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Roberto Ignacio Díaz

@robertissimus.bsky.social
1K followers 674 following 577 posts

Professor of Spanish and Comparative Literature at USC | Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. | Author of “Latin America and the Transports of Opera” | Platonic Cyclist, Real Public Transit Rider | 🇨🇺🇺🇸🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🇬🇱🇩🇰🇵🇦🇨🇦🇲🇽🇵🇸🇺🇦🇪🇺🇻🇪🇪🇸🇮🇷🇰🇷

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Roberto Ignacio Díaz @robertissimus.bsky.social · 2h
Carlos Fuentes, aged nine, in a mural by Roberto Cueva del Río at the MacVeagh House, the 1910 Beaux Arts mansion serving as the Mexican embassy in Washington when Fuentes’s father was counselor in the 1930s. It’s now the Mexican Cultural Institute; the boy’s eyes remain as perceptive as ever.
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Roberto Ignacio Díaz @robertissimus.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Late summer, early fall. Sunday, drizzly sunset. A view of Maryland and the Potomac and West Virginia.
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Roberto Ignacio Díaz @robertissimus.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Late summer, early fall. Not a big fan of FLW myself, but I couldn’t stop thinking how much Jim would’ve have enjoyed Fallingwater. He would’ve have smiled through the entire tour and would’ve marveled at the iconic view — which, I confess, I did find most wondrous.
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Roberto Ignacio Díaz @robertissimus.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
Trains and churches of Cumberland, Maryland.
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Roberto Ignacio Díaz @robertissimus.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Matching for Tibet this morning along Connecticut Avenue.
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Roberto Ignacio Díaz @robertissimus.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Awesome news for Los Angeles and surely too for Velázquez’s formidable Conde-Duque, who now gets to live in California.
getty.edu
Getty Acquires Rediscovered Diego Velázquez Painting | Getty News
“Portrait of the Count-Duke of Olivares” strengthens Getty’s collection of 17th-century European paintings.
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Roberto Ignacio Díaz @robertissimus.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
“His ego wants what it wants. He lives in a city that he evidently hates and that […] hates him back. But Trump’s obsession with these vulgar memorials to his own vanity is a reminder of the darkness around him, of his hostility to democracy, his loathing of honor, and his disordered mind.”
theatlantic.com
Trump’s Monumental Obsession
The president fantasizes about a capital city full of memorials—to himself.
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Roberto Ignacio Díaz @robertissimus.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
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Roberto Ignacio Díaz @robertissimus.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
Late summer in D.C. | Blue Skies.
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Roberto Ignacio Díaz @robertissimus.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
“17 September 1809 “We had not seen a Vessel since we passed Fair Isle in the North Sea — We had had a gale all day and night and the Swell was frightful — The Swell continued terrific — At about five o clock in the Afternoon a British Brig was discovered. …
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Roberto Ignacio Díaz @robertissimus.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
Late summer in Washington, D.C., and the sky is blue. Despite it all, this city will be fine. Then again, it would be good to have more control over our own affairs, if you catch my drift.
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Roberto Ignacio Díaz @robertissimus.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
Even “Blue” is being forced out of the Kennedy Center by Trump-appointed board. As some have suggested, this may well be the first step on demolishing the whole thing. Are we going to sit idly by as the Man in the White House exerts his power of destruction?
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Roberto Ignacio Díaz @robertissimus.bsky.social · 30/08/2026
“They felt a railway train as power; yet they, and all other artists, constantly complained that the power embodied in a railway train could never be embodied in art. All the steam in the world could not, like the Virgin, build Chartres.” “The Education of Henry Adams,” Chapter XXV
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Roberto Ignacio Díaz @robertissimus.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
Such sadness after so much joy.
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Roberto Ignacio Díaz @robertissimus.bsky.social · 09/08/2026
Literary birth of a D.C. landmark, the Exorcist steps: “She turned a wistful look to her right, where, beside the house, a precipitous plunge of old stone steps fell away to M Street far below […]” William Peter Blatty, “The Exorcist”
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Roberto Ignacio Díaz @robertissimus.bsky.social · 20/07/2026
From the timeline of my friend Paco in Madrid, from whom I’ve learned so much about Spain.
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Roberto Ignacio Díaz @robertissimus.bsky.social · 12/07/2026
Borges would like a word.
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Roberto Ignacio Díaz @robertissimus.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
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Roberto Ignacio Díaz @robertissimus.bsky.social · 02/07/2026
Braved the humid heat to visit with the magnificent eleventh-century “Vishnu Reclining on the Serpent Ananda,” who is in at the National Museum of Asian Art all the way from the National Museum of Cambodia — reassembled for the first time in all his elongated gorgeousness.
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Roberto Ignacio Díaz @robertissimus.bsky.social · 26/06/2026
Flora of the District of Columbia in early summer, as Ozu would have it.
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Roberto Ignacio Díaz @robertissimus.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
Haunted by this image. What an awesome country America can be. We surely will be touched again by those better angels President Lincoln talked about. (There’s a link to the WaPo story behind the image in the comments.)
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Roberto Ignacio Díaz @robertissimus.bsky.social · 21/06/2026
D.C. peeps, forget the algae and you-know-who and go see “Joan Miró and the United States” at the Phillips Collection. Today was my second visit and I loved the show even more than the first time.
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Roberto Ignacio Díaz @robertissimus.bsky.social · 21/06/2026
Con mi papá en una biblioteca perdida de Santiago de Cuba en 1961 o 1962. #FathersDay
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Roberto Ignacio Díaz @robertissimus.bsky.social · 20/06/2026
D.C. peeps, it’s best to stay away from the Mall for now — at least until after the Fourth. It looks like a junkyard, apart from the algae and peeling paint in the reflecting pool — the saddest image for America’s 250th. As always, everything Donald Trump touches dies.
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Roberto Ignacio Díaz @robertissimus.bsky.social · 20/06/2026
In love with this melancholy head from the Kingdom of Benin at the National Museum of African Art — “a very rare late-15th-century copper alloy trophy head, likely of a defeated enemy — one of the earliest known examples of this genre of figurate cast sculpture from the kingdom.”
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Roberto Ignacio Díaz @robertissimus.bsky.social · 17/06/2026
In the realm of the algae.
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Roberto Ignacio Díaz @robertissimus.bsky.social · 17/06/2026
Setsuko Hara, born in Yokohama on this date in 1920. Here she is in “Late Spring,” a radiant image of happiness.
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Roberto Ignacio Díaz @robertissimus.bsky.social · 14/06/2026
The sun sets over the Potomac all the way to Georgetown. Make no mistake: that name may be off the Kennedy Center, but the future doesn’t look rosy for the performing arts in D.C. The Washington National Opera has no home and the National Symphony Orchestra has yet to get a budget for next year.
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Roberto Ignacio Díaz @robertissimus.bsky.social · 13/06/2026
As seen at the Hirshhorn yesterday afternoon: Bacon, Lam, Mitchell, Diebenkorn. What a cool refuge from the humid heat and, worse,Trump’s wild circus on the Mall.
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Roberto Ignacio Díaz @robertissimus.bsky.social · 13/06/2026
What goes up …
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Roberto Ignacio Díaz @robertissimus.bsky.social · 12/06/2026
Such sad news. If you were a gay man living in Los Angeles, David Hockney could be your genius loci — the freest spirit of a lovely place. Blessed memories.
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Roberto Ignacio Díaz @robertissimus.bsky.social · 10/06/2026
That arch proposed for our fair capital city? Please consider sending your views to the National Park Service by clicking here:
parkplanning.nps.gov
National Park Service - PEPC - Triumphal Arch - Section 106 Assessment of Effect and Draft Programmatic Agreement -Submit Comments
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Roberto Ignacio Díaz @robertissimus.bsky.social · 10/06/2026
As seen last Saturday: Aalto lives at the National Gallery of Art.
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Roberto Ignacio Díaz @robertissimus.bsky.social · 08/06/2026
As Trump begins to exit the stage …
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Roberto Ignacio Díaz @robertissimus.bsky.social · 06/06/2026
Saw this again two nights ago — first time in years. Loved every aspect of it, and not because I’m a Georgetown alum with memories of watching it on campus, walking up and down the famous steps, etc. Such craft: the buildup, all that’s visible and invisible, the operatic deaths & triumph of love…
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Roberto Ignacio Díaz @robertissimus.bsky.social · 05/06/2026
Not a big fan of keeping animals in cages, but today I was at the Washington zoo, impressed by the strange beauty of the red tufted lemur from Madagascar and the tamandua from South America. What can we, bigger and supposedly most sapient mammals, do for our smaller cousins?
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Roberto Ignacio Díaz @robertissimus.bsky.social · 01/06/2026
Things that are true.
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Roberto Ignacio Díaz @robertissimus.bsky.social · 30/05/2026
A commanding performance of “Quartet for the End of Time” at Dupont Underground, the old streetcar station; I believe Messiaen would have loved it.
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Roberto Ignacio Díaz @robertissimus.bsky.social · 27/05/2026
“So the city has traded charisma for craft, and the trade works only if the city lets the craft carry the whole evening. Dudamel filled the hall with his body. Harding will have to fill it with the sound, and the sound he makes is lucid and exacting and cool to the touch.”
medium.com
The Pilot Takes the Podium: Daniel Harding is the new Los Angeles Philharmonic Musical Director
Daniel Harding holds a commercial pilot’s license and flies for Air France. On Tuesday the Los Angeles Philharmonic asked him to land…
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Roberto Ignacio Díaz @robertissimus.bsky.social · 26/05/2026
I am Richard Serra’s “Contour 290.” Rain or shine, I am weatherproof steel undulating forever in the meadows at the Glenstone Museum in Potomac, Maryland.
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Roberto Ignacio Díaz @robertissimus.bsky.social · 22/05/2026
Because every house can profit from having an orangery, even when the temperature reaches 95°F|35°C, as it did last Tuesday at Dumbarton Oaks.
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Roberto Ignacio Díaz @robertissimus.bsky.social · 10/05/2026
A very brief report on the embassies of Denmark and Finland, which I toured yesterday as part of the EU Open House event in D.C.: they are both gorgeous — modern, warm, open, luminous. The city is lucky to have such buildings.
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Roberto Ignacio Díaz @robertissimus.bsky.social · 03/05/2026
A brief report on non-EU Embassy Day yesterday in D.C.: 1) The Cuban embassy & Miami-redolent Colada Shop shared a table at UDC, which bodes well; 2) You could purchase plantain chips (seen here) at the Cameroonian embassy; 3) the palatial Haitian embassy does feature a bust of Toussaint Louverture.
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Roberto Ignacio Díaz @robertissimus.bsky.social · 23/04/2026
Second visit to Zumthor’s LACMA; late afternoon; here came the sun. Earthenware, Neolithic period, 2700-2400 BCE, China. The Lansdowne Bust of Athena of Velletri, 2nd century copy after a Greek original.
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Roberto Ignacio Díaz @robertissimus.bsky.social · 22/04/2026
Zumthor’s new galleries at LACMA strike me as gorgeous spaces for displaying art. The painted concrete feels sumptuous and the rupture with traditional taxonomies privileges the collection itself. Objects from multiple periods and lands become visible in ways I’d never seen before. 1/2
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Roberto Ignacio Díaz @robertissimus.bsky.social · 17/04/2026
D.C. these days — green mansions, pace Guillermo Enrique Hudson.
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Roberto Ignacio Díaz @robertissimus.bsky.social · 16/04/2026
Can’t think of any other structure as maligned as the new galleries at LACMA, except for perhaps the Eiffel Tower back in the day. Delighted, therefore, that the NYT critic has mostly positive things to say about the architecture. Can’t wait to see the place again next week, now full of artworks.
nytimes.com
Daring and Dazzling, a New LACMA Floats Above Los Angeles
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Roberto Ignacio Díaz @robertissimus.bsky.social · 12/04/2026
Happy to report that yesterday I was able to hike along across the creek in my local woods — first time since January, when I stupidly fell on the ice and re-injured my right knee. Spring in D.C. — far more than those pretty cherry blossoms.
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Roberto Ignacio Díaz @robertissimus.bsky.social · 10/04/2026
My slightly cropped image of the decidedly horizontal painting Joan Miró created for Josep Lluís Sert, who kept it in his house in Cambridge, Mass. The painting now belongs to Harvard’s Fogg Museum and can be seen in “Miró and the United States,” the lovely show at the Phillips Collection.
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Roberto Ignacio Díaz @robertissimus.bsky.social · 06/04/2026
Still thinking of Yuval Sharon’s stunning production of “Tristan und Isolde” last Thursday. Not sure what it all may mean, but I was riveted and can’t wait to see what he does for the “Ring.” (Now if the Met could retire that over-the-top “Traviata” and send it all to the White House…)
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