Richard Armstrong, Director, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Foundation, today announced that distinguished independent curator Pablo León de la Barra has been selected as Guggenheim UBS MAP Curator, Latin America. He is the second curator to have been chosen to participate in the Guggenheim UBS MAP Global Art Initiative, an ambitious collaboration between the Guggenheim Museum and UBS that was launched last year.
Through the Initiative, the Guggenheim is engaged in a multi-year effort to identify and support a network of artists and curators from three major regions—South and Southeast Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East and North Africa—in a comprehensive program involving curatorial residencies, acquisitions for the Guggenheim's permanent collection, international touring exhibitions, and extensive educational and online activities.
Pablo León de la Barra will undertake a two-year residency in New York, where he will work with the Guggenheim's curatorial staff to identify recent artworks by artists of Latin American origin that reflect some of the region's most significant contemporary cultural practices and ideas. Artworks chosen by León de la Barra will enter the collection and form the basis of an exhibition planned to open at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, in 2014 before traveling to two international venues.
León de la Barra was nominated by a committee of five esteemed experts on this region: Magalí Arriola, Curator, Fundación Jumex, Ecatepec de Morelos, Mexico; José Falconi, Fellow, Department of History of Art and Architecture, Harvard University; Gabriela Rangel, Director of Visual Arts and Chief Curator, Americas Society, New York; Ana Sokoloff, art advisor, New York; and Yolanda Wood Pujols, Director, Center for Caribbean Studies, Casa de las Américas, Havana.