Clark Art Lecture on Images of the Female Body in 20th Century Argentina

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WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — On Tuesday, Nov. 12, the Clark Art Institute's Research and Academic Program presents "Being Gorgeous Is a Duty!", a lecture by María Isabel Baldasarre (Universidad Nacional de San Martín, Argentina and Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas / Every Page Foundation Fellow). 
 
This free event takes place at 5:30 pm in the Manton Research Center auditorium.
 
According to a press release:
 
Baldasarre analyzes how throughout the twentieth century a hegemonic image of the female body was shaped and spread through popular culture in Argentina. Visual culture—magazines, cinema, television, art—contributed to cementing this canon, while physiques that did not adhere to the norm were made invisible.
 
María Isabel Baldasarre is a professor of art history at Universidad Nacional de San Martín, Argentina and a researcher at Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET). Between 2019 and 2023 she was National Director of Museums of the National Ministry of Culture. She is the author of the books Los dueños del arte: Coleccionismo y consumo cultural en Buenos Aires (2006) and Bien vestidos: Una historia visual de la moda en Buenos Aires (1870–1914) (2021). At the Clark, Baldasarre is working on a book project titled The Liberation of the Female Body: Fashion, Art, and Visual Culture in Modern Argentina.
 
Free. Accessible seats available; for information, call 413 458 0524. A reception at 5 pm in the Manton Research Center reading room precedes the event. 

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Discrimination Against Muslim Americans Persists 25 Years After 9/11

By Stephen DravisiBerkshires Staff
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — Dozens of Muslim Americans were among people killed in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
 
Untold numbers of Muslim Americans have suffered countless acts of discrimination in their aftermath.
 
"Of course, you'll find several accounts of Muslims from all over the U.S. describing how they went from the unknown kids in the school to being stereotyped or ridiculed for their Muslim names," Sidra Mahmood recalled recently. "However, many Americans forget that the victims of 9/11 were also Muslim Americans.
 
"I can't forget the time when a classmate broke down in sobs when 9/11 came up in our classroom at the Islamic seminary I went to in Texas, because her father's best friend who was like an uncle to her, died on 9/11."
 
Today, Mahmood is a chaplain at Williams College. In 2001, she was growing up in Karachi, Pakistan, when terrorists forced two passenger jets into the Twin Towers in lower Manhattan and another plane into the Pentagon outside Washington, D.C. A third plane, which terrorists hoped to crash into a D.C. landmark, was brought down in western Pennsylvania after passengers and crew fought back against the hijackers.
 
The attacks, which ultimately claimed 2,976 lives, horrified people around the world, including in Mahmood's native land.
 
"I remember being aghast like anyone who witnessed the fall of the Twin Towers in real time," she said. "However, even as a child, fear gripped me about the possibility of war, especially once we learned that Afghanistan, right adjacent to Pakistan, would be attacked by the U.S. My mother had told me about the 1971 war between India and Pakistan when she remembered hiding in the dark after bomb sirens would go off in Punjab after intentional blackouts.
 
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