THE ART NEWSPAPER Number 284, November 2016 13
Photography, John Bigelow TaylorART OF THE ARCTIC:
Masks and Prehistoric Ivories
Fully illustrated 256-page
hardcover catalogue available[email protected]
donaldellisgallery.com
By appointment in New YorkDANCE MASK
Yup’ik
Kuskokwim River, Alaska
ca. 1890–
wood, pigments, vegetal fibers
height: 16"“Now we’re strong.” The institution’s
UBS-sponsored global art initiative is
funding acquisitions, research and its
curator of Latin American art, Pablo León
de la Barra. In addition, the Guggenheim
established an acquisition committee
dedicated to Latin American art in 2016.
The Whitney Museum of American
Art is also showing more works by Latin
American-born artists who spent a form-
ative period in the US. Next summer, it
will present a survey of the Brazilian
artist Hélio Oiticica, which is now on
show at the Carnegie Museum of Art in
Pittsburgh (until 2 January). The exhibi-
tion’s co-curator, Donna de Salvo, who
is the Whitney’s deputy director for
international initiatives, says that the
museum is expanding “how we think
about American art; we recognise the
US as a ‘culture of cultures’”. She adds
that this includes but is not exclusive to
South or Central America.REVIVAL OF INTERESTMeanwhile, the Getty Foundation has
provided more than $15m to fund new
research for the Pacific Standard Time
Los Angeles/Latin America (LA/LA) initi-
ative. More than 70 institutions are par-
ticipating in the project, which focuses
on the links between southern Califor-
nian and Latin American artists. The Los
Angeles County Museum of Art (Lacma)
will present five Pacific Standard Time
shows next year. When it comes to Latin
American art, Lacma “lives LA/LA every
day”, says its director, Michael Govan.
US museums’ interest in Latin Amer-
ican Modernism can be traced back to
the 1930s. By 1943, MoMA owned more
works by Brazilians than by Italians. But
during the Cold War, many institutions
backed away from the region amid rising
fears over the spread of Communism.
Interest revived in the 1990s, and “the
past two decades have been a crescendo
of this more proactive approach to Latin
American art”, says the art historian and
curator Cecilia Fajardo-Hill. Between
2002 and 2012, the number of doctoral
dissertations in the field grew by 300%,
says Adriana Zavala, an art history profes-
sor at Tufts University in Boston.
Scholars and museums alike recog-
nise that Latin American art will only
become more relevant as the Latino pop-
ulation of the US—its largest minority—
continues to grow. “Trustees are saying,
‘Our audience is changing, and it will
be even more diferent in the future’,”
Pérez-Barreiro says.
Many acknowledge the vital role of
Latin American-born philanthropists,
such as Patricia Phelps de Cisneros and
Estrellita Brodsky, who has endowed
curatorships at MoMA and the Metro-
politan Museum of Art in New York as
well as at the Tate in London.
“It is shocking that Latin American
art exists [in US museums] only thanks
to these generous philanthropists, and
not because there is a clear acknowl-
edgement that Latin America has been
at the forefront of contemporary art in
the past century,” says the Chile-born,
New York-based artist Alfredo Jaar. “In
our little so-called ‘global’ art world,
New York is still very provincial.”There are significant blind spots.
Geometric abstraction—the focus of the
Cisneros gift—is an easier sell to US insti-
tutions because it “still frames Modern-
ism at the centre of the narrative”, Zavala
says. Work by female, Chicano and Latino
artists remains at the margins partly due
to its more political subject matter, she
adds. And artists from countries such
as Chile and Peru, which lack a wealthy
collector base, are still little-known inter-
nationally. Brodsky says: “My biggest
worry is that it doesn’t become over-
globalised or over-simplified—you need
that in-depth knowledge.”
There is one point on which every-
one can agree: there is much more to
be done. “This is not a passing interest
that will be replaced by something else,”
Pérez-Barreiro says. “It’s impossible to
go backward now.”
Julia Halperin and Javier PesCOMING TO US MUSEUMS
- A comprehensive survey of the Brazilian artist Hélio Oiticica,
now at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh (until 2
January), travels to the Whitney Museum of American Art
in New York and the Art Institute of Chicago in 2017 - The Met Breuer is organising a survey of the Brazilian artist
Lygia Pape, a pioneer of the Neo-Concrete movement, in
March 2017 - The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston will next year open
the largest exhibition of Modern Cuban art for decades (Adiós
Utopia: Dreams and Deceptions in Cuban Art Since 1950,
5 March-21 May 2017) - The Brazilian painter Tarsila do Amaral will be the subject of
a solo show at the Art Institute of Chicago in 2017, travelling
to New York’s Museum of Modern Art in 2018 - The Brooklyn Museum plans to host Radical Women: Latin
American Art, 196085, which is part of Paciic Standard Time
LA/LA, in March 2018, after the show debuts at the Hammer
Museum in Los Angeles (15 September-31 December 2017) - The Perez Art Museum Miami is due to open the irst US
museum exhibition of work by the Argentinian kinetic artist
Julio Le Parc on 18 November (until 19 March 2017) J.H.
Modernism goes Latin American at MoMA
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1
“In our little
so-called
‘global’
art world,
New York
is still very
provincial”—
Alfredo JaarA Hélio Oiticica survey is travelling to three US museumsInstitutions across the US are planning major exhibitions of
work by Latin American artists, some of which have yet to be
formally announcedNews US & Americas
Waldemar Cordeiro’s Visible Idea (1956) and Carlos Cruz-Diez’s Project for an Exterior Wall (1954-65) are
among the 102 works that have been given to MoMA by Patricia Phelps de Cisneros and Gustavo CisnerosCORDEIRO AND CRUZ-DIEZ: COURTESY OF THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART, NEW YORK. OITICICA: BRYAN CONLEY; COURTESY OF THE CARNEGIE MUSEUM
OF ART