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Posts tagged as “St. Benedict”

Baltimore’s Walters Art Museum Opens “African Presence In Renaissance Europe” Exhibit

By goodblacknews on November 9, 2012

Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid “The Three Mulattoes of Esmereldas” (1599) is one of the works in “Revealing the African Presence in Renaissance Europe,” at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore.

BALTIMORE — In a fall art season distinguished, so far, largely by a bland, no-brainer diet served up by Manhattan’s major museums, you have to hit the road for grittier fare. And the Walters Art Museum here is not too far to go to find it in a high-fiber, convention-rattling show with the unglamorous title of “Revealing the African Presence in Renaissance Europe.” 

Visually the exhibition is a gift, with marvelous things by artists familiar and revered — Dürer, Rubens, Veronese — along with images most of us never knew existed. Together they map a history of art, politics and race that scholars have begun to pay attention to — notably through “The Image of the Black in Western Art,” a multi-volume book project edited by David Bindman and Henry Louis Gates Jr. — but that few museums have addressed in full-dress style.

From Samba to Carnival: Brazil’s Thriving African Culture

By goodblacknews on October 27, 2012
Brazil's thriving African cultureBrazil’s thriving African culture

Rio de Janeiro (CNN) — From samba and carnival to food, music and religion, African culture is everywhere in Brazil.  The cultural heritage stems from the estimated four million slaves who were brought to the country over a 300-year period, at least four times as many as to the United States.  Brazil was the last country to abolish the slave trade in 1888. More than half of Brazilians now identify themselves as black or of mixed race, according to the latest census.

Rio de Janeiro now has the most famous carnival in the world, attracting an estimated 1.1 million visitors to the city this year and with 5.3 million people taking part in street parties, according to the English language newspaper The Rio Times.