Past Events

Exit Through the Gift Shop focuses on Thierry Guetta, a French immigrant and aspiring filmmaker in Los Angeles who infiltrates the underground street art community and befriends the talented and elusive Banksy. As Guetta documents Banksy’s exploits, he slowly establishes an artistic profile of his own as “Mr. Brainwash,” leaving the audience to wonder who is subject and who is filmmaker.

Panel Discussants: Anthony Cascardi (Dean, Arts & Humanities), Carla Hesse (Dean, Social Sciences), AnnaLee Saxenian (Dean, School of Information) and Thomas Leonard (University Librarian)

Dr. Lisbet Rausing is a Senior Research Fellow at Imperial College’s Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine. She is also the founder of the Arcadia Fund, which since 2001 has made grant commitments of over $181 million to preserve endangered treasures of culture and nature. Dr. Rausing is the author of Linnaeus: Nature and Nation as well as numerous scholarly articles, including “Toward a New Alexandria,” (The New Republic, March 2010), which addresses the future of libraries and public access to scholarly resources.

Part of the lecture series “Return to Mesopotamian Cosmic Geography: New Studies on Heaven and Earth.”

In this series of lectures Avenali Resident Fellow Wayne Horowitz discusses specific aspects of Mesopotamian cosmology, from the heavens above to underworld below. Each of these lectures is open to the public and may be attended separately.

Mark Lilla’s research in the humanities focuses on intellectual history, with a particular emphasis on Western political and religious thought. A frequent contributor to the New York Review of Books, the New Republic, and the New York Times, Professor Lilla is best known for his books The Reckless Mind: Intellectuals in Politics and The Stillborn God: Religion, Politics, and the Modern West.

In celebration of the launch of the Old Things Course Thread, faculty members present papers addressing the value of studying the past at the university level, particularly at UC Berkeley.

Svetlana Boym is a Professor of Slavic and Comparative Literatures at Harvard University and the Associate of Harvard School of Design and Architecture.

In anticipation of the "Old Things" Symposium, Hans Sluga (Philosophy) will present a keynote lecture titled "What has History to do with Me?: Old Things for New Times."

Part of the lecture series “Return to Mesopotamian Cosmic Geography: New Studies on Heaven and Earth.”

In this series of lectures Avenali Resident Fellow Wayne Horowitz discusses specific aspects of Mesopotamian cosmology, from the heavens above to underworld below. Each of these lectures is open to the public and may be attended separately.

Director Lucy Walker follows artist Vik Muniz as he visits the world’s largest garbage dump in Rio de Janeiro and builds one of his famous portraits from trash. The world the film explores is indeed a land of waste, but it is also a world of vibrant optimism, endless creativity, and touching generosity on the part of the people who occupy it.