Spotlight: Olga Viso on Ana Mendieta

Last update: November 8, 2008 - 10:57 PM

OLGA VISO ON ANA MENDIETA

Tuesday: Besides running a major museum, Walker Art Center director Olga Viso is a scholar, curator and writer. Her most recent book is "Unseen Mendieta: The Unpublished Works of Ana Mendieta" (Prestel, $75), about a pioneering feminist who gained notoriety in the 1970s with body-oriented performances involving blood and water, feathers, fireworks and gunpowder. Mendieta's tragic death in 1985 when she fell from the 34th-floor window of the apartment she shared with her husband, sculptor Carl Andre, scandalized and "polarized the American art world," writes Viso, who found a trove of photos, movies, drawings and correspondence as she delved into Mendieta's archives. Viso will give an illustrated lecture about the Cuban-born artist. It will include unpublished material and gender-bending, sexually charged studies done while Mendieta was studying at the University of Iowa, traveling in Mexico and living in upstate New York and Cuba between 1973 and 1981. (7 p.m. Tue. Free. Walker Art Center, 1750 Hennepin Av. S., Mpls. 612-375-7600 or www.walkerart.org)

MARY ABBE