Art Museums of Latin America

Since the late nineteenth century, art museums have played crucial social, political, and economic roles throughout Latin America because of the ways that they structure representation. By means of their architecture, collections, exhibitions, and curatorial practices, Latin American art museums have crafted representations of communities, including nation states, and promoted particular group ideologies. This collection of essays, arranged in thematic sections, will examine the varying and complex functions of art museums in Latin America: as nation-building institutions and instruments of state cultural politics; as foci for the promotion of Latin American modernities and modernisms; as sites of mediation between local and international, private and public interests; as organizations that negotiate cultural construction within the Latin American diaspora and shape constructs of Latin America and its nations; and as venues for the contestation of elitist and Eurocentric notions of culture and the realization of cultural diversity rooted in multiethnic environments.

Michele Greet is associate professor of modern Latin American and European art and director of the art history program at George Mason University . Gina McDaniel Tarver is associate professor of modern and contemporary art history, with a focus on Latin America, at Texas State University.

Part I: Art Museums and State Politics 1 From Universalist to National Art: The Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Buenos Aires 2 Mexico's Museo de Artes Plásticas: The Divergent Discourses of 1934 and 1947 3 History and Metamorphosis: Cuba's Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes 4 Incendiary Objects: An Episodic History of the Museu de Arte Moderna, Rio de Janeiro Part II Art Museums as Constructions of Modernity 5 Pedrosa and Malraux: Impossible Meetings in the "Museum of Copies" 6 A Museum without a Venue: The Invention of the Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá, 1955-1963 7 The Architecture of Mexico's Museo de Arte Moderno: A Stimulus to Museological Renewal Part III Local Dynamics of Internationalism 8 The São Paulo Biennial Complex: MAM-BSP-MAC 9 Local Processes and Transnational Circuits: The Inter-American Project and the Birth of Modern Art Museums in Barranquilla and Cartagena 10. An Uneasy Alliance: The Early Years of the Museo Tamayo 11 Colección Jumex and Mexico's Art Scene: The Intersection of Public and Private Part IV National and Regional Perspectives from the United States 12 Latin American Art at The University of Texas at Austin: The University Art Museum 13 Somehow Exceptional: El Museo del Barrio, New York 14 Museum as Battleground: Exile and Contested Cultural Representation in Miami's Cuban Museum Part V Reimagining the Art Museum 15 Revolutionary Modernism: A "Museo de Arte Moderno Americano" Rehearsed in Print in Mexico City, 1926-1928 16 The Museum in Times of Revolution: Regarding Nemesio Antúnez's Transformation Program for Santiago's Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, 1969-1973 17 Critical Deviations in Latin American Museums: The Experiences of the Museo del Barro in Asunción, Paraguay and the Micromuseo in Lima, Peru