Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

Ferreira Gullar uses his newspaper column to reply to an article that appeared in the Correio da Manhã in which Waldemar Cordeiro challenged his review of an exhibition of works by Concrete artists from São Paulo at the MAM-RJ (Museu de [...]

This article about the Museo del Hospital Psiquiátrico Víctor Larco Herrera [Museum of the Victor Larco Herrera Psychiatric Hospital] (in Peru’s capital city) was written by Ernesto More, under the pseudonym “Jerome,” as part of a series on [...]

Luis Camnitzer discusses Joaquín Torres García’s exhibition at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York and assesses reactions to his work among North American audiences and intellectuals. The Uruguayan artist and critic, who lives in New [...]

This brochure corresponds to the catalogue for the collection of the Museo Criollo Raúl Santana, which is part of the Consejo Municipal of Caracas; [the collection] is made up of sculptures created on a 1:16 scale by Venezuelan sculptor Raúl [...]

This article by Venezuelan writer, poet, and literature professor Rafael Castillo Zapata begins by quoting a passage from Walter Benjamin’s “On the Concept of History,” and then goes on to cite Marcel Proust in relation to his understanding of [...]

This article by Alberto J. Martínez discusses the use of stylized pre-Hispanic motifs to decorate one of the galleries of the Museo Nacional de Lima. In his view, “every effort to bolster a genuinely Peruvian form of artistic expression represents [...]

This article was written by the journalist and art critic Luis Freire Sarria, following his visit to the Museo de Arte de la Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, in Lima. There, he would discover, among the collections, a great quantity of Pop- [...]

This is the official transcript of the speech given by General Juan Velasco Alvarado, the president of the Peruvian military junta, at the closing ceremony of the thirty-ninth Congreso Internacional de Americanistas in Lima in August 1970. He used [...]

The first version of the text “Umberto Giangrandi: espacios y espejos de la carrera 12”, by the art theoretician Armando Silva Téllez, was published in the catalogue Sobre el paisaje urbano: La doce. Monotipos y litografías (1979) from the [...]

This is a card bearing the letterhead of the Museo de Arte Moderno in Bogotá and a handwritten message. It was sent to Casimiro Eiger by Alejandro Obregón to introduce José Gómez Sicre, who is very interested in the plan for a modern art [...]

In this document Chon Noriega considers the process of developing a panel discussion organized in conjunction with a museum exhibition. As a scholar who is also a curator, Noriega notes the existing tension between museums and universities as [...]

This is the transcript of a lecture given by Maurício Segall on the subject “Museus hoje para o amanhã” [Museums today for the future]. In his lecture, the museum organizer reviews current trends in the field of museology, characterized by [...]

Looking to her background in philosophy, Otília Arantes analyzes the transformations that have ensued in the relationship between the viewer and the work of art. Structural changes in museums, she argues, have given rise to “new museums” [...]

In this text written by Aracy Amaral on the occasion of the opening of the Espaço Fotóptica/MAC-USP—a space dedicated to photography at the Museu de Arte Contemporânea da Universidade de São Paulo that Amaral directed—the author defends the [...]

This anonymous article bemoans the failure of Assis Chateaubriand’s initiative to build regional museums in Brazil. The author does not blame Chateaubriand, a businessman based in São Paulo, for the failure, but instead focuses on the [...]

Pietro Maria Bardi discusses the alarming number of Brazilians leaving the country, specifically mentioning Eugênio Hirsch, who had worked as a graphic artist in Rio de Janeiro, and was in Madrid working as the art director of a collection of books [...]

This article relies on photographs and captions to describe the cultural environment at the time that the Museu de Arte Moderna da Bahia (MAMB) was founded. Prompted by the military coup of 1964, the Italian architect Lina Bo Bardi assessed the [...]

In this article, the Italian architect Lina Bo Bardi shares the announcement of the founding and operation of the MAMB (Museu de Arte Moderna da Bahia) that was published in the magazine Mirante das Artes. She refers to the “disastrous” state of [...]

In this article, the architect Lina Bo Bardi describes the ten years it took to design and build the MASP (Museu de Arte de São Paulo) on the Avenida Paulista in São Paulo. She mentions her first visits to the site in 1957, the political [...]

The Italian journalist and art dealer Pietro Maria Bardi describes the organization and construction of the MASP (Museu de Arte de São Paulo) during the first two decades of its existence, from 1947 to 1967. This was no easy task in the provincial [...]

This article discusses the initiative to open regional art museums in key Brazilian cities other than the hegemonic centers of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. The force behind the project was newspaper magnate Assis Chateaubriand who had [...]

After the fire that destroyed the majority of the collection at the MAM-RJ (Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro) in 1978, critic Mário Pedrosa presents a proposal for the institution’s reconstruction, one that advocates for the building of a [...]

The journalist Boris Kossoy emphasizes the professionalization of the field of photography and the growth of the photography art market in Brazil; in his opinion, this creates advantages and disadvantages. On the one hand, it would be an advantage [...]

This text by architect Lina Bo Bardi describes the difficulties she faced as the head of the Museu de Arte Moderna da Bahia (MAMB) and of the Museu de Arte Popular (MAP), both of which were located in the Solar do Unhão (since 1963), a seventeenth- [...]

This is an article by the Italian architect Lina Bo Bardi, who lived in Brazil, about the first exhibition held at the MAP (Museu de Arte Popular) in 1963 in Salvador, the capital of the state of Bahia. The exhibit included everyday items handcrafted [...]

In this letter to Lomanto Júnior, the governor of the State of Bahia at the time, architect Lina Bo Bardi requests public support for the Plano de Artesanato Popular, a project geared to encouraging craft production in northeastern Brazil. In a way [...]

This is a letter from Lívio Xavier—who, at the time, was the director of the MAUC (Museu de Arte da Universidade do Ceará)—to the architect Lina Bo Bardi, who was the director of both the MAMB (Museu de Arte Moderna da Bahia) and the MAP (Museu [...]

Architect Lina Bo Bardi explains the structural concepts underlying the creation of the Museu de Arte Moderna da Bahia. She asserts that because the institution she heads does not have an art collection, it should not be called a museum, but rather a [...]

In this text, filmmaker Glauber Rocha describes architect Lina Bo Bardi’s tenure as director of the Museu de Arte Moderna da Bahia (MAMB). He points out the polemic, rather than provincial or anti-academic, nature of her work and proposals, as well [...]

Wall text for the exhibition Formas como escultura, held at the Museu de Arte Moderna da Bahia (MAMB) in 1960, when Lina Bo Bardi—the possible author of this text—was the director of that institution. The exhibition set out to emphasize the forms [...]

This document records the founding of the MAM-SP (Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo) and describes its initial activities, including the exhibition of Abstract work organized by René Drouin (director of the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris). In [...]

This document consists of the minutes to the special general meeting of the board of the Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo (MAM-SP), where motions to dissolve the museum and to donate its holdings to the Universidade de São Paulo (USP) are [...]

In this brief article, the critic Jayme Maurício outlines the history of the Atelier de Gravura em Metal, the workshop at the MAM-RJ (Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro). This involved a process that began in 1955 with the ambitious project [...]

This article is about the founding of the Museu de Arte Negra (Rio de Janeiro, 1968). The author deplores the lack of study in the field of Afro-Brazilian art and the general ignorance concerning its contribution to Brazilian culture. The Museu de [...]

This proposal was submitted to the MAM-RJ (Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro) by the Brazilian artist known as Tunga, for an exhibition of his work at the museum’s Sala Experimental. In this text, the author identifies the concept of & [...]

This text by art critic Ronaldo Brito discusses Tunga’s work on the occasion of the opening of the exhibition Ar do corpo [Body of Air] held at the Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro (MAM-Rio) in 1975. After arguing that the work of all [...]

In this article the critic Mário Pedrosa discusses the proposed reconstruction of the MAM-RJ (Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro) after it was partly destroyed by a fire in 1978. Pedrosa suggests that the original institution should be replaced [...]

The synopsis and the annotations in English are coming soon.                                However, our bilingual readers can click on “Español” to access this information in Spanish [...]

This essay by curator Rina Carvajal was written for Uno, Dos, Tres, Cuatro, an exhibition featuring Venezuelan artists Alfred Wenemoser, Héctor Fuenmayor, Roberto Obregón, and Antonieta Sosa held at the Museo de Bellas Artes in Caracas in 1991. [...]

In this article, Colombian anthropologist Pilar Riaño Alcalá presents the concepts underlying her reflections on the connection between art and social processes, as well as between public art, art in general, and memory in Colombia.  On the basis [...]

This is a report on the underlying reasons for the founding of the Instituto de Arte Contemporânea del Museu de Arte de São Paulo (IAC-MASP). The article highlights the pedagogical mission of the MASP under its director Pietro Maria Bardi. It also [...]

Waldo Rasmussen introduces the exhibition, Latin American Artists of the Twentieth Century, with the history of participation by The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in the promotion of Latin American art. Rasmussen refers to the important role played by [...]

In this document, the Inter-American Office at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., has compiled a listing of all of the exhibitions of Latin American art available for loan to museums and institutions in the United States. The foreword [...]

In this 1943 speech, delivered on “Radio Nacional”, José Sabogal praises the cultural and technological accomplishments witnessed on a recent trip to the United States, and argues that Peru needs to preserve its culture by building a museum for [...]

Carlos Tortolero wrote this text in response to an article by Lonnie Bunch, “Museums, Diversity, and the Will to Change” (which appeared in the July/August 2000 issue of Museum News), noting that, while Bunch’s article was well written and [...]

Carlos Tortolero, founding father and director of the Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum (now the National Museum of Mexican Art), writes that mainstream museums are elitist and discriminatory institutions that either claim they have already diversified [...]

This document summarizes the proposals submitted by the participants at the Primer Encuentro Iberoamericano de Críticos de Arte y Artistas Plásticos who were sitting at work table number two. Referring to the subject “Criticism, Theory, and [...]

In this essay, art historian Marimar Benitez applies Walter Benjamins’s concept of the “aura” of the work of art, and its reduction in the age of mechanical reproduction to the assumed role of the museum as a religious temple of art. Comparing [...]

Puerto Rican professor Rafael Rivera Otero notes that Puerto Rico does not have any art museums, exhibitions of paintings, or art critics. This situation gives rise to an urgent need to create suitable facilities for both the study and appreciation [...]

Puerto Rican historian and curator Marimar Benítez asserts that the museums created by the Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña (ICP) under Ricardo Alegría, the director of that organization from 1955 to 1973, did not have an adequate structure for [...]