Calendar Highlights

International House
“Viva Brazil: Brazilian Cultural Celebration”
Noon to 6 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 12
1414 E. 59th St. 753-2274. ihouse.uchicago.edu. Admission is $7 for adults, $5 for Brazilian Cultural Center members and free for children under 12.

In cooperation with the Brazilian Cultural Center of Chicago and the Mayor’s Office, International House will celebrate Brazilian culture with dance, music, fine arts and handicraft collections from Brazil.

University Library, Special Collections Research Center
“Catalyst for Change, 1970-2004: On the Occasion of Martin Runkle’s Retirement as Library Director”
Through Thursday, Oct. 7
Exhibition hours: 8:30 a.m. to 4:45 p.m. Monday through Friday and 9 a.m. to 12:45 p.m. Saturday.
Joseph Regenstein Library, Special Collections Research Center, 1100 E. 57th St. 702-8705. www.lib.uchicago.edu/e/spcl/. Free.

In honor of Martin Runkle’s retirement from his post as Director of the University Library, Special Collections will present this exhibition, an informal visual record of selected highlights of library history during Runkle’s tenure, from 1970 through the present. Photographs are the work of Beverly Sperring, Reference Librarian and Reference Collections Manager in the library’s Reference and Business Information Center. Sperring, whose portraits of blues musicians can be seen on Buddy Guy’s Legends Web site, also has exhibited blues photographs at the University’s Festival of the Arts.

Smart Museum of Art
“Medieval Art and Medievalisms”
Tuesday, Sept. 7 through Sunday, Jan. 2, 2005
Summer Hours: 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Tuesday-Friday, and 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday-Sunday.
5550 S. Greenwood Ave. 702-0200. smartmuseum.uchicago.edu. Free.

From the Early Christian material culture of Egypt and the Eastern Roman empire and the devotional art of Gothic Europe to the Celtic revival of the 19th century, medieval art shifted from iconic religious images to historical tributes. Drawn from the Smart Museum’s holdings, this exhibition looks at key moments in this thousand-year transformation of use and meaning. Illustrating the complex trajectory of art in this period, selected 19th-century paintings, sculptures, graphic works, and decorative objects, as well as imagery in the new medium of photography, will be on display. A highlight of the exhibition is the decorative pieces from the museum’s important group of Celtic Revival metalwork, originally shown at one of the two Irish pavilions at the 1893 world’s fair in Chicago.

Oriental Institute Museum
Lecture: “On the Origin of Cities in Mesopotamia: Recent Excavations at Tell Brak, Northeastern Syria”
8 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 22
Breasted Hall, Oriental Institute, 1155 E. 58th St. 834-9777. www-oi.uchicago.edu. Free.

Although it has long been thought that the first Mesopotamian cities were those of Sumer, modern southern Iraq—the “Heartland of Cities”—recent excavations and surveys in northern Mesopotamia have shown that large, differentiated urban centers were developing in the north by 3500 B.C. In a lecture titled “On the Origin of Cities in Mesopotamia: Recent Excavations at Tell Brak, Northeastern Syria,” Geoff Emberling, Director of the Oriental Institute Museum, will survey the mid-fourth millennium city at Tell Brak, which reveals a large temple, feasting hall, valuable jewelry and a specialized ceramic production area.