Museum Nights celebrates the Day of the Dead

November 2, 2006

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — The University of Florida Student Government will host Museum Nights with a celebration of the Mexican holiday Day of the Dead from 5 to 10 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 2, at the Harn Museum of Art and Florida Museum of Natural History in the UF Cultural Plaza.

The evening will include festivities both ancient and new. Participants will discover the roots and regional distinctions of this Mexican holiday through photographs and displays. Visitors also may make a calavera mask and enjoy authentic refreshments.

The event is sponsored by the Florida Museum of Natural History, Student Government, and Center for Latin American Studies, Mexican-American Student Association and other Mexicans in Gainesville. The “Hatching the Past: The Great Dinosaur Egg Hunt” exhibit is also free to UF students with their Gator 1 card.

Visitors at the Harn Museum of Art will view work by America’s modernist master in the Samuel P. Harn Memorial Exhibition, “Marsden Hartley: American Modern,” featuring 37 paintings, 16 works on paper, a portrait by Alfred Stieglitz and two sculptural busts of Hartley. The retrospective exhibition, on display at the museum until Dec. 31, 2006, reveals Hartley’s shifting practice and beliefs in the context of the changing cultural and political realities of the time.

A lecture at 6 p.m. by Dickran Tashjian, a nationally recognized historian of American art and Pulitzer Prize-nominated author, will discuss Marsden Hartley’s life and work. “Adventures in the Arts: Marsden Hartley and the First American Avant-Garde,” will not only address the artist’s contributions to the first American avant-garde, but also examine the intersections between art and literature in Hartley’s book of essays, “Adventures in the Arts: Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville and Poets.”

Funded by UF Student Government, Museum Nights strives to increase student and community visitation at the UF Cultural Plaza, located near the intersection of Southwest 34th Street and Hull Road. It serves as an entertainment alternative for Thursday nights in Gainesville and offers individuals who are too busy during the day the opportunity to visit the museums in the evening. For more information and a complete schedule, visit www.sg.ufl.edu/SpecialEvents/MuseumNights.