Papelitos, the ICAA blog, is an online forum for staff, student interns, fellows, and project associates to share ideas and insights into the activities and research-in-progress at the Center. We also invite proposals from artists, scholars, and researchers that engage with the role of archives and documentation in the field. If interested in contributing, please write to the ICAA’s Research Specialist, Liz Donato at edonato@mfah.org.
Papelitos Blog
Announcing the 2024-26 ¡Aquí Estamos! and Latinx Papers Project Fellows
The ICAA is thrilled to announce the first cohort of the ¡Aquí Estamos! and Latinx Papers Project fellows, supported by the Mellon Foundation and Terra Foundation for American Art. Based in Curatorial, the ICAA, Conservation, and Learning and Interpretation departments, the fellows will contribute to research on archival materials, potential acquisitions, and collection objects, as […]
2024 Peter C. Marzio Award Winners Announced
The ICAA is pleased to announce this year’s winners of the Peter C. Marzio Prize for Outstanding Scholarship in Latin American and Latino Art: Graduate Essay Prize: Nolan Boomer (Harvard University), “Against Maritime Industry: Two Utopian Visions for Las Cruces, Chile” Boomer’s essay examines the convergence of architectural programs and urban planning schemes in early […]
Look Again: Judith Lauand’s Variação de quadrados
Lee esta entrada en español. The 2023-24 ICAA’s UH Object-based Learning Fellow, Elliot Penn (MA, Art History, 2024), models the object-based inquiry approach on one of his favorite objects in the collection: Judith Lauand’s Variação de quadrados (1957). Brazilian artist Judith Lauand passed away on December 9, 2022 in São Paulo at the age of […]
¡Aquí Estamos!: Latinx Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
The ICAA and MFAH are working to address this absence via the ¡Aquí Estamos! Latinx Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. This multi-year, institution-wide initiative aims to transform this emergent field by opening critical pathways for the increased visibility and study of Latinx art and artists within a major encyclopedic museum.
2023 Peter C. Marzio Award Winners Announced
Lee esta entrada en español. The ICAA is pleased to announce the winners of the 2023 Competition for the Peter C. Marzio Award for Outstanding Research and Latin American and Latino Art. The two graduate-level winning essays will be published in a 2024 issue of Working Papers. This year’s Graduate Essay Prize was awarded to […]
Photographs
August 19 is International Photography Day, and I photograph paper; the delicate nature of paper is incontrovertible. Paper succumbs: to ink, inadvertent mishandling, moisture, the passage of time, the voracity of insects, and—well—scissors beats paper. […]
Pride Month Spotlight: Los Contemporáneos
The writers and artists associated with the magazine Contemporáneos, published in Mexico City from 1928 to 1931, were called a “group without a group.” Rather than adhering to specific doctrines or styles, they advocated individual expression and shared a desire to bring international, avant-garde ideas into Mexican culture. […]
The CAYC Files: An ICAA/MFAH and ISLAA Collaboration
The CAYC Files—the first initiative organized as part of a long-term partnership between the ICAA and the Institute for Studies on Latin American Art (ISLAA), New York—will create the first centralized digital resource for the comprehensive study of the Buenos Aires-based Centro de Arte y Comunicación. […]
New in the Archive: Carlos Cruz-Diez through the Decades
Selected by ICAA Director Mari Carmen Ramírez with the artist while he was still living, nearly 100 documents from the archive of the Cruz-Diez Documentation Center, in collaboration with the Cruz-Diez Foundation, will be published in the ICAA’s Documents Project this year, commemorating the centennial of the artist’s birth. […]
2022 Peter C. Marzio Award Winners Announced
The ICAA is pleased to announce the winners of the 2022 competition for the Peter C. Marzio Award for Outstanding Research in Latin American and Latino Art. Named for the late, longtime director of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH), who supported the establishment of the International Center for the Arts of the Americas […]