For over three and a half decades, Ricardo Pau-Llosa has been a prominent figure in the literary and visual arts of South Florida. An internationally recognized authority on Latin American Modernist art, Pau-Llosa has attained equal prominence as a poet and essayist. And he has also been collecting art. The University of Notre Dame’s Snite Museum of Art is featuring a major exhibition this fall – Parallel Currents: Highlights of the Ricardo Pau-Llosa Collection of Latin American Art (Aug. 29-Nov. 14). Pau-Llosa will be signing copies of the superbly designed and printed, full-color book accompanying the exhibition, Parallel Currents which includes a penetrating essay, “Art and the Diasporic Imagination” (published with facing-page translation into Spanish), in which Pau-Llosa discusses the emergence of the Latin American art scene in Miami, the role art played in his exile family’s struggles to establish themselves in America, and the development of his original critical model for the interpretation of the region’s art. Also being presented this evening is the just released book, The Miami of the Poet (Maker’s Press), with a selection of Pau-Llosa’s South Florida-inspired works alongside photographs by James Gersing. 8pm