Sebastian Mendes in New York pursuing 'most important project of entire career'

Sebastian Mendes, an associate professor in Western Washington University's Department of Art, has recently begun a professional leave for academic pursuit in New York City, where he is now Visiting Professor of Art at Yeshiva University.

Mendes has been invited to teach an honors seminar centered upon issues relating to a four-year creative project, which is culminating in a major solo exhibition at Yeshiva University Museum in New York. This exhibition will run for six months and is by far the most important project of Mendes' entire career, he says.

"The work in my exhibition has been inspired by the the greatest single rescue act of the entire Holocaust, where Portuguese diplomat Dr. Aristides de Sousa Mendes saved the lives of an estimated 30,000 refugees fleeing Nazi persecution," Mendes says.

Mendes is also a board member of two international foundations, the Fundação Aristides de Sousa Mendes (since 1997, based in Portugal) and the Sousa Mendes Foundation (since 2010, for which he is vice president). The SMF just completed its first public event, which was hosted by the Nassau County Holocaust Memorial and Tolerance Center and addressed by the Portuguese Ambassador to the United Nations and Mordechai Paldiel, the most widely recognized living scholar of the Holocaust.