Latin American Art on the Verge, Yet Again

Robin Pogrebin highlights the renewed interest in Latin American art in the New York Times special section on the art world:

“Latin America is hot, whether you’re talking about Bogotá, Colombia; São Paulo, Brazil; or Buenos Aires, Argentina,” said Glenn D. Lowry, the director of MoMA. “You’ve got institutions with a longstanding interest, biennials, art fairs, new collectors and other institutions that have become increasingly aware of how important Latin America is to any global conversation.”

Art aficionados in the United States are reaching beyond the Western canon to build their collections. The country’s growing Hispanic population also represents a new potential constituency of collectors and museum-goers.

And there is a crop of curators who are more internationally minded. “There is a multilingual generation of U.S. curators,” said Susana Torruella Leval, a trustee at the Metropolitan Museum of Art who formerly served as the director of El Museo del Barrio.

To Latin American art experts, the larger world is discovering what they have known all along: that the field is rich and worthy of attention.

“We seem like an evergreen, to be rediscovered over and over,” said Julián Zugazagoitia, who stepped down as Museo del Barrio’s director last year to become director of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Mo.

At the same time, Mr. Zugazagoitia and others say, there is a growing sophistication about the field, a stronger body of scholarship.

“Over the last 10 to 15 years, museums have created a deeper understanding of their holdings or a different focus on creating collections,” Mr. Zugazagoitia said. “One of the important things that has come out is an awareness of how rich and varied Latin American art is.”

Latin American Art, Rediscovered Again (New York Times)