THE UofA’s CENTER FOR CREATIVE PHOTOGRAPHY is offering a chance to see the work of photographer Robert Mapplethorpe again – and maybe for the first time.

 Mapplethorpe’s 1989-1990 exhibit “The Perfect Moment” – that reached the public months after his death at the age of 42 from complications arising from AIDS – created a major battle in the culture wars with its explicit homoerotic and sadomasochistic images.

Mapplethorpe self-portraits

 The uproar seared an image of Mapplethorpe into the public mind to the exclusion of nearly all his other work.

 And it is that other work – a vast body of strikingly dramatic portraits – that is represented in 104 Mapplethorpe photographs on display at the Center through October 4.

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THIS SHOULD BE ONE GOOD PARTY!

Beginning Thursday afternoon from the UofA Main Gate, to 4th Avenue, to Congress Street, La Placita and pretty much all downtown the celebration of the opening of the new 4th Avenue underpass will get underway – and keep going well into the evening.

Rendering from north side of 4th Ave. underpass

This should be fun. Make plans to go. Particularly, enjoy what this is all about – the linking, finally, of a continuous activity corridor from the UofA to downtown’s emergent arts, dining and entertainment center through 4th Avenue’s well-established cultural scene.

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THE BIKE SANCTUARY, TUCSON’S NEWEST PUBLIC ARTS PROJECT, got off to a celebratory start over the weekend.

New Bike Sanctuary in Barrio Anita

About 200 people gathered at the sanctuary site at the southwest corner of Main and Davis in Barrio Anita for the inaugural. The 12 by 12 foot steel frame sculpture is dedicated to bicyclists who have been injured or died and stands as the northern gateway to the proposed El Paso and Southwestern Greenway, a six-mile long bicycle and pedestrian path to run on a former railroad corridor from downtown, through South Tucson and to the Kino Sports Center.

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