Viewing page 6 of 34

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

The ARt center

AVENIDA A. BENAVIDES 325 y LOS PINOS 81 - MIRAFLORES - LIMA, PERU —— TELEFONO 56063

September 13, 1957

Mrs. T.D. Parker
Jacques Selignann& Co.
5 East 57th street,
New York,N.Y.

Dear T

I hope you have been haveing a fine vacation on the farm, and are now starting a happy and prosporus fall. I wish we could spend a few weeks in old N.Y. this season, but there is to much to do here right now. Our Art Center has become an important part of the camunity and it constantly makes new demandes on us,but it's great fun. Time is our constant shortage and we are very short ofhelp right now, with my best teacher on vacation in the States.

Our school has grown much faster than we had planed and now has an enrolment of seventy students. I now find myself teaching fourty hrs. a week, Isabel teaches six to nine hrs. aside from looking after our three kids ,our delapitated 18 room house,six servants, and comitions for her work in sculpture.  WEalso try to run an exhibition progrum, concertos, free art talks and Art & crafts films. On my one free morning from the center, I give History of Art classes at the Peruvien -American girls school. We are constantly called on for interesting projects ,but have to turn them down. It seems at times the country is starved for Art, 20th cent. Art and information. Yet the land over flows with native Arts, old and new that go unseen or even is looked down. As in all things Peru is the land of contrasts.

Modern Lima (three times crowned, City of kings) is an ancient dowager ,doing the "waltz-criollo" to the tune of "rock & roll" , trying to hold her traditiomal dignity while becoming glamourously modern. All of rest of Peru are her servents. --It's a land held togeather by the love of anarchy varnished over with politics and decorated with pontiffs, grandes, beggers, and lots of gilt. You must come down here some time. I think you will like it. In December our summer starts, and for four or five mounths the weather in Lima and all the cost is pure sun, but not as hot as N.Y. City. At that time the mountains are cool & wet,hard to see due to wet roads (or no Roads). But by air one can get to Cuzco at any time.

If you come (I'll warn you) we will find a few jobs for you. There is one small problem you may help me with in N.Y.;the Maria Magdalena by Guido Reni. The painting is believed to have come to Peru in the late 17th cent.,but here I can find no real proof. In 1940 its owner a DoñaLuisa Alvarez-Calderon de Mujica sent the painting to Colombia for cleaning and an expert examination by one Santiago Martinez Delgado. He took X-rays, Ultra-violet tests, Micro-chemical tests, and more. His findings I quote, "No doubt,..an original work of Guido Reni,..."

The painting is now for sale.

Transcription Notes:
.