Latin America's Living Ruins: El Helicoide de la Roca Tarpeya

The architectural legacy of utopian mid-twentieth-century modernism in Latin America is filled with buildings that have, in Lisa Blackmore and Celeste Olalquiaga’s words, “troubled afterlives.” The authors trace El Helicoide’s fitful iterations from its inception to its present day use, as a state security forces headquarters and prison.

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A Closer Look: The Getty Generates New Scholarship about Concrete Art from the CPPC

Patricia Phelps de Cisneros discusses the CPPC’s collaboration with the Getty’s Research and Conservation Institutes that led to surprising new scholarship concerning Concrete art from Latin America.

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Repoliticizing Modernity: Military Spectacles in Venezuela

Excerpted from her book Spectacular Modernity, Lisa Blackmore’s statement posits that the political, social, and cultural forces that converged to create Venezuela’s “modern spirit” in the mid-20th century unfolded as a spectacle, revealing the spaces, practices, and aspects of life comprising the combined aesthetic and political agenda of its power relations.

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Lost and Gone Forever

Patty Cisneros recalls a 1994 visit to the studio of Brazilian artist Oiticica and the work she wishes she had been able to save...

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Imagen de Caracas: Counter-Didactics to the Integration of the Arts

Imagen de Caracas was an ambitious multi-media arts project commissioned in the 1960s to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the foundation of Venezuela’s capital, Caracas. Gabriela Rangel writes about the role Imagen de Caracas played in a pivotal moment in the arts and history of Venezuela.

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That's How Things Are: Installation and Object Art in Latin America, 1997

Magalí Arriola identifies "That’s How Things Are: Installation and Object Art in Latin America", Mexico’s 1997 exhibition featuring new media and materials, as an important marker in the development of a dialogue across national, regional, and global scenes.

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Juan Acha's Creative Engagement: "Paper and More Paper" (1969)

In his work in Perú in the late, turbulent 60s, Juan Acha relinquished the traditional role of critic to become implicit in the collective cultural production he encouraged, and was one of the first to experiment with curatorial formats. However, as Miguel López notes, political circumstances resulting in Acha's abrupt departure from Perú soon after resulted in the relative neglect of Acha's work from this time.

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A Brief Relation of the Production of Fernando Gamboa

Fernando Gamboa, the man whom Octavio Paz dubbed “the inventor of Mexican museography”, was enormously influential in the decades from the 1940s through the 80s as a tireless promoter of Mexican art and culture. As Mauricio Marcin explains, Gamboa’s engagement was broad, deep, and foundational.

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On Telling Shows

The sixth edition of the annual Seminario Fundación Cisneros, Show and Tell, focuses on exhibition makers and curatorial projects in Latin America during the 1960s, the 1990s, and the decade of 2020 to come. The program places special emphasis on cultural production in Venezuela.

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Laying Plans for Independence: The New Art Scene in Mexico City

Tamara Ibarra chronicles the recent development of independent spaces in Mexico City by a new generation of emerging artists whose trajectory from critique to proposal has expanded an art scene previously centered around institutional venues.

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Reinvention: Collector as Custodian

We are pleased to republish Patricia Cisneros’ essay “Reinvention: Collector as Custodian” here as an expression of her collecting philosophy and ideas.

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Combinatorial Elements II: Cartographies, Community and Virtuality

In the second installment of her contemporary glossary of art, Sandra Pinardi offers a concise look at three notions – cartography, community, and virtuality – that act as “combinatorial elements” in art theory’s space of transit.

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