Our America: The Latino Presence in American Art
This exhibition, organized by E Carmen Ramos, Latino Art curator for the Smithsonian Institution's American Art Museum, takes into account the way in which Latino artists participated in artistic movements of their era and explored key themes of American art and culture. It presents their abundant and varied production since the mid-Twentieth Century, when the notion of a collective Latino identity began to emerge. The art on exhibit comes in its entirety from the museum's pioneering Latino art collection. Ninety two artworks by 72 renowned modern and contemporary artists are on display. Our America will remain open to the public through March 2nd, 2014.
"This show is the culmination of an important initiative on the part of the Smithsonian's American Art Museum to establish a significant Latino art collection in the nation's capital", said Elizabeth Broun, the Museum's director. "It is specially exciting to exhibit for the first time so many works of art recently acquired for the museum's permanent collection".
The exhibition includes works by artists who distinguished themselves in the most diverse styles and movements, among them abstract expressionism, activist and conceptual art, and performance. They also worked in classic genres such as landscape, portraiture, and everyday scenes. Latino artists in many regions of the United States were inspired by the civil rights movement in the 1960s and 1970s. They created new images of their communities and examined bicultural experiences Many looked at American history and popular culture with a critical eye, revealing the possibilities and tensions of expansionism, migration, and settlement. Others devoted themselves to experimentation, overcoming the boundaries of their preferred artistic medium.
The artists featured in this exhibition are of Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, and Dominican backgrounds, as well as from other Latin American groups with deep roots in the United States. Included are artists like Manuel Acevedo, Elia Alba, Olga Albizu, Asco (Harry Gamboa Jr., Gronk, Willie Herrón and Patssi Valdez), Luis Cruz Azaceta, Myrna Báez, Guillermo Bejarano, María Brito, María Magdalena Campos-Pons, Enrique Chagoya, Marcos Dimas, Teresita Fernández, Scherezade García, Ken Gonzáles-Day, Carmen Herrera, María Martínez-Cañas, Antonio Martorell, Ana Mendieta, Amalia Mesa-Bains, Franco Mondini-Ruiz, Abelardo Morell, Jesús Moroles, Raphael Montañez Ortiz, Pepón Osorio, Paul Henry Ramírez, Juan Sánchez, Rafael Soriano, Rubén Trejo, Jesse Treviño, John M. Valadez, Alberto Valdés, and Xavier Viramontes, among others.
After closing at the American Art Museum, the exhibition will travel to other US cities. It will be presented at the following museums: Patricia and Phillip Frost Art Museum of Florida International University, in Miami (March 28 through June 22, 2014); Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento, California (September 21, 2014 through January 11, 2015); Utah Museum of Fine Arts in Salt Lake City (February 6 through May 17, 2015); Arkansas Art Center in Little Rock, Arkansas (October 16, 2015 through January 17, 2016); and Delaware Art Museum in Wilmington, Delaware (March 5 through May 29, 2016).
The exhibition's parallel program includes an opening lecture by the Museum's director, on October 25th, at 6 pm., and a debate panel with five of the artists featured in the show. The museum will also launch a bilingual Web site to coincide with the exhibition opening, which will feature commentary on the artworks and images of all of them. Both through this Web site and on YouTube (youtube.com/americanartmuseum) short features and trailers will be av...
