I Can See It All Even With My Eyes Closed - A Seminar on Madalena Santos Reinbolt (English)

April 13, 2025

I work everything out in my head. I can see it all even with my eyes closed. I think of something, and if it has to be tacked then I start tacking, and then on top of that I stitch all the things that I have in my head. Really, it’s the needles that are doing the drawing.
– Madalena Santos Reinbolt, c. 1974–1975

I Can See It All Even With My Eyes Closed–A Virtual Seminar on the Life and Art of Madalena Santos Reinbolt, a day of talks and presentations held in both English and Portuguese, is the first large-scale program exploring the life, art, influences, and creative processes of Madalena Santos Reinbolt (Vitória da Conquista, Brazil, 1912–1976, Petrópolis, Brazil).

Organized in conjunction with the exhibition "Madalena Santos Reinbolt: A Head Full of Planets", the first retrospective of the artist's work–first on view at the Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand in 2022, and currently at the American Folk Art Museum), I Can See It All Even With My Eyes Closed will present new research on this overlooked but important figure of twentieth-century Brazilian art. The virtual seminar will bring together leading scholars, curators, and artists from Brazil and the US to explore modernisms, Latin American arts, textiles, craft, self-taught practices, and the Black diaspora. It will offer a rare opportunity for the audience to situate Santos Reinbolt’s artistic process in a broader historical, geographical, gendered, racial, and socio-economic context while examining the extent of the artist’s practice and singular vision.

This seminar is organized by Mathilde Walker-Billaud, AFAM Curator of Programs and Engagement

Schedule

11:00 AM - 11:30 AM ET

Madalena Santos Reinbolt at the American Folk Art Museum in New York

Introduction by Valérie Rousseau, PhD Curatorial Chair and Senior Curator of 20th-Century & Contemporary Art, AFAM and Mathilde Walker-Billaud, Curator of Programs and Engagement.

11:30 AM - 1:30 PM ET

Madalena Santos Reinbolt: A Public Secret No More?

Panel presentation and conversation featuring:

Amanda Carneiro & André Mesquita, co-curators of "Madalena Santos Reinbolt: A Head Full of Planets" presented at MASP, from November 25, 2022 to February 26, 2023

Amanda Reis Tavares Pereira, art scholar

Mariana Arantes, art scholar

Introduced and moderated by Dylan Blau Edelstein, PhD Candidate, Princeton University's Spanish and Portuguese Department, and Curatorial Assistant of AFAM’s "Madalena Santos Reinbolt: A Head Full of Planets"

2:00 PM - 3:15 PM ET

Embellishing the Threads: Madalena Santos Reinbolt and Afro-Diasporic Textile Traditions

Conversation with Kesiena Onosigho, artist

and Julia Bryan-Wilson, Professor of LGBTQ+ Art at Columbia and Curator-at-Large at MASP

3:15 PM - 4:30 PM ET

Madalena Santos Reinbolt: Art As a Form of Saturation and Anachronistic Time

Closing remarks by Lilia Moritz Schwarcz, Full Professor in Anthropology at the University of São Paulo and Visiting Professor at Princeton University.Schedule

Credits

I Can See It All Even With My Eyes Closed–A Virtual Seminar on the Life and Art of Madalena Santos Reinbolt is co-presented with the Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand and Brazil LAB at Princeton University.

The Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand - MASP, the first modern museum in Brazil, is a private, non-profit institution founded in 1947 by Brazilian businessman Assis Chateaubriand. Its building, designed by Lina Bo Bardi, is a landmark of 20th-century architecture. This year, MASP is expanding, transforming into a cultural complex with the most important collection of European art in the Southern Hemisphere. Its curatorial program is diverse, inclusive, and plural, celebrating the history of art.

The Brazil LAB is an original initiative at the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies, gathering Princeton faculty and students working in and on Brazil and on subjects Brazil is helpful to think with. The LAB | Luso-Afro-Brazilian Studies | is a multi-disciplinary research and teaching hub for exploring the country’s history, politics and culture, along with its regional significance and international connections.

Support

Lead Support for this program is provided by Dorothea and Leo Rabkin Foundation.

Additional support is provided by The Coby Foundation, the Madalena Santos Reinbolt Advisory Committee (Vilma Eid, Luciana Solano, Maria Fernanda Mazzuco), the Consulate-General of Brazil in New York / Instituto Guimarães Rosa, Citi, the Dorothea and Leo Rabkin Foundation, and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature, and the David Davies and Jack Weeden Fund for Exhibitions.