DURHAM—What if Picasso had not died in 1973 but was murdered by the Germans during the occupation of Paris in 1940?

This is the scenario playwright Ariel Dorfman has devised for his play, “Picasso’s Closet,” which will have a staged reading at the Nasher Museum of Art, beginning Oct. 29.

“Picasso’s Closet” is the first official event celebrating “25 Years of Ariel Dorfman at Duke University”, an event sponsored by the Duke University Center for International Studies.

The Nasher Museum’s exhibit, “Picasso and the Allure of Language” creates a stunning background for this play, which, like Picasso, distorts reality, transgresses and reforms the question of “what is art?”

The play premiered in 2006 at Theater J in Washington, D.C., directed by John Dillon. This latest performance will be a staged reading, directed by Jay O’Berski, artistic director of the Little Green Pig Theatrical Concern and Duke Theater Studies lecturing fellow.

General admission tickets are $5. For ticket information, call 684-4444 or visit tickets.duke.edu, or at the Nasher the day of a performance. Ticket sales will benefit three organizations supporting literacy and human rights.

The performance on Thursday, Oct. 29 begins at 7 p.m. and will be followed by a conversation between Ariel Dorfman and the audience. Performances on Oct. 30 and Oct. 31 begin at 7 p.m. and 2 p.m., respectively.

A special performance of “Picasso’s Closet” on November 15 will include a benefit dinner, with donations going to the Durham Literacy Center, the Torture Abolition and Survivors Support Coalition (TASSC), and the PEN American Freedom to Write Program.

Reservations for the 5 p.m. dinner with Ariel Dorfman may be made by contacting Rob Sikorski, Executive Director of DUCIS. (r.sikorski [Email: r.sikorski #AT# duke.edu ]). Reserved seats are limited. The performance will follow at 7 p.m. in the Nasher Museum’s Nancy A. Nasher and David J. Haemisegger Family Lecture Hall. General admission ($5) will also be sold for the evening performance.

Patricia Leighten, Duke professor of Art, Art History and Visual Studies, wrote in the March 2009 Art Bulletin dedicated to this play: “In ‘Picasso’s Closet,’ Dorfman explores the precise question Picasso addressed in his statements: What is the responsibility of the artist in times of war? Picasso’s answer is that it is the same as in times of peace, especially when that peace is predicated on injustice: to make art that stands for life against death.”

Mieke Bal, a cultural theorist and critic at the University of Amsterdam, wrote in the same journal: “Dorfman’s play has a special appeal for historians of art. Those interested in modernism may have always wondered how Picasso could survive painting radical art under the nose of the Nazi regime… The play presents an imagined response.”

Ariel Dorfman is the Walter Hines Page Professor of Literature and Latin American Studies and Writer in Residence at DUCIS. His plays, including “Death and the Maiden,” “Widows,” and  “The Other Side,” have been translated into more than forty languages and performed in over 100 countries. His play, “Purgatorio” will have its Spanish language premiere in Madrid in February  2010, starring Viggo Mortensen and Emma Suárez, one of Spain’s pre-eminent actresses.

Ariel Dorfman’s website is www.arieldorfman.com

For more info, contact:

Jennifer Prather

Assistant to Ariel Dorfman

919-684-6054

jprather [Email: jprather #AT# duke.edu ]

  Ariel Dorfman, In the News

Professor Michael D. Ward’s October 8, 2009 presentation to the University Seminar on Global Governance and Democracy, “International Trade Networks & International Institutions: The Role of Democracy & the WTO in Contemporary Trade” is now available on iTunes U. [more »]

  Global Governance and Democracy, iTunes U

Amy White, of The Independent Weekly, reviews Jean Toche: Impressions from the Rogue Bush Imperial Presidency , now on display in the Franklin Center’s main gallery . [more »]

  art, gallery exhibition, In the News

The Concilium on Southern Africa (COSA), an initiative of the Duke University Center for International Studies, recently celebrated the launch of its brand-new website, which includes information about upcoming events in Fall 2009 as well as iTunes links to the public conversations held in Spring 2009 with South African Constitutional Court Justices Albie Sachs and Yvonne Mokgoro.

Visit COSA’s new website: http://www.jhfc.duke.edu/cosa/

  about DUCIS, Africa, Concilium on Southern Africa, website

Here’s a question for you: What do the Director of the International Security Program at the Atlantic Council of the U.S., the Senior Director of Integrated Programming Effectiveness for World Vision International and a human rights activist and member of the Board of Directors of Romero House in Toronto, Ontario have in common? For a start, all three are Duke alumni (Trinity ‘95). In addition, they will share the podium at the upcoming Anthony Joseph Drexel Biddle, Jr. Lecture on International Studies, which will take place on Thursday, October 8th at the Sanford School of Public Policy.

[more »]

  Biddle lecture, diplomacy, international studies, lecture series

Jean Toche: Impressions from the Rogue Bush Imperial Presidency, opens on September 17 in the main gallery of the John Hope Franklin Center for Interdisciplinary and International Studies and runs through November 29, 2009.

Kristine Stiles, professor of art, art history, and visual studies, curated the exhibition from her extensive archive of art, artists’ letters, documents, posters, and ephemera. A 48-page full-color catalog designed by Molly Renda and featuring an essay by Professor Stiles accompanies the exhibition. In her essay, Stiles writes that, “for over fifty years, Jean Toche has made art from the position of moral and ethical indignation, expressed openly and without reservation against political corruption, social hypocrisy, and human rights abuses throughout the world.”

Jean Toche

Born in Bruges, Belgium in 1932, Toche moved to New York in 1965. He is involved in New York’s radical political art scene from the 1960s on and was associated with the New York Destructive Art movement, the Artist Workers’ Coalition, the Guerrilla Art Action Group (1969-1976; co-founded with Jon Hendricks), organized actions and happenings directly attacking and provoking the New Yorker art-establishment. These groups expressed public consciousness through happenings, written manifestos, publications. Currently, Toche is working in political mail art and lives in Staten Island.

As witnessed in the current show, Toche has lost nothing of his ability to employ art to explore and express critical understandings of global decision-making and social and political acts, especially by the United States. All works in this exhibition are from the year 2004 and focus on the administration of George W. Bush.

The Franklin Center gallery is open to the public weekdays from 8:30am to 5:30pm. Admission is free.

  art, culture, gallery exhibition, politics

Local press is abuzz with coverage of the Duke University Center for International Studies’ new gallery exhibition at the Durham Art Guild. Pathways to Unknown Worlds: Sun Ra, El Saturn and Chicago’s Afro-Futurist Underground 1954 – 1968, co-sponsored by the Franklin Humanities Institute, opens tonight at 120 Morris Street in downtown Durham. [more »]

  art, culture, gallery exhibition, In the News

The Duke University Center for International Studies, in concert with the Franklin Humanities Institute and the Durham Art Guild are pleased to announce the opening of “Pathways to Unknown Worlds: Sun Ra, El Saturn and Chicago’s Afro-Futurist Underground 1954 – 1968,” An exhibition celebrating the life of jazz musician, pianist, bandleader, mystic, philosopher and Afro-Futurist Sun Ra. [more »]

  art, culture, gallery exhibition, music

Duke News’ Geoffrey Mock recaps the Duke University Center for International Studies’ recent Faculty Institute for Global Studies, headed by Robin Kirk, entitled “Human Rights and Wrongs.” The Summer 2009 Institute, held July 13th through 17th at the John Hope Franklin Center, brought together expert speakers from across the country, was aimed at providing faculty members of North Carolina’s small liberal arts and community colleges with tools and insights to help them connect more effectively with their students, when discussing human rights history, as well as ongoing issues. [more »]

  Faculty Institutes in Global Studies, human rights, Outreach

The Duke University Center for International Studies is pleased to announce that, through the use of Google translate, the DUCIS website is now available in forty-two languages. [more »]

  about DUCIS, foreign language, website