ELOY O. AGUILAR, Associated Press Writer Tuesday, June 3, 2003
(06-03) 23:17 PDT PANAMA CITY, Panama (<a href=www.sfgate.com>AP) --

There were no tears of joy, just the confident smile of a winner when 18-year-old Miss Dominican Republic, Amelia Vega, was crowned Miss Universe 2003.

A 6-foot-1 aspiring singer, the niece of merengue musician Juan Luis Guerra, Vega accepted the crown from outgoing titleholder Justine Pasek of Panama on Tuesday night.

"God has been my strength all along," the brunette told a news conference immediately after her triumph at a U.S. military base-turned-convention center.

Tuesday's finals were hosted by television personalities Daisy Fuentes and Billy Bush -- who is President Bush's cousin.

Asked if she was nervous when she stood alone with co-finalist Mariangel Ruiz of Venezuela after 70 other contestants were eliminated, Vegas said, "No, I just said, 'God, whatever is going to be, let it be."'

Vega's mother competed for the Miss World title in 1980.

Cindy Nell, a South African tourism promoter, was the second runner up, followed by Miss Serbia and Montenegro Sanja Papic and Miss Japan Miyako Miyazaki.

Dropping out after reaching the top 10 were representatives from Trinidad and Tobago, the Czech Republic, Namibia, Canada and Brazil. An earlier cut took out Misses USA, Greece, Panama, Angola and Peru.

Kai Davis of Antigua and Barbuda was named Miss Congeniality. Miss Puerto Rico, Carla Tricoli, was named Miss Photogenic.

The event gave Panama a chance to promote its new image as a tourist destination after decades of living under the shadow of the U.S. military, which protected the Panama Canal until Dec. 31, 1999.

An estimated 600 million television viewers and nearly 7,000 Panamanians watched the event at the new Figali Convention Center, built on the former U.S. base known as Fort Amador.

Hotels, restaurants, a marina and a $10 million convention center now adorn the former base.

Last year, for the first time, Panama's annual income from tourism -- $678 million -- surpassed revenues from the canal.

The jury included Maria Celeste Arraras of Telemundo TV; Deborah Carthy-Deu, the 1985 Miss Universe; Italian designer Roberto Cavalli; Richard Johnson of the Washington Post; professional model Audrey Quock; Peter Reckell of NBC's "Days of Our Lives;" professional model Fernanda Tavarez; Matthew St. Patrick of HBO's Six Feet Under series, and Amelia Marshall of NBC's "Passions" series.

Tue June 3, 2003 11:11 PM ET PANAMA CITY (<a href=asia.reuters.com>Reuters) - Miss Dominican Republic Amelia Vega, an 18-year-old high school student, won the Miss Universe 2003 title at a sparkling ceremony in Panama City on Tuesday, beating a field of 70 other pageant queens.

Miss Venezuela Mariangel Ruiz came second, followed by Miss South Africa Cindy Nell.

The winners were announced at the end of a gala night of parades in figure-hugging swimsuits and shimmering evening gowns in the $10 million Figali Convention Center on the banks of the Pacific entrance to the Panama Canal.

PANAMA CITY, Panama (<a href=thestar.com.my>AP) - Three Latin American contestants were among the 10 finalists competing Tuesday before judges and an estimated 600 million television viewers for the 2003 Miss Universe title.

Among the favorites chosen from the field of 71 contestants were representatives of South Africa, the Dominican Republic and Venezuela.

The winner will replace Justine Pasek of Panama, the first runner up last year who took the crown after the Russian winner surrendered the title voluntarily.

Many here are already betting on Miss Dominican Republic, a tall aspiring singer named Amelia Vega, 18, whose uncle is well-known merengue singer Juan Luis Guerra.

Vega is following in the family footsteps in more than one way: her mother represented her country in the 1980 Miss Universe pageant.

Miss Venezuela, Mariangel Ruiz, is the Cinderella of the contest: the 22-year-old almost couldn't come to the competition, because of financial problems in her home country. A donor finally turned up to meet the costs of her trip.

Cindy Nell, 21, is a bit of a departure among the favorites; a refined South African tourism promoter in a field dominated by Latin Americans.

The top 10 announced during the ceremony also included women from Trinidad and Tobago, the Czech Republic, Namibia, Canada, Brazil, Serbia and Montenegro and Japan.

Cut after making the top 15 were Miss USA, Susie Castillo, and Misses Greece, Panama, Angola and Peru.

One local favorite who dropped out earlier was Miss Colombia, Diana Mantilla, who had released a record of her songs here.

It's also showtime for Panama, which will have a few minutes of prime time to promote itself as a new tourist destination after decades of living under the shadow of the U.S. military that long protected the Panama Canal.

On December 31, 1999, the United States took its last soldiers home and handed Panama the canal administration.

The women arrived on May 15 and have visited schools and hospitals amid rehearsals for the finals.

"I am excited and anxious. I have been preparing for this for ten months,'' said Vega. "It is partly because of confidence and the personal pride of representing your country.''

Mantilla said the contest also has a social purpose, noting that the winner promotes the fight against AIDS. "It is not just a search for a pretty woman.''

Tuesday's finals were to be hosted by television personalities Daisy Fuentes and Billy Bush. Puerto Rican Pop singer Chayanne and Bond, were to perform.

This year's pageant is being held at a refurbished canal-side base abandoned by the Americans. Hotels, restaurants and a marina, as well as a US$10 million convention center now adorn what once was U.S. Fort Amador.

Panama wants to show the world it is a changed country since last hosting the pageant in 1986 under the military dictatorship of Gen. Manuel Noriega and with U.S. troops guarding the Panama Canal.

Last year, for the first time, Panama's annual income from tourism - US$678 million - surpassed revenues from the canal.

The government has done all it could to ensure a smooth pageant - and avoid protests.

It suspended classes in the national university and the National Technical Institute to discourage demonstrators such as those who caused traffic chaos last Thursday.

On Tuesday, Panama City Mayor Juan Carlos Navarro presented the keys to the city to real estate developer and investor Donald Trump, the half-owner of the Miss Universe parent organization.

"Panama is a great country, and I'm going to come back,'' said Trump. - AP

<a href=www.artnewsonline.com>Art News Online June 2003 By Roger Atwood Making up for decades of neglect, North American museums are bolstering their commitment to buying, showing, and studying everything from Mexican colonial portraiture to Chilean Surrealism

The Museo del Barrio's upcoming exhibition "MoMA at El Museo" features some of the Museum of Modern Art's Latin American holdings, including Beatriz Milhazes's 1996 Succulent Eggplants. ©Beatriz Milhazes/Courtesy Museum of Modern Art, New York "No one came," says the museum’s director, James Ballinger.

How times have changed. Now the museum’s sole Kahlo painting, El suicidio de Dorothy Hale (1939), a copy of which appears prominently in the Salma Hayek movie Frida, is one of the prize holdings of the museum, which has been steadily building its modern and contemporary Latin American collection. The institution is now searching for its third full-time curator to run the ten-year-old Latin American division. "I don’t think we could even do a show like that now, because of insurance and the value of the paintings," says Ballinger. "But if we could, we would have lines down the avenue. There is curiosity now about what’s going on in Latin American art and a lot of energy going into bringing it to the public."

American museums, long accustomed to regarding Latin American art as an appendage of other divisions or to ignoring it altogether, are bolstering their commitment to buying, showing, and studying everything from Mexican colonial portraiture to Chilean Surrealism. Two major institutions, the Houston Museum of Fine Arts and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), have recently appointed their first chief curators for Latin American art. Others have held major Latin American shows, including "Brazil: Body and Soul" at the Guggenheim in New York and a survey of South American abstraction at Harvard University’s Fogg Museum. Museums across the country have established community groups aimed at drumming up support and interest for their Latin American programs, and dealers say the institutional push into Latin American art is adding momentum to the market.

New York’s Museum of Modern Art has been dusting off some of its lesser-known Latin American holdings for a show of about 100 works at the Museo del Barrio in New York, called "MoMA at El Museo." The show, which opens September 25, is being curated by a team from both institutions including the Museo del Barrio’s chief curator, Fatima Bercht, and MoMA’s chief curator of drawings, Gary Garrels. It is no reprise of MoMA’s sprawling Latin American survey of 1993 but rather a review of the museum’s own holdings, which originated with Abby Aldrich Rockefeller’s donation of a Diego Rivera painting in 1936. Interest in these has ebbed and flowed with political tides and tastes ever since. Curators exploring a MoMA warehouse are discovering one forgotten jewel after another, most acquired in the 1950s, ’60s, and ’70s, and many never before shown to the public.

"We’re finding things that no one has set eyes on for 40 years," says Garrels. Coming upon Maya Women (1926), a painting by Mexican modernist Roberto Montenegro, who died in 1968, "was this moment of revelation," he notes. Works by Argentine artist Jorge de la Vega, who died in 1970 at the age of 41, and Brazilian painter Antonio Dias, among others, will hang in the show alongside prominent works by Roberto Matta, Joaquín Torres-García, and Wifredo Lam, as well as acquisitions by newer figures like Brazilians Lygia Pape and Beatriz Milhazes and the Argentine Guillermo Kuitca. "It really is the story of a collection, how MoMA developed the whole notions of modern art and Latin American art, and how those notions are now being revisited," says Julian Zugazagoitia, El Museo’s director.

Outside the United States, the Tate appointed its first associate curator of Latin American art in October—National University of Mexico art historian Cuauhtémoc Medina. And in Spain the Museo Reina Sofía just wrapped up a retrospective of paintings by Kuitca. A major show of pictorial work by Mexican-based multimedia artist Francis Alÿs is on view at the Reina Sofía through August 18.

The strongest pitch has been in the U.S. Southwest, where museums are reaching out to the large and fast-growing Hispanic communities that they confess they have neglected. "The ethnic makeup of Houston is becoming strongly Latin American, and I want to make sure that the institution stays rooted in its community—because when it becomes disconnected, it starts to die," says Peter Marzio, director of the Houston MFA. "We’re late getting into this, but from the point of view of geography and demographics it makes a lot of sense. It’s been staring us in the face for so long that we just didn’t see it." Marzio’s museum created a department of Latin American art in May 2001, under the direction of University of Chicago–trained art historian Mari Carmen Ramírez, and has been aggressively acquiring on the high end of the market, including two major works by Torres-García. Acquisitions are coming in "every way you can imagine," says Marzio. "We’re going through dealers, collectors—purchasing some wonderful things—and then we’ve got innumerable sources south of the border, an extremely diverse group of artists and galleries."

The museum’s Latin American department kicked off in March 2002 with a well-received show of works by the late Venezuelan sculptor Gertrudis Goldschmidt, known as Gego. Her delicate abstract figures made of wire, string, and drill bits—she called them "drawings without paper"—are far from the Latin American stereotype of stooped peasants and whitewashed churches.

LACMA bounded into the big leagues of Latin American art with the donation in 1997 of more than 2,000 works by collectors Bernard and Edith Lewin, focusing on 20th-century Mexican painting. Over the past few years, the museum opened a 4,000-square-foot wing to house the collection, appointed a chief curator of Latin American art, Ilona Katzew, and planned an ambitious round of acquisitions. "The idea is to get as wide a spectrum as possible of works from the whole hemisphere," says Katzew. The gaps she is looking to fill are "not particularly inexpensive" and include works by Matta, of whom the museum now has only a few drawings, and Lam.

Meanwhile, curators are also grappling with an array of questions that were more or less settled generations ago in other fields. Many issues are being reexplored, starting with the very idea of "Latin American art" as a collecting area. Debates are simmering over ghettoization, over where—if anywhere—to draw the line between Latin American and U.S. Hispanic art, over whether collections should be organized by national origin as opposed to chronology, theme, style, or medium. All this makes Latin American art one of the most stimulating fields in the art world, say curators.

"We’re in this honeymoon now, but I think certain tensions will emerge later," says Gabriel Pérez-Barreiro, curator of the large and well-established Latin American collection at the Jack S. Blanton Museum of Art at the University of Texas. Slapping together vastly disparate kinds of Latin American art is bound to create a strain, he says. "If you’re looking at art from Argentina you might as well be looking at art from Russia, and yet there it is being bunched together with things from Mexico or Cuba." Pérez-Barreiro is critical of the approach some museums are taking in expanding their Latin American holdings. "Directors see a gap; they have no idea what to do about it; and instead of addressing it institution-wide, they form whole Latin American departments, which helps fund-raising but doesn’t fix the problem," he says. "The risk is that when other departments are formed on a medium basis, like paintings or drawings or sculptures, and then you add a department called ’Latin America,’ with all mediums included in it, it becomes a form of tokenism."

Interest in Latin American art at U.S. museums has come and gone like Latin dance crazes over the decades. Mexican muralists Rivera and José Clemente Orozco were celebrities before World War II, but their work "looked a bit old and out of step after the war," says Marzio. A brief spurt of acquisitions in the late 1940s and early 1950s focused on the Chilean Surrealist Matta, who influenced the U.S. Abstract Expressionists, and on a few artists then in vogue who have since slipped in critical esteem, such as Oswaldo Guayasamín. But museums failed to build on those foundations, and Latin American art was relegated to the basements and warehouses. A kind of curatorial estrangement set in, and it didn’t lift until the 1990s.

MoMA’s erratic relationship with Latin America is a case in point. It started with gifts from the Rockefellers in the 1930s, followed by an infusion of Rockefeller money early in the course of World War II, with the explicit strategic intent of shoring up support for the Allied cause among South American elites, who in Argentina and, to a lesser extent, Chile, sympathized with Fascism. Arts patron Lincoln Kirstein toured Latin American galleries and garrets, buying scores of works as he went. Some were featured in a 1943 show and have not been seen publicly since.

MoMA’s show at the Museo del Barrio (created at the latter’s initiative) "proved to be the perfect catalyst" for MoMA’s long-standing desire to bring more of its vast Latin American holdings to the public, says Garrels. MoMA planned a retrospective of the work of Venezuelan painter Armando Reverón, known for bleached landscapes evoking the intensity of tropical light, for late 2004, but political turmoil in Venezuela has put the show on indefinite hold. Garrels insists the museum remains committed to it. "There’s a chance it will be the first major show" at MoMA’s new building in Manhattan in 2005, he says.

But don’t expect MoMA to create a Latin American department, says Garrels. "We’re not working like that. We’re very actively building a collection and folding it into each individual department. It’s part of the reinterpretation of what constitutes modernism and where its edges are. Matisse and Picasso are going to remain very much the heart of the museum."

Most museums are buying Latin American art partly on the assumption that they should "reach out" to Hispanics, yet the notion that Latin American immigrants and their descendants prefer to see art from their homelands is itself the subject of some bracing debate. Do Hispanic immigrants necessarily want to see Latin American art more than, say, French Impressionism?

"Yes, it is an assumption, but it’s an assumption based on the understanding that this community not only has a sense of pride in its culture but wants to make North Americans more aware of the riches of that culture," says the Houston MFA’s Ramírez. "We’re doing this not as a reaction to pressure to be politically correct but as an organic movement within the museum." A new private endowment supports her curatorial post, a signal to everyone, she says, "that this department is here to stay and that everything we do in terms of Latin American art is part of a long-term commitment." The Blanton Museum’s Pérez-Barreiro cautions against assuming that Latin American art will bring Texas’s highly heterogeneous Hispanic community into museums. "It’s a strange assumption to make. You’re sort of sending people back to where they came from."

A Rivera show at LACMA in 1999 drew huge crowds, giving a sense of the potential for high-quality Latin American shows, says Katzew. "It’s a tricky thing. You can accept that the Hispanic community wants to see Latin American art but also accept that it might want to see European art, for example," she adds. To puncture the ghettoization charge, she placed a piece called Armoire by the three-man Cuban collective Los Carpinteros in the museum’s modern-and-contemporary gallery, giving the work a larger resonance.

Many museums are farther along in collecting Latin American photography than in acquiring painting and sculpture, particularly Mexican work from the first half of the 20th century. The Getty Museum in Los Angeles mounted a show of about 100 photographs by Mexican master Manuel Alvarez Bravo in late 2001, based mostly on gifts and loans to the museum. Works by contemporary photographers Sebastião Salgado and Sergio Larraín and early Peruvian master Martín Chambi are also in demand, say specialists. Adding to the spark in Latin American art is the fact that comparatively little critical, analytical, or historical scholarship has been done on the subject. "We’re confronting this incredible lack of art-history research and scholarship," says Ramírez. Poor infrastructures in Latin American libraries and research centers has only worsened matters, she says. At the same time, the lack of serious work in museums until now has meant that auction houses such as Sotheby’s and Christie’s have taken outsize roles in defining tastes and styles, she says.

"That’s what creates a lot of the energy in Latin American art, this amazing sense of discovery about it," explains Phoenix’s Ballinger. "The lack of scholarship is a penalty, no question, but it opens up a sense among collectors and the public that there is much left to learn about Latin American art, unlike in other fields where you’ve got book after book after book on all the major figures." The appearance of more serious public venues in Latin America, like the new Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires, has helped form a sense of evolution and volume in Latin American art and aided research, say curators.

Instead of the usual inquiries into modernism’s influence on Latin America, scholars are now going in the opposite direction—looking at the depth of Matta’s legacy to midcentury U.S. art, for example. Research by Bronx Museum curatorial associate Amy Rosenblum Martín traces the way Latin American esthetics found their way into the work of Camille Pissarro and Paul Gauguin, who each spent a part of his childhood in Venezuela and Peru, respectively; and of Manet, who visited Brazil. "Latin America is a neglected strand in the development of modernism," she says.

The push by museums into Latin American art is helping sustain prices throughout the current recession, particularly for titans like Matta, Rufino Tamayo, and Fernando Botero. At the same time, the steady rise in value of Latin American art makes donations more attractive because donors can deduct the appreciated value. "There are a lot of private collectors holding major pieces of Latin American art in this country for which they paid very little money," says Marzio. "This is one time when the tax code is our friend." The result is that donations are driving acquisitions to an unusual degree. The Boston Museum of Fine Arts developed a respectable Latin American collection overnight last January with a donation from the late New York doctors Melvin Blake and Frank Purnell. Included in the gift of 60 works focusing on Spanish realists were 12 works by Chilean-born realist Claudio Bravo, whose canvases have sold at auction for $1.4 million, and a pair of nudes by Botero.

The trade is feeling the momentum, says dealer Mary-Anne Martin, whose New York gallery pioneered some major Latin American artists in the early 1980s but is now one in a crowded field. "It’s been kind of all or nothing—20 years ago I don’t think any museums were buying Latin American art," she says. "Part of the change is that some of the most sought-after artists and photographers these days happen to be Latin American. Gabriel Orozco, Ernesto Neto, a few others—these are names on the must list for any museum. We’ve definitely broken the ghetto barrier."

Roger Atwood is a Washington correspondent for ARTnews.

By DAVE MASON Scripps Howard News Service June 3, 2003

"Enterprise" is going on a mission next season to save Earth from future destruction.

Any parallels in this season's finale to Sept. 11, 2001, or the war in Iraq were unintentional, according to executive producers Rick Berman and Brannon Braga.

"We were way out in the script stage before we saw the parallel," Berman said during a conference call featuring Braga and star Scott Bakula.

Braga added: "The idea of aliens coming to destroy Earth has been around a lot longer than Sept. 11. But anytime we can explore a contemporary issue, it makes the show that much better."

"Enterprise" airs on UPN. The prequel "Star Trek" series explores Starfleet's first missions in deep space in the century before Capt. Kirk and company.

In the finale, a man from the future, who has guided the alien race called the Sulibans, told Capt. Jonathan Archer (Scott Bakula) that it was the Xindi, a new alien species, who had attacked Earth with the blast of a small ship, killing millions of people from Florida to Venezuela. Archer persuades Starfleet Command to let him go to the Delphic Expanse, a horrific area of space, to find the Xindi and prevent their plan to destroy Earth with a larger weapon.

The Xindi attacked Earth because someone else from the future told them that 400 years from now, Earth will destroy their planet. The communication from the future is all part of a temporal Cold War.

Is the man who talked to Archer telling him the entire story or even the real story? That's the question for next season, Berman said.

On "Enterprise," Archer and crew are trying to save Earth. Here on the real Earth, it's all part of a plan by Berman and Braga to raise interest in the series at a time when the ratings and fan satisfaction fall short of those for "The Next Generation."

"We went to the 10 'Star Trek' films and saw that two of the most popular movies, 'Star Trek IV' with the whales and 'Star Trek VIII' with the Borg, which Brannon and I were involved with, had to do with saving Earth," Berman said. "It's the first time in a 'Star Trek' series that we're taking on a mission besides exploring space."

Bakula, the "Quantum Leap" star who portrays Archer, said it's the right time in the series for the captain's mission.

"I'm thrilled about it. Rick, Brannon and I were talking about the first two seasons, what we had learned, and I felt it was time for (Archer) to take a stand. It was time for him to pick up something and pursue it."

That's when Berman and Braga told him about the plan for the Delphic Expanse, a newly discovered part of space. "My character is going to be more determined; he'll be more driven," Bakula said. Searching for the Xindi won't distract Archer from his original mission of discovery, Bakula said. "The Delphic Expanse is unexplored; the emotion won't be lost."

Berman and Braga said the mission into the Delphic Expanse doesn't mean "Enterprise" is following the course of "Star Trek: Voyager." "It's not a 'Lost in Space' like 'Voyager,'" Berman said. And they could run into aliens familiar to "Star Trek," including Klingons and Vulcans.

The season ended with the Klingons still chasing Archer for having escaped from their mining prison on Rura Penthe after Archer rescued refugees escaping from their empire. Will the Klingons follow Archer into the Expanse? "Perhaps," Berman said, not saying another word.