arts

The University of Panama's central campus in Bella Vista is one of the places that the tourist who is interested in Panamanian art should visit. (More and more, since the Fine Arts Faculty has moved to the old dome that used to be Curundu Middle School, that satellite campus is also worth a visit for those who are curious about the directions in which this country's young artists are headed. But that's a photo story for another issue.)

Yes, artists can and do bicker about what's good, and even what's art. And yes, both the arts and art criticism get political --- for example, there are those who would consider the work shown above, honoring the memory of Panama's first female lawyer Clara González, who among her many other accomplishments was also the first judge of this country's first juvenile court, to be insufferably "politically correct."

Some of the university's public art, like this decorated water tank near the student cafeteria, honors Panama's indigenous cultures, in this case the Kuna.

Some of the university's public art works, like Beverly Atencio's bird paintings shown above and below, are by indigenous artists. Now might someone complain that these aren't molas, reproductions of abstractions from the bygone Coclean culture or otherwise what would be traditionally known as Panamanian indigenous art? Fair enough, but a static culture is a dead one, ANd the creative people from Panama's first nations don't intend to be frozen in time.

The campus radicals also from time to time find their artistic expression. Here the commie radicals celebrate an ill-fated 1959 attempt at an armed uprising, and at the bottom of the poster take a swipe at electoral politics.

This bust of Mahatma Gandhi, next to the university's administration building, is one of two statues honoring the great Indian independence leader and social reformer in Panama City. The other is in a little park on Avenida Central, near the Legislative Assembly's Palacio Justo Arosemena.

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