The MFAH will launch in January the Project Documents of 20th-Century Latin America and Latino Art

The online archive will be available worldwide, free of charge, and is intended as a catalyst for the future of a field that has been notoriously lacking in accessible resources. According to Edward Sullivan, the Helen Gould Sheppard Professor of Art History, New York University, “this project has the potential to integrate the lost chapter of Latin American art into the discipline of art history as it is taught at Western universities”.
The digital archive goes online at www.icaadocs.mfah.org on Friday, January 20. The phased, multiyear launch begins with 2,500 documents from Argentina, Mexico and the American Midwest, capping the 10th-anniversary year for the Latin American program. Documents from other countries and communities will continue to be uploaded and made available.
An international symposium, Mining the Archive: New Paths for Latin American/Latino Art Research, planned for Thursday and Friday, January 19th and 20th, will accompany the launch. The keynote address will be delivered Thursday evening by Terry E. Smith, the Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Contemporary Art History and Theory in the Department of the History of Art and Architecture, University of Pittsburgh. The proceedings of the symposium will be available through a simultaneous webcast at www.mfah.org/webcast.
The online archive is comprehensive in artists’ writings, correspondence and other unpublished materials, as well as in texts published in newspapers and period journals by artists, critics, scholars and others who have played a vital role in shaping the cultural fabric of the countries and communities where the documents in this project have had a presence. The material brings to life the ferment of international cultures, ideas and personalities that swept across 20th-century South America, the Spanish-speaking Caribbean and Latino communities in the United States as artists, writers and intellectuals sought to define or challenge notions of a national art; art movements emerged in response to changing local political regimes, as well as to what was perceived as the onslaught of North American culture; and the contribution of Latin American artists to the early stages of global avant-garde movements. The archive also highlights the common interests and affinities shared by Latin artists working in North and South America, allowing for first-hand comparative studies of these broad-based, highly heterogeneous groups. Documents from Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Peru, Puerto Rico, Venezuela and the United States will continue to be added to the website over the next three years, with the entire selection of holdings to date available by 2015. As the ICAA research initiatives progress, the website will continue to develop in perpetuity, making it an indispensable provider of Latin American and Latino primary-source documents.
“Latin American art can now fully become part of the worldwide discussion of Modernism. For graduate students especially, this project will be of immense use and interest,” commented Edward J. Sullivan, the Helen Gould Sheppard Professor of Art History, New York University, and adviser to the Documents Project. “The access to material written at the moment when the art was happening is a major tool for understanding the development of artistic movements in Latin America”
“This project is just the beginning of the effort to recover the intellectual production of 20th-century Latin American artists, critics and curators and to further research and awareness of this production in the United States and elsewhere,” said Mari Carmen Ramírez, the Wortham Curator of Latin American Art at the MFAH and director of the ICAA.

Symposium Program:

Friday, January 20, 9 a.m.–6 p.m.
Welcome: 9 a.m.
Mari Carmen Ramírez, Wortham Curator of Latin American Art at the MFAH and director, International Center for the Arts of the Americas.
María C. Gaztambide, director, ICAA Documents Project.
Morning Session: 9:30 a.m.–1 p.m.
Moderator: Edward J. Sullivan, Helen Gould Sheppard Professor of Art History, New York University.
Yvonne Pini, author, executive editor of Art Nexus and art professor at the Universidad de los Andes and Universidad Nacional (Colombia), on Bogotá 1920s: Charting the Concept of “Art”
Natalia Majluf, director, Museo de Arte de Lima, Peru, on A Place for Art: Nation Building and the Forgotten Nationalism(s)
Cristina Rossi, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina, on On Sculpture: Conversations between Aldo Paparella and Libero Badii
Afternoon Session: 3–5:30 p.m.
Moderator: Fabiola López-Durán, Rice University
Roldán Esteva-Grillet, Venezuelan historian and art critic, and author of Fuentes Documentales y Críticas de las Artes Plásticas Venezolanas: Siglos XIX y XX (2001), on Avant-garde Journals in Venezuela, 1950–1970
Alejandro Anreus, art history professor at William Paterson University of New Jersey, on Two Texts by José Gómez Sicre (1944 and 1965)
Chon Noriega, director, Chicano Studies Research Center, UCLA, on The Museum of the Future: Raphael Montañez Ortiz, Destructivism and Institution Building
Closing Discussion: 5:30 p.m.
Moderator: Terry E. Smith, Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Contemporary Art History and Theory in the Department of the History of Art and Architecture, University of Pittsburgh