Thursday, August 20, 2009

"An Iconography of the Flesh: The Bizarre Afterlife of Eva Perón" Lecture; Observatory Tomorrow Night!


Full details following. Hope to see you there!
An Iconography of the Flesh: The Bizarre Afterlife of Eva Perón
Professor Margaret Margaret Schwartz
Date: Friday, August 21
Time: 8:00
Admission: $5
Wine (some of it chilled, I promise!)

When Argentine First Lady Eva Perón died in 1952, the intent was to embalm her body for display in a monument to the Argentine worker: a fitting tribute for the martyred patron saint of the working classes. This ambitious project—it was to be three times the height of the Statue of Liberty—was never realized, and when Perón was overthrown in 1955, the embalmed corpse became the new regime’s most stubborn problem and potent secret. In its thirty years in search of a permanent resting place, the embalmed body left a trail of death, insanity, and corpse-napping in its wake as Evita sympathizers sought to find the body of their saint and Evita’s enemies tried to keep the body’s whereabouts a secret. Professor Margaret Schwartz tells the story of the corpse’s afterlife and shows how Evita has stubbornly refused to die a proper death, thus rendering her corpse one of the world’s most unique and potent objects.
You can directions by clicking here and find out more about Observatory by clicking here.

No comments: