A great man is one who collects knowledge the way a bee collects honey and uses it to help people overcome the difficulties they endure - hunger, ignorance and disease!
- Nikola Tesla

Remember, remember always, that all of us, and you and I especially, are descended from immigrants and revolutionists.
- Franklin Roosevelt

While their territory has been devastated and their homes despoiled, the spirit of the Serbian people has not been broken.
- Woodrow Wilson

Art and Reality: Serbian Perspectives

Art and Reality: Serbian Perspectives
Friday, May 1, 2015, 6:00 pm
Marshall D. Shulman Seminar Room (1219 IAB, 420 W 118th St.)

Please join the East Central European Center and the Harriman Institute for a talk by Svetlana Rakić.

Rakić will present some of the most recent trends in Serbian two-dimensional art. Selected examples testify to the diversity, vibrancy, and beauty of art produced in this troubled country during the turbulent past two decades. Having witnessed their former country, Yugoslavia, torn apart by civil war, and their ‘new’ country, Serbia, crippled by NATO bombings, political intrigues, corruption, staggering unemployment, and bleak prospects for recovery, these artists have turned to the creative potential of the human imagination to escape, confront, and comment on a situation over which they have no control. Despite the specificity of the conditions under which Serbian artists live and work, their works of art – poignant, inspiring, humorous, or despairing – touch a responsive chord in the viewer that attests to their success at achieving an expression that is both universal and human.

.

Svetlana Rakić was born in Sarajevo (now Bosnia-Herzegovina) in 1958. She left her home country, Yugoslavia, in 1992 to come to the U.S. She received her M.A. in art history from the University of Belgrade, Serbia, in 1989 and her Ph.D. in art history from Indiana University, Bloomington in 1999. She teaches art and art history as a full professor at Franklin College, Indiana. Rakić is the author of two books on icons from Bosnia-Herzegovina, a book on the twentieth-century American painter Alexander Markovich, and numerous articles published in academic journals in Yugoslavia, Serbia, and the United States. Before coming to the U.S., Rakić worked as a curator at the State Art Gallery of Bosnia-Herzegovina in Sarajevo and as a consultant at the Institute for Preservation of Cultural Heritage of Bosnia-Herzegovina in Sarajevo. In addition to her interest in pre-modern and modern Western art, Rakić is a painter and has exhibited her works in the U.S., Germany, and Serbia.

Sponsored by the Njegos Endowment for Serbian Language and Culture.

Latest Articles

People Directory

Richard Milanovich

Richard Milanovich

Birth: Dec. 4, 1942, Banning, Riverside County, California, USA
Death: Mar. 12, 2012, Rancho Mirage, Riverside County, California, USA

Born to an Indian mother and Serbian father, Richard M. Milanovich grew up in poverty in Palm Springs, living in a shack and receiving government handouts of surplus food. He served as in infantryman in the United States Army from 1960-1963, and later returned to the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians Reservation to engage in tribal politics. Eventually he was elected Chairman of the Band in 1984, and became a major figure in the development of casino operations on Indian land in the region and California. Through his vision and leadership, the Agua Caliente Band became the most prosperous group of Indians in the United States, and were able to make major contributions to the economy of the Palm Springs area. As Chairman, he was invited to the White House to consult with the President and other political officials. California Governor Jerry Brown, Congresswoman Mary Bono-Mack, Palm Springs Mayor Steve Pougnet, and Tribal Chairpersons from throughout California all eulogized Chairman Milanovich at the memorial service held in his honor held at the Palm Springs Convention Center. He was buried in a service attended by family and close friends.

Publishing

The Hagia Sophia

The Hagia Sophia

The Mystical Light of the Great Church and its Architectural Dress

by Charalambos P. Stathakis

Dear reader, as you run like the rest of us along the dizzy main road, stop, stay aside for a while. Let the others be dizzy, and take the secret underground trail, which will lead you through the dewdrops of the leaves, the crystal smile of the sun, the city’s underground galler- ies, your knowledge, and your feelings, to the doorstep of the Hagia Sophia. Because all dew- drops, all sunrays, and all beauty lead there. That is what you will be told by my friend, the author, whom I am fond of and whom I send you to, Charalambos Stathakis: the doctor, the warm and humane researcher, the scientist devoted to his work and his patients, who has given a series of scientific papers, who, nevertheless, retains a nest of beauty untouched in his heart, which makes him outstanding—even though he is not a specialist in architecture, nor a historian, nor a theologian, nor a Byzantinist—it makes him stand out in all these together and in entirety.