‘The biggest and most important artistic and cultural space in the world’

by the El Reportero’s news services

A new cultural center touted as the biggest in the world will be established on a military site in Mexico City, President López Obrador announced on Tuesday.

The president said that renowned artist Gabriel Orozco will direct the project in conjunction with the Secretariat of Culture and the Mexico City government.

The center will be built on an 800-hectare former military base that will become the fourth section of the Chapultepec Park.

“It’s going to be the biggest and most important artistic and cultural space in the world,” López Obrador said, adding that Orozco will not charge anything for his services.

A luxury real estate development had been planned for part of the site but López Obrador said last month that idea had been scrapped.

The president said today that the government already has the resources required to build the cultural center although he didn’t specify how much it would cost.

“Not a lot of funds will be needed because the creative side [of the project] is going to be provided voluntarily,” López Obrador said.

“We’ll seek not to waste resources, it’s not [a project of] buildings that will turn into white elephants,” he added.

López Obrador said that a detailed plan of the project, including its cost and how long it will take to complete, will be presented in two or three months.

Orozco, who said in 2015 that Mexico needed a contemporary art museum of the stature of New York’s Museum of Modern Art, Paris’ Centre Pompidou or London’s Tate Museum, described the opportunity to coordinate the cultural center as an “honor.”

The federal government has made a point of returning space formally occupied by the government to the people of Mexico.

The president’s former official residence, Los Pinos, has already been turned into a cultural center, and metal barricades that prevented citizens from getting close to the National Palace were removed shortly after López Obrador took office on December 1.

Protesters with a range of grievances have since established makeshift camps cheek by jowl with the facade of the National Palace, located in Mexico City’s downtown opposite the zócalo, or central square.

Source: El Financiero (sp), Milenio (sp).

Cecilia Suárez and Santiago Segura will be the hosts of the PLATINO Awards
We now have the names of the hosts of the 6thAnnual Platino Awards for Ibero-American Cinema. Cecilia Suárez and Santiago Segura will be the Masters of Ceremonies of this year’s edition of the highly prestigious awards.

The Mexican actress and the Spanish actor and director will be the hosts of the ceremony, which will be held on May 12 in the Grand Tlachco de Xcaret Theatre, in Riviera Maya, Mexico. The award show will be broadcast across Latin American on TNT via pay per view and on the main national television channels in open mode.

In this spectacular venue in the Mexican Riviera, Cecilia Suárez and Santiago Segura will present a gala that year after year is making an impact internationally and is now a benchmark in the Ibero-American audiovisual industry. They will host what promises to be an exciting night.
As well as presenting the event, Mexican actress Cecilia Suárez will also be among the four nominees for her role in The House of Flowers.

by the El Reportero’s news services

Uruguayans since Friday have the possibility to appreciate first hand the creative genius of Spanish painter Pablo Picasso through 45 original works under exhibition in Montevideo up to June 30.

The National Director of Culture, Sergio Mautone, expressed the importance of hosting a very powerful exhibition of original paintings of the great Picasso.

He emphasized that this opportunity has paved the road ‘to implement some actions that are going to help Uruguay to bring from now on important pieces from renowned painters’.

The initiative to have Picasso’s works coming to Montevideo came from the Picassso-Paris National Museum, whose President Laurent Le Bon hosted this exhibition under Emmanuel Guigon’s curatorship, Director of the corresponding Museum in Barcelona and under French Embassy auspices.

Director of the Visual Arts Museum, which will host the exhibition, Enrique Aguerre, explained there will be a free day of the week, and always with that benefit for children under 12 and people with disabilities, while retirees will enjoy a significant discount.

He assured that also the students with teachers, who schedule visits, will have access without cost, and already ‘we have more than 14,000 with reservation’.

Harvard University appoints Chucho Valdés as Resident Teacher

The Office of Arts and the Jazz Band of Harvard University, United States, today named Cuban pianist Chucho Valdés as resident Jazz Master, due to his contribution to the development of said institution.

The appointment is granted to eminent artists linked to the entity with the aim of developing initiatives that provide new opportunities to university students, work directly with the classical repertoire and honor artists who have made a significant contribution to American music.

From April 8 to 12, Valdés – six-time winner of the Grammy Award and three of the Latin Grammy – will exchange with teachers and students as part of a meeting sponsored by the Arts Office and the Harvard Jazz Band, in association with the Program of Studies of Cuba and the Center David Rockefeller of the same house of high studies.

According to an official note on the university’s website, in addition to working and rehearsing, the musician will participate in a concert open to the public that under the title Puente Musical, will bring together several instrumentalists, among which the bassist Yunior Terry.

Valdés is one of the most influential figures of modern jazz, organic and personal style distills elements of the Afro-Cuban, classical, rock music tradition, among several.

The program in which the pianist will participate in Harvard is one of the most prestigious in the United States as it brings together distinguished artists in this art form whether world-renowned masters or emerging artists, honors them and allows connection with new generations.

In past editions have been named Resident Masters Benny Carter, Roy Haynes, Joe Lovano and Cassandra Wilson, who have played with the Harvard jazz bands for almost five decades.

The Arts Office maintains a recording archive of visiting artists in jazz, which is available to students and scholars through the Morse Music and Media Collection, the Lamont Library, as well as a collection of Tom Everett’s jazz manuscripts, at Eda Kuhn Loeb music library.

Iconic Latin alternative bands Aterciopelados & Los Amigos Invisibles announce U.S. tour
Internationally acclaimed bands, Colombian rock Aterciopelados and funk acid-jazz Venezuelan Los Amigos Invisibles, will be joining forces for a 10-city co-headlining tour for the first time together nationwide, kicking off at the Sony Hall in New York City on April 21st.

Three-time Latin Grammy winning and 2x Grammy nominated Aterciopelados, is one of the most important dynamic duos in the Latin American alternative music scene. Their latest album “Claroscura” (2018), praised by international media and awarded as the Best Alternative Album by the Latin Grammy.

Alongside Aterciopelados is Latin Grammy winning and 3x Grammy nominated group Los Amigos Invisibles, known for their blend of Afro-funk, disco, acid jazz and Latin rhythms. The band is one of the most recognized bands from Venezuela and the Latin American music scene, praised for their energetic live shows that have been presented worldwide in more than 60 countries.

Empowering the community through education

by the El Reportero’s news services

EstrellaTV kicked off this year’s effort on Feb. 11 by hosting 13 young students from The Orange County Community Housing Corporation (OCCHC).

The students, who participate in the organization’s SteppingUp College Awareness Program, had an opportunity to get a behind the scenes glimpse of how television broadcasting is made and the many career opportunities available in the industry.

Students were able to interact with on-air talent, producers and technical personnel as they navigated master control rooms and various studio sets, and got to experience a live taping of a news promo segment.

The Orange County Community Housing Corporation (OCCHC) is a non-profit organization whose mission is to transition extremely low-income families to greater self-sufficiency by assisting with housing and education.

French fire fighters and police officers certified the security of the Museum of Visual Arts in Uruguay for an exhibition of the Spanish painter Pablo Picasso”s works, Culture Minister Maria Julio Muñoz confirmed.

The exhibition will take place from March 29 to June 30, as a result of an agreement signed on Feb. 14 between the Museum of Paris, which holds Picasso’s works, and the Uruguayan institution.
In order to reach the agreement, the two French agencies inspected the conditions of the museum that will exhibit Picasso’s paintings in Montevideo.

Muñoz made it clear that Montevideo will be only place in the Americas where the exhibition will take place, and it will tour other continents. She added that the museum was chosen because its director, Enrique Aguerre, enjoys great prestige among international artists.

Uruguayan Museum certified to host Picasso exhibition
French fire fighters and police officers certified the security of the Museum of Visual Arts in Uruguay for an exhibition of the Spanish painter Pablo Picasso”s works, Culture Minister Maria Julio Muñoz confirmed.

The exhibition will take place from March 29 to June 30, as a result of an agreement signed on Feb. 14 between the Museum of Paris, which holds Picasso’s works, and the Uruguayan institution.
In order to reach the agreement, the two French agencies inspected the conditions of the museum that will exhibit Picasso’s paintings in Montevideo.

Muñoz made it clear that Montevideo will be only place in the Americas where the exhibition will take place, and it will tour other continents. She added that the museum was chosen because its director, Enrique Aguerre, enjoys great prestige among international artists.

Also in Uruguay:

Uruguayan wins Best Director Award at Sundance
Uruguayan Lucia Garibaldi wins the award for best director at the prestigious Sundance International Film Festival with the film The Sharks, the first one representing her country in this contest.
The young actress Romina Bentancur stars the film in the role of a teenager who lives on the Uruguayan coast and gets ready to receive a flood of tourists while facing the vicissitudes of amorous awakening.

Before the competition, she said, she proposed to work with non-professional actors and before choosing her, she saw about 50 videos, and discovered in her ‘one of those faces, those voices, those ways of moving that are always finding something new.’
Garibaldi, graduated from the Uruguayan Film School, thanked the official support she received to finish the film and announced that she has her second feature film, to be called The Last Queen.
She received this award a day after her compatriot Alvaro Brechner won in Seville the Goya for Best Screen Adaptation in the Uruguayan-Argentinean-Spanish co-production A Twelve-Year Night.
The actor Robert Redford founded the Sundance Festival in Utah, United States to open doors to quality art productions lacking powerful commercial scaffolding.