These programs are made possible in part by a grant from the Illinois Humanities Council, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Illinois General Assembly.
Saturday, September 30, 10:00 am – 12:00 pm
Gallery walks: 12:00 pm, 1:00 pm, 2:00 pm
The Newberry Consort guest artists
Exhibition curators: Ellen Baird, University ofIllinois at Chicago, and Cristián Roa-de-la-Carrera, University of Illinois at Chicago
Moderator: Carla Zecher, The Newberry Library
Newberry Consort guest artists will sing selections of church choral music in Latin, Spanish, Nahuatl, and Mixtec from the Consort’s season opening program. Immediately following, the exhibit curators, Ellen Baird and Cristián Roa-de-la-Carrera, will discuss their challenges and discoveries in the making of the exhibit.
At 12:00 pm and 2:00 pm, Ellen Baird will lead tours of the exhibit in English. At 1:00 pm, Cristián Roa-de-la-Carrera will lead a tour in Spanish.
Saturday, October 14, 11:00 am
Speaker: David Carrasco, Harvard University
An historian of religion, David Carrasco has published extensively on Aztec ritual, ceremonial centers, and sacred spaces. He will compare the Aztecs’ imaginative andcreative responses to colonization with the way that contemporary Mexican and Mexican-American activists, artists, and scholars use Aztec myths and symbols to construct and explore their own identity.
Please Note the New Venue!
Alliance Francaise Auditorium
54 W. Chicago Avenue (two blocks south of the Newberry at Dearborn and Chicago)
Thursday, October 19, 6:00 pm
Doors open: 5:30 pm
Speaker: Barbara Mundy, Fordham University
On either side of the Atlantic, both Spaniards and Aztecs used maps for practical and symbolic purposes. After the
Spanish conquest of the Aztec empire, the Spanish crown attempted to make its new global empire visible through maps. In response to these imperial ambitions, maps made in sixteenth century Mexico show the transformation of indigenous mapping traditions, as new maps and new understandings of space were forged in the New World.
Sunday, November 5, 1:30 pm - 2:30 pm
Tickets are required for this Chicago Humanities Festival event (see below)
In recognition of the Newberry’s important 2006 exhibition, The Aztecs and the Making of Colonial Mexico, the art historian and director of the Center for Latin American Studies at Columbia University, discusses notions of peace, conflict, and warfare as they pertained to Aztec culture and politics.
Tickets for the 2006 Festival go on sale to the general public September 18, 2006. For CHF memberships, tickets, and programinformation, visit www.chfestival.org or call the CHFticket office at (312) 494-9509 in late August.
Tickets for CHF events are $5 in advance, unless otherwise noted. A $1 surcharge per ticket may apply at the door. Programs, dates, venues, and presenters are subject to change without notice.
See other CHF programs at the Newberry Library.
Saturday, November 18, 11:00 am
Speaker: José Luis Matías Alonso (Nahua)
The lecture will be given in Spanish with English translation.
Documentary film director José Luis Matías Alonso will introduce the audience to what they are about to see and explain why it is important “to tell our own stories as indigenous peoples.” In Atltzatzilistli, his eighteen-minute film in the Nahua language with English subtitles, the people of the Nahua community of Acatlan, Guerrero, Mexico, ask for rain for the annual harvest. Their ritual performance includes “tiger fights,” masked boxing matches, Tlacololeros, who imitate thunder and lightning, and Cotlatlastin, who invoke the wind and waterladen clouds.
On Monday, November 20, 6:00 pm, the director will present the film at Erie Neighborhood House (La Casa Erie), 1347 W Erie St., Chicago.
Saturday, January 13, 2007, 11:00 am
Speaker: Enrique Chagoya, Stanford University
Mexican-born artist Enrique Chagoya mixes pre-Columbian mythology with religious icons, American comics, international popular imagery, art history, and images of ethnic stereotypes. Chagoya works in different media (painting, drawing, printmaking, and bookmaking) and his series of codices are made of the bark (amatl) paper used in ancient books. In his talk he will address cultural boundaries among peoples, from the time of the conquest of Mexico to today’s globalization.
The Newberry Library
Center for Public Programs
60 West Walton Street
Chicago, IL 60610-7324
telephone: (312) 255-3700
fax: (312) 255-3680
e-mail: programs@newberry.org