Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

To mark the October 28 opening of the exhibition Contesting Modernity: Informalism in Venezuela, 1955–1975, the symposium will explore the historical context, artistic innovations, and progressive ideology of the Informalist movement in Venezuela. This movement embraced many of the abstract gestural tendencies that developed in Venezuela at the same time as North America’s Abstract Expressionism and Europe’s Tachisme and Art Informel; however, despite its irreverent approaches, Informalism had, before this exhibition, long languished as an unwritten chapter in the art historical canon. Presenters include Sagrario Berti, Independent Researcher, Caracas; Lisa Blackmore, Lecturer, School of Philosophy and Art History, Colchester campus, University of Essex; Colette Capriles, Professor, Universidad Simón Bolívar, Caracas; Luis Duno-Gottberg, Associate Professor of Caribbean & Film Studies, Rice University; María Gaztambide, Director and Chief Curator, UHS Public Art, University of Houston (former Associate Director of the ICAA); Fabiola López-Durán, Professor of Art History, Rice University; Mari Carmen Ramírez, the Wortham Curator of Latin American Art and Director of the International Center for the Arts of the Americas, MFAH; Gabriela Rangel, then Visual Arts Director and Chief Curator at Americas Society, New York (current Artistic Director, MALBA); Tahía Rivero Ponte, Chief Curator, Colección Mercantil Arte y Cultura, Caracas.
 

This symposium consists of a series of artist‐centered dialogues organized by the International Center for the Arts of the Americas (ICAA) at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, in conjunction with the exhibition Adiós Utopia: Dreams and Deceptions in Cuban Art Since 1950. Spread over three theme‐based conversations and a by‐invitation-only student workshop, the dialogues will provide spaces for reflecting on how the contemporary artists featured in Adiós Utopia propelled creative-critical readings of the social utopia postulated by the Cuban Revolution, highlighting its paradoxes and deceptions. The conversations allowed participants the opportunity to interact with many of the most relevant artists to have emerged from Cuba since the early days of the Revolution. Participants include Elsa Vega, Adiós Utopia curator, Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Havana; Pedro de Oraá, artist, Havana; Ella Fontanals‐Cisneros, collector, Havana and Miami; Abigail McEwen, University of Maryland; René Francisco (Cuba), artist, Havana; Flavio Garciandía (Cuba), artist, based in Mexico City; Gerardo Mosquera, Volumen Uno curator, Havana and Madrid; Rachel Weiss, School of the Art Institute of Chicago; Dagoberto Rodríguez, member of Los Carpinteros, Madrid; Carlos Garaicoa, artist, Madrid; Glenda León, artist, Madrid; Eugenio Valdés, Director and Chief Curator, CIFO, Havana and Miami; Luis Duno Gottberg, Rice University; George Flaherty, University of Texas; María C. Gaztambide, ICAA/MFAH; Fabiola López‐Durán, Rice University; Mari Carmen Ramírez, ICAA/MFAH.

Art and the Cuban Revolution: A Critical Dialogue and the related graduate student workshop Between the Contemporary and the Archive: New Challenges and Perspectives in Cuban Art History are generously underwritten by the Mellon Foundation, Judy and Charles Tate, and Rice University.

The Contingencies of Beauty is a series of artist-centered dialogues organized by the ICAA in conjunction with the exhibition Contingent Beauty: Contemporary Art from Latin America. Spread over three installments (a conversation, a round-table discussion, and a more formal two-session symposium), the dialogues will provide spaces for reflecting on how many of the artists from Latin America featured in Contingent Beauty merge aesthetic concerns with issues grounded in the region's complicated social and political realities. Participants include Marco Castillo and Dagoberto Rodríguez, artists, Los Carpinteros, Cuba; Juliana Laffitte and Manuel Mendanha, Grupo Mondongo, Argentina; Fabiola López-Durán, Rice University; María C. Gaztambide, ICAA/MFAH; Javier Téllez (Venezuela), artist, based in New York; Miguel Ángel Ríos (Argentina), artist, based in New York and Mexico City; Johanna Calle (Colombia), artist, Bogotá; María Fernanda Cardoso (Colombia), artist, based in Sydney, Australia; Regina Silveira (Brazil), artist, São Paulo; Carmela Gross (Brazil), artist, São Paulo; Tahía Rivero Ponte, Colección Mercantil, Caracas; Tania Bruguera (Cuba), artist, based in New York; Magdalena Fernández (Venezuela), artist, Caracas; José Alejandro Restrepo (France/Colombia), artist, Bogotá; Teresa Serrano (Mexico), artist, Mexico City; Gabriela Rangel, then Visual Arts Director and Chief Curator Americas Society, New York (currently Artistic Director, Malba); and George Flaherty, University of Texas, Austin.

Join us for the launch of the Digital Archive website, a preview of the book series, and the symposium Mining the Archive: New Paths for Latin American/ Latino Art Research, featuring an international roster of scholars, art historians, and curators from Latin America and the United States.

The MFAH, and its research institute, the ICAA, have devoted 10 years to creating a digital archive of 20th-century Latin American and Latino art. This January 2012 marks a milestone with the launch of the first phase in this digital archive of some 10,000 primary source and critical documents from Latin America and the United States. Culled by more than 100 researchers based in 16 cities in the United States and throughout Latin America, the online digital archive will be available worldwide, free of charge, to serve as a catalyst for the future of a field that has been notoriously lacking in accessible resources.

Resisting Categories: Latin American and/or Latino? is the first of archive’s companion-book series,  Critical Documents of 20th-Century Latin American and Latino Art. Organized by Héctor Olea, Mari Carmen Ramírez, and Tomás Ybarra- Frausto, with document introductions by María C. Gaztambide, the first volume gathers 168 documents that trace the development of the constructs of “Latin American” and “Latino” art beginning in the late 19th century. The series is published by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and distributed by Yale University Press, New Haven and London.

On the occasion of the MFAH acquisition of the Adolpho Leirner Collection of Brazilian Constructive Art, this colloquium assessed the state of research on the avant-garde artists and groups that constituted this critical chapter of Brazilian Modernism. Bringing together key artists, critics, and scholars, Concretismo and Neoconcretismo: Fifty Years Later sought to generate updated frameworks and new lines of investigation for the interpretation of these artistic tendencies. The starting point for this historiographic revision was the testimonies presented by some of the earliest participants of these groups as well as by the critics who first identified their contributions in relation to both the Latin American avant-garde and international modes of abstraction. Participants included Francisco Alambert, Aracy Amaral, Ana Maria Belluzzo, Yves-Alain Bois, Ronaldo Brito, Paulo Sérgio Duarte, Paulo Venâncio Filho, María Amalia García, Héctor Olea, Luis Camillo Osório, Nicolau Sevcenko, Mari Carmen Ramírez, Ann Reynolds, and Alexander Wollner.

This international colloquium was presented in conjunction with the exhibition Dimensions of Constructive Art in Brazil: The Adolpho Leirner Collection.