BU RS Faculty, Students Collaborate on Lorca Exhibition
Students and faculty from the BU Department of Romance Studies have collaborated on the first-ever exhibition on the archive of Europe’s most popular poet, Federico García Lorca (1898-1936).
The exhibition Lorca y el archivo: Memoria en movimiento / Lorca and the Archive: Memory in Motion (December 12-May 11) is the largest ever organized by the Centro Federico García Lorca, Granada (Spain), and was widely reported by the Spanish press. Co-curated by Melissa Dinverno (Indiana University), Christopher Maurer (Boston University) and Andrew A. Anderson (University of Virginia), the exhibition brought to life a previously unexplored archive–that of the poet’s family–as well as newly discovered documents about Lorca from the files of the Franco regime, including some related to his assassination in August of 1936 and the censorship of his works. It traces the precarious history of the archive from the poet’s death (when his papers were kept in hiding) to the family’s exile in the U.S., and from the reestablishment of democracy in Spain to the present. The Centro García Lorca and twenty-five other institutions provided the more than 400 items for the exhibit.
Fran Ramallo, who teaches art history in BU’s Study Abroad program and has curated other exhibitions at B.U. and at the Centro García Lorca, served as associate curator and designer. Josh Dunn, a graduate student in Romance Studies, translated essays and captions and another RS grad student, José Quispe conducted interviews and research. Laura Mayron, a recent graduate of BU’s PhD program in Hispanic Language and Literatures who is studying Lorca in Granada on a Fulbright Fellowship, is giving guided tours of the exhibition. Undergraduate Spanish major Iris Fitzsimmons Christensen (BA 2024) contributed to the exhibition with research on the work of Lorca’s brother Francisco.
The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue and interactive digital map of archives holding Lorca papers throughout the Europe and the Americas.