INFORMATION PROVIDED BY THE MEXICAN CULTURAL INSTITUTE OF NEW YORK 
 

New York premiere: Labyrinths of Memory
Wednesday, January 23 at 1:30 & 6 PM
The Jewish Museum and the Film Society of Lincoln Center present
The New York Jewish Film Festival
January 9 - 24, 2008

A total of 32 shorts, dramas, and documentaries from Germany, Hungary, France, Argentina, Russia, the US, Mexico, Canada, Israel, the United Kingdom, and Austria add up to an exhilarating worldwide journey. To mark the 60th anniversary of the founding of the State of Israel, this year’s festival showcases ten new Israeli films. A festival-within-the-festival presents four masterpieces by the late Austrian stage, television,
And film director Axel Corti.
Labyrinths of Memory is this year's Mexican film by director Guita Schyfter.
(Mexico, 2007, 95 min., Spanish with English subtitles)

NY PREMIERE
This documentary draws parallels between two very different women united by a search for identity: Maite Guiteras, Mexican born, adopted at birth, and raised in Cuba; and the film’s director, born in Costa Rica to East European Jewish parents and raised in Mexico. Each defies ethnic and geographic boundaries to travel to her ancestral home to claim a place in the world.

Director Guita Schyfter in attendance.
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 23, 1:30 PM
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 23, 6:00 PM
Screenings, unless otherwise noted, are at:

The Walter Reade Theater at Lincoln Center
165 West 65 Street
between Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue, upper level.

Due to construction at Lincoln Center, please walk west on 65th Street for Walter Reade Theater access.

www.thejewishmuseum.org 

Torrijos: The Man and the Myth January 31- May 5, 2008 Opening Reception: Wednesday, January 30 at 7 PM Torrijos: The Man and the Myth Guest Curator: Nan Richardson Opening Reception: Thursday, January 30, 7:00 p.m. Gallery Hours: Wednesday - Saturday, 12:00 p.m. - 6:00 p.m. Torrijos: The Man and the Myth is a unique exhibition of never-before-published photographs of former Panamanian leader Omar Torrijos by Graciela Iturbide, one of Mexico's most celebrated photographers. Omar Torrijos was Panama's most famous leader (from 1968 to 1981) and is one of the best-known twentieth century figures throughout Latin America.

Graciela Iturbide, General Torrijos on on of his visits to the countryside in Panama, 1975.

The exhibition is not only an homage to Omar Torrijos, it is also the documentation of a period of social change in Panama. Graciela Iturbide photographs a rural Panama and captures indigenous people in small villages across the land. At times we see the clash between urban and rural life, indigenous and modern life, as Iturbide moved alongside General Torrijos from community to community.

Torrijos: The Man and the Myth will be accompanied by a bilingual publication by Umbrage Editions. It will include all the exhibited photographs by Iturbide and never-before-told personal reminiscences by Gabriel García Marquez, Nobel Prize Laureate in Literature who was a friend and confidant of General Torrijos.

In conjunction with the exhibition, Americas Society will host public lectures, conversations with the photographer, and other related cultural and education programs.

Americas Society
680 Park Avenue
New York, NY

Click here for more info

Unmonumental
December 1, 2007 - April 6, 2008

Unmonumental: The Object In The 21st Century
New Museum New York inaugural exhibition
Mexican participating artists: Abraham Cruzvillegas, Gabriel Kuri and Jonathan Hernández

Unmonumental is an international group show that proposes a dynamic, new exhibition model by beginning with a major sculpture exhibition then adding layers of collage, sound and new media. The first segment, Unmonumental: The Object In The 21st Century, presented on all three floors, explores an important trend in sculpture by artists from around the globe who are adopting and reinventing the 20th century vanguard technique of assemblage as a touchstone for the state of our world in a new entury. Redeploying the old strategy of using found, fragmented, and discarded material, their art addresses, the fractures and contingencies of our fragile and volatile contemporary existence in fresh, poignant and sometimes challenging ways.
Organized by the New Museum's curatorial team of Richard Flood, Laura Hoptman and Massimiliano Gioni, Unmonumental: The Object In The 21st Century, includes 30 artists whose object are seemingly improvised from common materials, often appearing as if they had been created in basements and garages rather than in traditional ateliers. Fabrication, scale, and permanence have given way to that wich is intimate, provisional, domestic and otherwise overlooked confirming in the words of the curators, "the times demand an anti-masterpiece".

For more information visit www.newmuseum.org or www.kurimanzutto.com
New Museum, 235 Bowery, New York, NY 10002

The participation of the Mexican artists was made possible with the support of Mexicana Airlines

El Maestro de Modernismo: Photographs by Manuel Alvarez Bravo
January 10 - March 1, 2008

THROCKMORTON FINE ART is pleased to announce our first exhibition for the new year, El Maestro de Modernismo: Photographs by Manuel Alvarez Bravo. Considered to be one of Latin America’s greatest and most influential photographers of the twentieth century, this exhibition will feature many of the extraordinary images he captured in a career that spanned eighty years.

Manuel Alvarez Bravo (1902–2002)
He began his career as a young photographer in the 1920’s in post-revolutionary Mexico. With the emergence of Mexico City as an international center, artists and intellectuals, celebrated the avantgarde and their indigenous past. Through association with and recognition by such luminaries as Tina Modotti, Edward Weston, Paul Strand, and Henri Cartier-Bresson, Manuel was able to work within a wide range of styles and subject matter including: formalist abstraction, architecture, interiors, landscapes, still lifes, and portraits. Bravo, influenced by the indigenous culture of Mexico, also remained open to the artistic influences outside his native country. His ability to mix these elements into his own invention, created photographs that transcended culture, time, and place. His work ahead of his time evokes the myths of twentieth century Mexico from revolutionary politics to surrealist depictions of everyday objects. His photographs have been exhibited all over the world and included in the collections of major world museums.

THROCKMORTON FINE ART
145 EAST 57TH STREET, 3RD FLOOR
NEW YORK, NY 10022
212.223.1059
www.throckmorton-nyc.com 

Congruent Allusions - Work by Carmen Maria
January 8 - 29, 2008
Opening Reception: Thursday, January 10 from 6-8 PM

The Agora Gallery is proud to present Mexican artist Carmen Maria in Congruent Allusions. Scheduled to run from January 8th through January 29th the collection will feature a captivating selection of Carmen's Japanese prints.
Carmen's work may be seen on http://www.agora-gallery.com/ArtistInvite/carmen_maria.aspx 

About Carmen
Carmen Maria’s recent work employs a grand range of visual texture. In some of her paintings, an austere simplicity reminiscent of Japanese prints fastens the eye cleanly to one fixed point, while in others a Klimptean agoraphobia, loaded with textiles and the tropes of textile design and quilt making, invite breathless, frenetic viewing.

In these canvasses, one finds a reverence for the mythological mingling beautifully with an unmistakable streak of mysticism. With her strong classical sense, Maria uses unmasked anachronisms- placing a figure in a modern pair of denim jeans on a classical Albertian grid, for example-or depicting modern lovers on the same canvas with a Trojan soldier-to evoke a sense of unsettledness within the banal and everyday. At the same time, the contrasts work to invoke not displacement but synthesis, suggesting that the classical is connected with the modern and the basic components of human reality constant. Carmen Maria lives and exhibits her work in Mexico City.

Agora Gallery
530 West 25th Street
Chelsea, New York, NY, 10001
agora-gallery.com 

Archive Fever: Uses of the Document in Contemporary Art
January 18 - May 4, 2008

Mexican participating artist: ILAN LIEBERMAN

One of the most compelling issues explored by artists in recent years centers on the nature and meaning of the archive, that is, how we create, store, and circulate pictures and information. this widespread investigation examines the archive as both a conceptual and physical space in which memories are preserved and history decided. The exhibition presents works by leading contemporary artists who use photographic images to rethink the meaning of identity, history, memory, and loss.

The International Center of Photography
1133 Avenue of the Americas at 43rd Street
New York, NY 10036
www.icp.org

State Symphony Orchestra of Mexico
Sunday, February 17, 2008 at 3 pm

Enrique Batiz, Director and Musical Conductor
Alfonso Moreno, Guitar

Program:
Bernstein, Leonard - 'Candide' Overture
Rodrigo, Joaquin - Concierto de Aranjuez
Chavez, Carlos - Sinfonia India, No. 2
Sibelius, Jean - Symphony No. 2 in D Major, Op 43

Box Office: 718.960.8833
Tickets: $25, $20, $15, $10

Concert Hall
Lehman College
250 Bedford Park Blvd. West
Bronx, NY 10468

www.lehmancenter.org

Concerts at Saint Luke's & polyhymnia present:
A Fiesta of Mexican Baroque Music
February 26, February 28 & March 1, 2008

Tuesday, February 26, 2008 at 8 PM
Marcia Young, Karol Steadman & Lisa Hindmarsch

The Nun's Recreation
Music from the cloistered communities of Mexico
$25 General Admission, $15 Students & Seniors

Peek behind concent walla and hear the musical diversions of the Mexican religiosa, where music, learning and cooking were celebrated as high art forms. After you hear the music, sample the inventive cuisine of the Mexican convents at a festive reception following the concert.

Thursday, February 28, 2008 at 8 PM
The Choir of Saint Luke in the Fields

18th Century Mexican Masters
$30 General Admission, $20 Students & Seniors

The fantastically carved and gilded interiors of the churches of baroque Mexico resounded with equally ornate masses, motets and villancicos by composers like the Native American Manuel de Zumaya (c. 1678-1755) and the Italian Ignacio de Jerusalem (c. 1710-1769). The Choir of St. Luke in the Fields with an ensemble of period instruments will explore the little known music of the Mexican "ultra baroque".

Saturday, March 1, 2008 at 8 PM
Polyhymnia

Elected of the Lord
17th Century Mexican Ceremonial Music by Fernandes, de Lienas & Lopez Capillas
$25 General Admission, $15 Students & Seniors

Polyhymnia's ensemble of voices and instruments will present music written in African and Amerindian dialects by Portuguese composer Gaspar fernandes (1570-1629) to welcome the Phillip III's new viceroy to Puebla in 1612, elegant polyphony by Native American composer Juan de Lienas (fl. c. 1617-1654) and elaborate vesper music by Mexican born Franscisco Lopez Capillas (1608-1674). Join us for this fascinating multi-cultural panorama of baroque Mexico.


For reservations & more information:
The Choir of St. Luke in the Fields
212.414.9419
www.concerts.stlukeinthefields.org

Polyhymnia
917.838.4636
www.polyhymnia-nyc.org