Click the star to add/remove an item to/from your individual schedule.
You need to be logged in to avail of this functionality.
Log in
- Convenors:
-
Camilla Sutherland
(UCL)
Bea Caballero (Birkbeck, University of London)
- Location:
- Malet 631
- Start time:
- 4 April, 2014 at
Time zone: Europe/London
- Session slots:
- 1
Short Abstract:
This panel examines how Latin American arts are framed within US cultural spaces.
Long Abstract:
This panel interrogates how Latin American arts are framed within US cultural spaces. From fine art galleries and ethnographic museums to print media and television, the depiction of Latin American cultures within the US is shaped according to these different spheres. Far from being fixed or static, these spaces of representation will be conceived as dynamic and active spheres where meaning making processes take place. Through offering case studies from the early-twentieth century to the present-day, this panel will expose the, often problematic, manner in which Latin American cultural products are defined by the spaces in which they are presented. Moving beyond notions of homogenization, Otherness, and exoticization, this panel will attend to the political motivations that inform the presentation of Latin American cultures within US institutions, exposing what is often an imbalanced cultural interchange between the two hemispheres. Through this discussion we aim to examine the material experience of culture: what is displayed (or excluded), by whom, and where. These elements have the power to shape interactions with and interpretations of Latin American cultural products - a process that is particularly pronounced within the context of the US. Through problematizing the manner in which Latin American arts are framed within the US we can gain a crucial insight into broader issues of cultural exchange within the region.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Camilla Sutherland (UCL)
Paper short abstract:
This paper will examine cultural interchange between the United States and Latin America during the early 20th century, examining the intersection between diplomatic and aesthetic realms in US exhibitions of Latin American art.
Paper long abstract:
This paper will examine the presentation of Latin American artworks in early-20th-century exhibitions in the United States. I will begin by offering an overview of the role played by Latin American artists in the US during this period, charting the burgeoning interest in art from the region in the 1920s - 1940s. Spearheaded predominantly by Mexican figures such as Diego Rivera, Miguel Covarrubias and José Clemente Orozco, Latin American culture gained unprecedented visibility within the US during the inter-war years. In addition, this period saw the presence of a number of key US figures, such as Waldo Frank and Edward Weston, working and travelling within Latin America, making the early 20th century appear as a time of fertile cultural exchange between the two hemispheres. However, through presenting a case study of the work of Bolivian sculptor Marina Núñez del Prado, this paper will highlight the at times problematic relationship between Latin American artists and the US cultural sphere. Through this discussion I will highlight the key role that organisations such as the Pan American Union, the Guggenheim Foundation, and cultural diplomats more broadly, played in the promotion of Latin American art within the US. Through analyzing the significance of the locations in which Núñez del Prado's art was exhibited and the discourses that emerge in the reception of her work in the US press, this paper will interrogate the complex interaction between diplomatic and aesthetic spaces in US exhibitions of Latin American art.
Stefanie Kogler (University of Essex)
Paper short abstract:
I will re-examine the approaches and strategies of curators and institutions in framing Latin American and Latino art in the USA in the 20th century.
Paper long abstract:
This paper analyses the efforts undertaken in the USA to exhibit and collect Latin American and Latino art in the 20th century beginning with Alfred H. Barr at the Museum of Modern Art, New York (MOMA) in the 1930s, and culminating in the curatorial approach of Marí Carmen Ramírez at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH) today. The strategies for the representation and re-evaluation of Latin American and Latino art in the USA have shifted. While Barr began to collect and exhibit art from Latin America, Ramírez seeks to write Latino and Latin American art into the art historical canon. While Barr stepped into this foray in a 'spirit of discovery', Ramírez retraces its development through the archive in order to legitimise and manifest it within the academic discourse.
Unlike Latin American art, the field of Latino art developed from within the social, political and cultural context in the USA. Since the 1960s, Latino communities have demanded inclusion and representation in cultural institutions. Some argue that their situation differs from that of Latin Americans, since Latinos are culturally more aligned to the USA and experience their identity differently. Nevertheless, Latin American and Latino art have been depicted similarly by curators and institutions over the past thirty years during which both gained steady interest and exposure.
I will provide a historical framework and discuss the development of representation and inclusion of Latin American and Latino art in U.S. institutions which will highlight the resulting tensions and alignments.
Bea Caballero (Birkbeck, University of London)
Paper short abstract:
This paper examines the ways in which knowledge about the Pre-Columbian past has been constructed in museum displays in the US. By looking at contemporary exhibits of Pre-Columbian collections, the paper explores how different settings and contexts of space transform objects’ meanings and values.
Paper long abstract:
During the twentieth century, the showcase of Pre-Columbian objects as artworks in US museums has transformed the ways in which museum audiences experience and understand the Pre-Columbian past. This paper examines the ways in which Pre-Columbian objects' meanings and functions have been influenced by the settings and contexts of space in which they have been displayed. By looking at the particular case of the Robert Woods Bliss collection of Pre-Columbian Art at Dumbarton Oaks, the paper explores how the aesthetic arrangement of these artefacts have contributed to produce a particular understanding and vision of Pre-Columbian cultures and societies. Exhibited in modern settings and displayed inside glass cases, with hardly any contextual information, only brief label descriptions, here Pre-Columbian objects are widely admired for their aesthetic value, high quality materials and individual attributes. Most significantly perhaps, when the same objects are exhibited in different contexts, for example Natural History Museums, they remain capable of communicating and producing different stories and interpretations of Pre-Columbian cultures and societies.