on to berlin

Award-winning UH professor books prestigious international arts prize

Cristina Rivera Garza university of houston UH

Cristina Rivera Garza has won one of only 10 awards.

Photo courtesy of University of Houston

An acclaimed University of Houston creative writing professor has just booked a prestigious award. UH’s Cristina Rivera Garza won the Berlin Prize for spring 2023, UH announced.

She is one of only 10 recipients to win the semester-long fellowship, which is awarded annually to elite scholars, writers, composers, and artists who are from or live in the United States.

Rivera Garza will travel to The American Academy, where she will collaborate with peers and institutions in the institution’s considerable network. As part of the fellowship public program, she and the other fellows will participate in readings, performances, and lectures with German audiences, per a press release.

Berlin Prize recipients are selected by an independent committee; The American Academy in Berlin recently granted 20 prizes — 10 for fall 2022 and 10 for spring 2023.

Rivera Garza will use the Berlin Prize Fellowship to work on her new project, The Solanum Tuberosum Diaries, a nonfiction that explores family history in the context of the demise of potato production in the Toluca Valley in Central Mexico.

“This is such a prestigious award, one that will allow me to build conversations across disciplines with top American scholars and authors in a city burgeoning with cultural and social activity,” said Rivera Garza in a statement. “I am sincerely grateful and elated about this opportunity.”

At UH, she serves as the M.D. Anderson Distinguished Professor and director of the UH doctoral program in creative writing in Spanish. Aside from penning fiction and nonfiction novels, short stories, and poetry, she teaches graduate seminars and workshops on the role of “capitalocene” on contemporary writing practices. “Capitalocene,” she noted in a statement, refers to the era of capitalistic endeavors disrupting our landscape and planet.

The phenomenon inspired her latest work, Geological Writings, which will be published later this year.

“Professor Rivera Garza is a leader in her field and this honor is well deserved,” said Paula Myrick Short, senior vice president for academic affairs and provost, in a statement. “She continues to write thought-provoking works on urgent topics, stimulating international conversations. Her talents as a teacher, researcher and writer have a lasting impact on our creative writing students.”

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A Roman Holiday (Season)

All roads lead to Houston museum's blockbuster exhibit of Imperial Rome

Photo courtesy of Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

The Museum of Fine Arts Houston presents "Art and Life in Imperial Rome: Trajan and His Times" ("Statue of Trajan" Minturno, Italy, 2nd century, marble, National Archaeological Museum, Naples)

Houston's holiday season will have a distinctly Roman feeling this year, as the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston is bringing the glory of the Gladiator era to Texas. On November 2, 2025 through January 25, 2026 the MFAH presents the monumental new exhibition “Art and Life in Imperial Rome: Trajan and His Times.”

Featuring 160 objects of antiquity, including marble sculptures, frescoes, mosaics, delicate glass vessels, and exquisite bronze artifacts, the exhibition will transport visitors back in time to the Roman Empire during a flowering of art and architecture. The MFAH partnered with the Saint Louis Art Museum to organize the exhibition, which will showcase many pieces that have never been on view in the U.S.

While Emperor Trajan might not be the most famous — or in some cases, most infamous — of the Roman emperors, he ruled between 98 and 117 C.E. during the empire’s height and was the second of the so-called “Five Good Emperors” of the Nerva-Antonine dynasty. He was also the first emperor born outside of present-day Italy, in what is now Andalusia, Spain. During his reign, he granted citizenship and rights to some peoples from conquered lands. The exhibition will explore how this time period expanded what it meant to be a Roman and how art reflected Rome’s power and promoted the empire’s values and ideals.

$\u200bThe Museum of Fine Arts Houston presents "Art and Life in Imperial Rome: Trajan and His Times"$

Photo courtesy of Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

The Museum of Fine Arts Houston presents "Art and Life in Imperial Rome: Trajan and His Times" ("Statue of Trajan" Minturno, Italy, 2nd century, marble, National Archaeological Museum, Naples)

From statues of prominent men and women of the era, including Trajan, to vivid frescoes and furnishing from the villas of Pompeii, the objects in the exhibition will tell fascinating cultural and political stories of life in imperial Rome. To add context to the artworks and objects of antiquity, the MFAH will recreate a section of Trajan’s Column, which was a towering pillar with a spiraling narrative frieze, one of the few monumental sculptures to have survived the fall of Rome.

“Art and Life in Imperial Rome: Trajan and His Times” brings such a wealth of objects to Houston thanks to unprecedented loans from the renowned antiquities collections of Italian museums including Museo Nazionale Romano, the Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli, the Parco Archeologico di Ostia, and the Musei Vaticani. It would would likely take months of travel across Italy to see this much art.

“This is truly a rare opportunity for U.S. audiences to experience spectacular objects from this glorious era of the Roman Empire,” said Gary Tinterow, director and Margaret Alkek Williams chair of the MFAH, in a statement. “We are enormously grateful to our colleagues in Rome, Naples, and Vatican City for lending these treasures to us and broadening the appreciation of Italy’s cultural heritage.”

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