Latin American Art at The Museum of Modern Art

This study sheds light on an as yet unstudied aspect of the Museum of Modern Art's (MoMA) preeminent role in establishing the definition of the problematic term "Latin American art" in the United States.

Miriam M. Basilio Gaztambide is Associate Professor of Art History and Museum Studies at New York University (NYU). She was co-curator of Tempo (MoMA QNS, 2002), MoMA at El Museo: Latin American and Caribbean Art from the Collection of The Museum of Modern Art (2003), and Fighting Fascism: Visual Culture of the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) (NYU Kimmel Windows, 2023). Her book Visual Propaganda, Exhibitions, and the Spanish Civil War (Routledge) was published in 2013.

Introduction: Collection Displays and Canon Formation; 1. "An Evolutionary Pedigree": Modern Art in the 1930s-40s; 2. "National Representations and International Standards" The Latin-American Collection of the Museum of Modern Art (1943) and The First General Exhibition of the Museum Collection of Painting and Sculpture (1945); 3. "Geographic Distributions": The 25th Anniversary Exhibition, 1954-1955; 4. A "Missing Link": Elaine L. Johnson's Latin American Program and the 1967 Collection Exhibition; 5. Revising Modernism? The Place of Latin American Art in MoMA's Collection Galleries, 2004-2023