Miguel Gandert and Dr. Enrique Lamadrid discuss – Bless Me, Ultima

NEW PALTZ — Photographer Miguel Gandert and University of New Mexico Chicano studies scholar Dr. Enrique Lamadrid will discuss their work and Rudolfo Anaya’s Bless Me, Ultima, the focus of this year’s One Book, One New Paltz community-wide reading project.

Saturday, November 3
2:00 p.m.
Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art

Over a twenty-year period, Miguel Gandert created captivating photographs that examine the rituals – sacred and secular – practiced by mestizo peoples of the Upper Rio Grande Valley in New Mexico. Now on view at the SDMA is an exhibition of 25 of Gandert’s photographs – Rituales de la Tierra y del Espíritu – Rituals of the Land and Spirit. The exhibition was planned as a component to The Big Read, a month of community programs related to Rudolfo Anaya’s novel Bless Me, Ultima. Rituals of Land and Spirit will be on view October 30 -December 9, 2007 with a Day of the Dead opening reception on Friday, November 2 from 6-8 p.m.

Miguel Gandert’s photographs have been exhibited in museums and galleries throughout the world including the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History. He is an associate professor in the Department of Communications and Journalism at the University of New Mexico.

Dr. Enrique R. Lamadrid is a professor at the University of New Mexico and a specialist in Southwest Hispanic cultural studies. He has conducted field work in New Mexico, Chihuahua, Michoacan, Colombia, and Ecuador. His inquiries into the Indo-Hispanic traditions of New Mexico chart the influence of indigenous cultures on the Spanish language and imagination.

This event is part of The Big Read, an initiative of the National Endowment for the Arts in partnership with the Institute of Museum and Library Services and Arts Midwest.

For information about this event and other museum programs and exhibitions, call (845) 257-3844 or visit the web at www.newpaltz.edu/museum

Additional events relating to The Big Read project can be found at www.onebookonenewpaltz.org