This short text appears in a catalogue of works in El Museo del Barrio’s permanent collection. It addresses several works by artist Leandro Katz. Among them, a chromogenic photographic print titled Lunar Typewriter (1980). It depicts an old-fashioned typewriter, the keys of which display images of phases of the moon rather than letters, a reflection on the merging of art and language. The Catherwood Project (1985–95, 2001) is a photographic reconstruction of the two mid-nineteenth century expeditions of John Lloyd Stephens and Frederick Catherwood to the Mayan areas of Central America and Mexico. Katz’s photographs show pre-Columbian monuments from quite similar viewpoints as Catherwood’s drawings. El día que me quieres (The Day You’ll Love Me, 1997) is a documentary film about a 1967 photograph of Che Guevara after his capture and execution in Bolivia. Paradox (2001) is a digital video and photographic project about Mayan ruins and banana plantations in Guatemala and Honduras. Finally, Bedlam Days–the Early Plays of Charles Ludlam is a photographic project and nonnarrative film on the early works of the playwright.

Julia P. Herzberg is an art historian, independent curator, and Fulbright Senior Specialist living in New York. She completed her PhD in art history at the Graduate Center, City University of New York, in 1998, with a dissertation on Cuban artist Ana Mendieta. She is a specialist of Latin American artists living in the United States, and has curated more than twenty-five exhibitions. Herzberg was a co-curator of The Decade Show (1990), held in New York at the Museum of Contemporary Hispanic Art, the New Museum, and the Studio Museum in Harlem, and she was the curator of the official U.S. representation for the III Bienal Internacional de Pintura in Cuenca, Ecuador (1991). In addition to serving as a consulting curator at El Museo del Barrio in New York (1996–2001), she was a consulting curator for the 2003, 2006, and 2009 Bienales de La Habana, and she is a contributing and consulting editor for Arte al día Internacional. Herzberg has taught, lectured, and published extensively in the United States and abroad and received two J. William Fulbright Scholarship Board awards: one at the Pontificia Universidad Católica (2007) and another at the Universidad Diego Portales (2013), both in Santiago, Chile, and also served as a visiting professor at the Instituto de Arte, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso, Chile (2016).

Leandro Katz (b. 1938, Buenos Aires) is an artist, filmmaker, and writer who lived in New York from 1965 to 2006; he currently lives and works in Buenos Aires. His interdisciplinary art practice is informed by extensive ongoing research, and includes films (1976–2001), Conceptual photography (1972–2002), artist’s books (1960–2000), and installations. Katz has been awarded numerous fellowships throughout his career, including a CAPS (Creative Artists Public Service) Fellowship from the New York State Council on the Arts (1976), a Guggenheim Fellowship (1979), and a Jerome Foundation Fellowship in filmmaking (1982). In 1984, he traveled to the Yucatán and Chiapas regions of Mexico to photograph ancient Mayan sites for an ongoing work known as The Catherwood Project. Katz has produced eighteen narrative and nonnarrative films, and he has published several artists’ books, including Natural History and The Ghosts of Ñancahuazú (both 2010). His nonnarrative film on Che Guevara, El día que me quieres (The Day You’ll Love Me, 1997) won the Coral Prize at the Festival del Nuevo Cine Latinoamericano de La Habana. He has exhibited widely, most recently at Fundación Proa, Buenos Aires (2010); the 8th Gwangju Biennale, South Korea (2010); CIFO (Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation), Miami (2015); and MUAC (Museo Universitario de Arte Contemporáneo), Mexico City (2018). He was a professor in the film program at William Paterson University of New Jersey.

This entry in El Museo del Barrio’s catalogue of collection highlights provides a useful overview of Katz’s key works and biography. [As a complementary reading on the artist’s work, see another text by Herzberg in the ICAA Digital Archive: “Two Projects/A Decade: The Catherwood Project & Project for the Day You Love Me.” New York: El Museo del Barrio, 1996 (doc. no. 1469667)].