the differences in the origins of conceptual art in Latin America, the United States, and Europe in response to formal and socio-political concerns. Wednesday, May 4 6:00pm Sackler Museum Auditorium http://www.artmuseums.harvard.edu/information/directions.html ------