José Clemente Orozco (Mexican, 1883–1949), Rear Guard (Retaguardia), 1929. Lithograph. Laura P. Hall Memorial CollectionWorks of modern and contemporary Latin American art in the Museum’s collection date from the late nineteenth century to the present. Created by more than eighty artists from thirteen countries and territories, they span multiple artistic movements, national traditions, and virtually all mediums—from painting, drawing, and printmaking to time-based media, such as video, and multi-object installations. This wide range made the question of how to define Latin American art a crucial point of departure for the project. Should works by the Cuban American artist Ana Mendieta, for example, or the acclaimed Mexican Portfolio of the American photographer Paul Strand find a place within the Museum’s understanding of Latin American art? Ultimately, we chose to cast a wide and inclusive net to encompass artworks made in Latin America; those by artists born in or with significant ties to the region; and those by artists, no matter their nationality, who treat subjects related to Latin America. This broad definition helped reveal the complex networks of artistic affiliation, dialogue, transformation, and circulation at play within and beyond Latin America during this period, when many modern artists trained, traveled, and created outside their places of birth.
Jane Gillies, conservator at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and the Art Museum’s Christopher Gorzelnik, senior lighting designer, and Bart Devolder, conservator, examine Gregorio Vardanega’s kinetic sculpture Circles chromatiques en progression. Photo: Kristina GiasiThe Museum has collected Latin American art since 1946, when it purchased prints by the artists José Clemente Orozco (Mexico) and Carlos Mérida (Guatemala). Until recently much of the collection has been built through donations made by individuals and organizations. The collection’s most generous donor, David L. Meginnity, Class of 1958, strongly shaped its character—his gifts throughout the 1990s and his transformative bequest in 2001 total approximately 140 works. Meginnity’s passion for Mexican art, in particular, enables the Museum to trace that country’s artistic developments through the twentieth century, from the Mexican Renaissance and mural movement to expatriate Surrealist artists who fled to Mexico from Europe during World War II through a number of postwar movements and schools, such as the 1950s Breakaway Generation, the sardonic kitsch of the Neo-Mexicanists, the School of Oaxaca, and recent conceptual works.
