Opens Saturday, Oct. 5
Art and democracy meet at the newest exhibit at the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art. “Libertad de Expresión: The Art of the Americas and Cold War Politics” opens Saturday, Oct. 5, and runs through Jan. 5. The museum, located at 555 Elm Ave. in Norman on the University of Oklahoma campus, presents pieces from more than 60 artists – including Joaquín Torres García, Roberto Matta and Jesús Rafael Soto – with work representative of styles from constructivism and surrealism to abstract expressionism. Collected by the Organization of American States during the Cold War to demonstrate the modern artistic virtues and freedoms enjoyed in Latin America and the Caribbean, this showing also tells a story of hypocrisy – how the organization and its Art Museum of the Americas at the time refused support to artists with socialist or communist leanings.
“Libertad de Expresión” is the focus of a symposium scheduled the day before the exhibit’s official opening. It will run Friday, Oct. 4, from 9 a.m.-4 p.m. and feature speakers on the politics and culture of Cold War-era Latin American and Caribbean beginning after World War II.
Exhibit admission is free. Regular viewing hours are 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday (open until 9 p.m. Friday) and 1-5 p.m. Sunday. For more, go to www.ou.edu/fjjma. For more on the symposium, call 405.325.4938.
