At the invitation of the National Museum of Fine Arts of Rio de Janeiro, Executive Director George Rivera traveled to Brazil in the fall of 2000, along with David Hayden, Poeh Museum Director, and Philip Karshis, the Poeh Center’s Arts Training Coordinator. While in Brazil, they made major presentations on the Pueblo of Pojoaque’s efforts at a Museum-sponsored forum and fair and at its International Seminar on Indian Culture and African Brazilian Culture. As important, they visited Guarani Tribes and met with their leaders to explain how the Pueblo of Pojoaque had established and implemented a successful long-term economic development strategy based on the Tribe’s traditional culture, values and way of life. The reaction to the Poeh Center’s presentations at both the Seminar and at the tribal level was overwhelmingly positive.
While in Brazil, the National Museum of Fine Arts of Rio de Janeiro and the Pueblo of Pojoaque entered into a cooperative agreement to establish a long-term interdisciplinary exchange program of arts education, cultural preservation and cultural tourism that would benefit the Guarani Tribes by increasing their capacity in sustainable development, based in artistic tradition. This program is now in its planning stage with an initial artist-to-artist exchange beginning in April, 2001.
