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The University of New Mexico

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Media Contact: Karen Wentworth (505) 277-5627
kwent2@unm.edu

Nov.5, 2007

New Exhibit Opens in Herzstein Latin American Reading Room

A new exhibit featuring the work of Kathleen Keating, a University Libraries professor is opening on November 12, 2007 in the Herzstein Latin American Reading Room’s conference room on the 2 nd floor of Zimmerman Library. The exhibit, titled “Drawing the Body: Memory, mimesis and the Florence Academy” will feature Keating’s recent works, produced while training at the Florence Academy of Art.

Keating’s drawings demonstrate not only the technique that she learning while training at the Florence Academy, but also provide an excellent example of the curriculum taught, and materials employed through the Bargue-Gérôme design course in late nineteenth-century French art and design schools.

The Florence Academy of Art continues this method of instruction, emphasizing a progression in drawing developed from the precise copying of antique engravings, then plaster casts, and finally, the live, nude model. Keating’s work, mostly charcoal on colored paper, marked a return to the European ‘academic’ tradition of drawing the body. As an artist, she pursued a course of training that places an emphasis on line, tonal value, memory and precision in rendering the human form.

The explanatory texts note the correspondences with academies of art and methods of drawing instruction utilized in Latin America during the same period. The exhibit is curated by Roland RodrÍguez, a Master’s candidate from the UNM Department of Art and Art History. RodrÍguez is the 2007-2008 recipient of the first-ever Chicano/Hispano/Latino Library Program (CHIPOTLE) Fellowship.

A reception for the opening of the exhibit will be held from 3:30 p.m. – 5:30 p.m. on November 12, 2007. The exhibit will be open for viewing through January 25, 2008.

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