Art Museum of the Americas

09/23/2024

Juan Roberto Diago (b. 1971)
No Puedo Hablar (I Can’t Speak), 2000
Mixed media on canvas
Courtesy of Cernuda Arte

Diago: The Pasts of this Afro-Cuban Present
On view through October 20

Curated by Alejandro de la Fuente
Director, Afro-Latin American Research Institute, Harvard University
A leading member of the new Afro-Cuban cultural movement, visual artist Juan Roberto Diago (b. 1971) has produced a body of work that offers a revisionist history of the Cuban nation. His history, a term that he frequently inserts in his works using the visual language of graffiti, is not the official narrative of a racially harmonious nation, built thanks to the selfless efforts of generous white patriots. Diago's Cuba is a nation built on pain, r**e, greed, and the enslavement of millions of displaced Africans, a nation still grappling with the long-term effects of slavery and colonialism. To him, slavery is not the past, but a daily experience of racism and discrimination. Africa is not a root but a wellspring of cultural renovation and personal affirmation, the ancestors that sustain him in his journey. This exhibition of forty mixed-media and installation artworks, his first retrospective, outlines Diago's creative work during his entire career. It traces his singular efforts to construct new pasts, the pasts required to explain the racial tensions of contemporary Cuba, the pasts of this Afro-Cuban present.

09/22/2024

Laguardia: Paintings of Paraguay
Exhibition brochure, 1952
OAS AMA | Art Museum of the Americas Archives

On this day in 1952, Laguardia: Paintings of Paraguay opened at the OAS Main Building Gallery, pre-cursor to the present-day AMA. The exhibition ran from September 22-October 11, 1952. Laguardia is the pseudonym of Carmen Fernández de Herrera, born in Asuncón, Paraguay, in 1918. Herrera started painting at an early age, while traveling through China and Japan. In the latter country she became interested in the lacquer technique, which she later developed and adapted to her own mode of expression. She studied at art schools in Germany, Italy, Spain, and France; she is also a graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts in Buenos Aires, and has taken courses in Rio de Janeiro, Lima, Santiago de Chile, Montevideo, and La Paz. Her exhibition at the OAS was her first show in the United States. She was working exclusively in lacquer on Celotex panels, using a process resulting from long experimentation.

09/21/2024

Seven Deadly Sins and Environmental Degradation featuring the work of Elizabeth Chiles, Yisak Choi, Esha Chiocchio, Frazier King, Jann Rosen-Queralt, Joel Simpson, and Jamey Stillings is now on view at the OAS F Street Gallery.

Visit by appointment only: [email protected]

Gallery photo: Rafa Cruz Photography

09/20/2024

Join Us for the Cultural Diplomacy Festival of the Americas! Tickets for food, beverages, and experiences are available now at the link in the comments.

You are cordially invited to the Cultural Diplomacy Festival of the Americas on Sunday, October 6, 2024 from 12:00 p.m. - 4:00 p.m.

Join us for a day of sampling regional food and drink offerings while soaking in live entertainment amid the stunning architecture and historic gardens. Don’t miss this chance to experience the richness and diversity of our shared heritage!

This one-of-a-kind experience promises a day filled with:
-Authentic Cuisine: Savor the flavors of Latin American and the Caribbean with a diverse array of regional dishes.
-Live Entertainment: Enjoy vibrant performances that showcase the rich cultural heritage of the region.
-Family Fun: A perfect day out for the whole family, with activities for all ages.

This festival is a unique opportunity to experience the Americas while also supporting the preservation and conservation of the OAS’s unique history and its grounds, which were designated a National Historic Landmark in 2021.

Organized by the OAS Office of Protocol, the Art Museum of the Americas, and the Columbus Memorial Library, with the support of the Friends of the Art Museum of the Americas, this vibrant celebration of cultural diplomacy promises to be a day to remember!

📅 Date: Sunday, October 6, 2024 - 12:00pm – 4pm
📍 Location: Historic Gardens of the Organization of American States,
C St. NW, between 17th & 18th St. NW

Tickets to spend on food, beverages, or special experiences: Adults - $42 for 7 tickets, Children - $20 for 7 tickets

Additional tickets: $6 (sold at the festival) *payment by credit card only*

Sponsored by: NailSaloon and SimplyFresh
Special thank you to: OAS Permanent Missions, OAS Permanent Observer Missions

09/20/2024

Thank-you to all who visited En los Otros Costados: Exilios de las Españas de 1936-39 en las Americas: Adonde fue la Cancion?, and who contributed to the wall of reflections.

Gallery image by Rafa Cruz Photography.

09/19/2024

The skies are clearing, and it's a good day to visit Diago: The Pasts of this Afro-Cuban Present, on view through October 20.

Gallery photo by Rafa Cruz Photography

09/18/2024

Enrique Tabara of Ecuador: Oils
Exhibition Brochure, 1964
OAS AMA | Art Museum of the Americas Archives

From the brochure:
"Enrique Tabara has won a place a distinction. Rather than the champion of a single mode of expression, he is essentially an experimentalist, assimilating and employing for original effects a variety of techniques. His work is a pageant of form, texture, and rhythm which seems to spring from the hieroglyphs of pre-Columbian America and yet is thoroughly modern in spirit."

Keep an eye on this space for forthcoming Tabara news.

09/17/2024

Jackson Beardy (b. 1944, d. 1984, Island Lake South)
Bird, 1973
Silkscreen / sérigraphie
OAS AMA | Art Museum of the Americas Collection
Gift of the Canada Council for the Arts

At a gala event celebrating Manitoba’s centennial—an event for which Jackson Beardy (Oji-Cree) had been commissioned to produce artworks, and to which he and his family were invited—Beardy was refused entry at the door. Such is the environment in which he and other Indigenous artists strove to revolutionize what it meant to be an artist in Canada, producing innovative, socially- and politically-engaged art that communicated worldviews long-suppressed by official national structures. At the same time, Beardy and other founding members of the Woodland School of Art produced artworks intended to be understood artistically rather than anthropologically, defying the art establishment’s long-held expectations.

This print shows Beardy’s use of smooth, crisp lines, elegant composition, and rich swathes of colour. The Canada goose is depicted as being visually and symbolically interconnected with the environmental elements surrounding it with lines that also break up the surface of the image into clean, graphic shapes. With great economy of line, Beardy’s work thoughtfully stylizes complex scenes and worldviews in evocative and striking compositions.

09/16/2024

Ányel Maidelin Calzadilla Fernandez
Lady Varsovia (detail)
Mixed media

On this day in 2007, Landings 5 concluded its run at the AMA. Landings was conceived by the visual artist community of Belize in mid 2003 and one year later took off with landings/1st in the restored XVII century Franciscan convent of Conkal, on the outskirts of Mérida, Yucatán, México. By early 2010 it had exhibited in 10 international events, comprising 8 exhibitions that took place in México (2), Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, USA, Cuba (2) and Taiwan. landings 9/the forum was held in Belize in August 2008 and the project ends with landings TEN, a conceptual book/event, the finale of a set of nine books (landings 6+7 exhibitions held in Havana are 1 book) reflecting the entire seven-year collective effort involving over 70 visual artists from 15 nations of the Caribbean, Central America and Yucatán, along with the later inclusion of 1 Taiwanese artist who worked with us at landings 8, Taipei Fine Arts Museum. Additionally, many writers, designers, journalists, photographers and translators of various nationalities played important roles in the team’s efforts. Landings was directed and coordinated by Joan Duran. Participating artists included Adrian Barron, Laura Baumeister, Valentina Bosio, Santiago Cal, Ányel Maidelin Calzadilla Fernandez, Alex Castilla, Caryana Castillo, Dalia Chévez, Michael Gordon, Yasser Musa, Pierre Obando, Ryan Oduber, Celeste Ponce, Fernando Poyón, Adislen Reyes, Vanessa Rivero, and Gabriel Serra, among many others. Landings 5 ran from July 5 through September 16, 2007.

09/15/2024

TES XX: Tiempo Espacio Siglo XX of Argentina
Exhibition Brochure
OAS AMA | Art Museum of the Americas Archives

From September 15-October 9, 1986, the exhibition TES XX: Tiempo Espacio Siglo XX of Argentina was shown at the Museum of Modern Art of Latin America, known today as the AMA. The exhibition included works of Carlos Alfredo Ara Monti, Melita Arteta, Claudia Bielinski, and Cristina Sicardi. OAS Curator of Temporary Exhibitions Félix Angel quotes Argentine art critic Jorge Anaya in the exhibition brochure: “Carlos Ana Monti views a painting as a structure composed of forms organized on the basis of the relationships between such individual elements as lines, angles, and color gradations. Melita Arteta concentrates on the rigorous organization of a system founded on triangular units; this does not prevent her, however, from resorting to subtle transparencies and gradations of light which blend them into a whole for purposes of the optico-psychological effect on the viewer. Claudia Bielinsky enhances her basically depersonalized pictorial material with certain tactile textures, opening the way to a new and imaginative vision of space by the mental association thus created between the intuitive and the conceptual. Cristina Sicardi reduces the basic elements of painting to simple geometric forms and pure, sharply contrasting colors. Occasionally she rejects the customary rectangular frame for one of circular or rhomboidal shape. She has also ventured into the creation of luminous spatial structures of colored neon.”

09/14/2024

Victoria Mamnguqsualuk (b.1930, d. 2016, Back River Camp)
Flesh Eating Monster, 1983
Stonecut / gravure sur pierre
OAS AMA | Art Museum of the Americas
Gift of the Canada Council for the Arts

Described as “one of the best-known Inuit artists of her generation,“ Victoria Mamnguqsualuk was a foundational artist of the Baker Lake Co-operative, and an influential practitioner of graphic and textile arts in Canada’s northern communities. Her work includes lively scenes with detailed figures engaging in communal activity, often with influences drawing from oral histories such as those of the legendary hero Qiviuk. These scenes, described by curator Candice Hopkins (Tlingit) as “choreographies,” tell incredibly complex stories of humour and horror, love and play, interrelation and transformation; sometimes all at once.

In this scene, we can see the stomach contents of a monstrous bear with a human face, which include “fish, people and what might be caribou.” In the background, figures are engaged in complex choreography: some attack the bear-creature, and another is attacked by a wolf. Among them, a giant bird wears an amauti (woman’s parka). Human and animal figures merge into and overlap one another in complex ways; “not simply as ingestion, but instances of a greater sense of exchange prevalent throughout Mamnguqsualuk’s creation.”

For Hopkins’ analysis of this artwork, see: Chris Hampton, “The Monstrous and the Nomadic: The stories of Victoria Mamnguqsualuk.” Inuit Art Quarterly, March 11, 2019.

09/13/2024

Hector Navarro (Mexico, b.1937)
Torso, 1964
Gouache on paper, 17 x 20 1/2" (sight)
OAS AMA | Art Museum of the Americas Collection

Fifty-five years ago today, the exhibition Héctor Navarro of Mexico ended its run at the OAS Main Building Gallery. Another exhibition of works of Mexico, Mexican Prints: University of Guanajuato was on view concurrently. Both shows ran from August 23 through September 13, 1966. Navarro is known for his prints as well as his paintings, such as this gouache, accessioned into the AMA collection following the exhibition.

09/12/2024

En los Otros Costados
Exilios de las Españas de 1936-39 en las Americas
Adonde fue la Cancion?

On the Other Coasts
1936-39 Spanish Exiles in the Americas
Where Did the Song Go?

On view through September 15

The exhibition presents around twenty works of art from the collections of the Art Museum of the Americas and the Inter-American Development Bank, contextualized with fragments of recordings from the PALABRA Archive of the Library of Congress of the United States of America, along with scores and documents from the era, safeguarded by the Columbus Memorial Library of the OAS.

Installation photo:

09/11/2024

Pedro Figari (Uruguay, b. 1861, d. 1938)
El Patio (The Market Place), c. 1935
Oil on cardboard, 17 3/4 x 25"
OAS AMA | Art Museum of the Americas Collection
Gift of the Bank of the Republic of Uruguay

In September of 1946, the exhibition Pedro Figari (1861-1938), organized with the Council for Inter-American Cooperation, Inc., New York, was on view at the Pan American Union Building Gallery, precursor to the present-day AMA. Uruguayan artist Pedro Figari’s The Marketplace depicts an archetypal South American plaza complete with an arcade and colonial church in the background. The plaza is filled with activity, with more than a dozen figures buying or selling wares or casually socializing. Rendered in a loose gestural style akin to impressionism, Figari’s figures are merely daubs of paint with unidentifiable features. Their multicolored tunics create a lively pattern over the surface of the canvas. Exactitude was not his goal; rather he aimed to capture the movement and activity of the marketplace. Stray dogs play and jump around the vendors, colorful piles of fruit and vegetables are stacked on blankets, women in head scarves and long dresses haggle over prices. Behind the figures, several pastel colored buildings rise above the plaza creating a sense of enclosure. Figari’s choice to employ certain aspects of impressionist technique (loose visible brushwork, bold color, and an emphasis on rhythm and motion rather than minute detail in his work) most likely stemmed from his 1913 visit to Paris where he attended an exhibition of impressionist paintings at the Durand Ruel Gallery that included works by Monet, Renoir, Sisley, Pissarro, Degas, and Cézanne. However, unlike these artists, Figari did not paint scenes of modern leisure observed from life. Whether painted in Paris, Uruguay, or Argentina, Figari’s scenes were nostalgic imaginings of disappearing customs. He redeployed impressionist technique as a means to represent the fuzzy edges of memory, a past reconstructed according to the desires of the present and nostalgia for a bygone era.

-Michele Greet

09/10/2024

Karl "Jerry" Craig (Jamaica, b.1936)
Islands (All That Glitters El Dorado Columbus Series), 1991
Mixed media with gold leaf on canvas stretched on plywood, 51 x 37"
OAS AMA | Art Museum of the Americas Collection

Karl ‘Jerry’ Craig was born in Jamaica. After the completion of his education in Jamaica, he traveled to England where he obtained his tertiary education. While there, he attended the Camberwell School of Art; London School of Printing; Goldsmith College of Art; and obtained the National Diploma in Design from the prestigious St. Martin’s School of Art. He attended the Maryland Institute College of Art in the U.S.A., where he graduated with the Master of Fine Arts Degree. He returned to Jamaica where he played an integral part in the development of education in the area of the Visual Arts, both at the Secondary and Tertiary levels. This prolific artist has mounted numerous one man shows in Jamaica, as well as in England, and the U.S.A. He has exhibited in many group exhibitions in numerous countries of the world. He has successfully participated by invitation, in many prestigious International Art Exhibitions and Biennials. He now resides in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.

-South Florida Artists Association

09/09/2024

Luce Carpi Turnier (Haiti, b. 1924, d. 1995)
Portrait of a Woman, 1949
Oil on canvas, 34 5/8 x 19 5/8 in.
Collection of Mary-Leigh Call Smart

On this day in 1955, the exhibition Luce Carpi Turnier of Haiti concluded its month-long run at the OAS Main Building Gallery, precursor to the present-day AMA. Turnier joined the Haitian Art Center in 1945 and exhibited for the first time in 1946, with Maurice Borno. She earned several scholarships (Rockefeller Foundation, N.Y., 1967; French government, 1951; Haitian government, 1952). In 1953 her work was exhibited in Boon. Bremen and Hamburg, leading to her 1955 exhibition at the OAS in Washington, D.C. In 1967, she began working in collage. In 1978 she exhibited at the French Institute of Haiti and participated in various exhibits of women painters. (Biographical source: Marie-José Nadal & Gérald Bloncourt, 1986, La Peinture Haitienne/ Haitian Arts, Editions Nathan, Paris).

09/08/2024

Hilda López (Uruguay, b. 1922, d. 1996)
Pintura número 8, 1960
Oil on canvas, 105 x 72 cm.
Private collection

On this day in 1961, the exhibition Hilda López: Streets and Inlets of Montevideo, Oils opened at the OAS Main Building Gallery, precursor to the present-day AMA. The exhibition ran from September 8 through September 24, 1961. The exhibition earned a strong contemporary review from Frank Getlein in The Sunday Star. López held her first solo exhibition in 1960 at the Zaffaroni Gallery. Her series Streets and inlets of Montevideo, exhibited in Washington in 1961, received a glowing critique from Frank Getlein in The Sunday Star. In 1965, López represented Uruguay in the São Paulo Art Biennial. She participated in the occupation of the Municipal Subway in protest of the appointment of representatives of the Municipal Salon of Plastic Arts, and in 1972 she participated in the reconstruction of Section 20 of the Communist Party in the Paso Molino neighborhood. In 1973, with the closure of official artistic training courses by the de facto government, López began to teach. Her workshop, as well as those of Guillermo Fernández, Nelson Ramos, and Hugo Longa, persevered in difficult times and were decisive in the formation of the next generation of Uruguayan artists, achieving the continuity of the national artistic process during the dictatorial period. In 1986 she made a mural in stone and cement in homage to the victims of the dictatorship at the Central Headquarters of the Communist Party of Uruguay.

09/07/2024

Miguel Diomede (Argentina, b.1902, d.1974)
Still Life, 1958
Oil on canvas, 10 1/2 x 15 3/4"
OAS AMA | Art Museum of the Americas Collection

Miguel Diomede was born in La Boca, on July 20, 1902. A self-taught artist, he began to practice in 1924. In 1929 he held his first individual exhibits at the Mutualidad de Estudiantes y Egresados de Bellas Artes (MEEBA) and at the Ateneo Popular de La Boca. In 1936, he received the First Award at the Salón de Artistas Noveles de la Boca for his work Cabeza de Mujer In 1952, he took part in the collective exhibit of Argentine artists at the Museo de Arte Moderno de Sao Paulo, Brazil. In 1957, he was awarded the First Prize at the Premio Adquisición for his work Renata at the XXII Salón de Arte de La Plata and the Second Prize at the Salón de Mar del Plata. In 1969, he took part in the Panorama de la Pintura Argentina I at the Lorenzutti Foundation and held an individual exhibit at Galería Bonino. In 1971, he took part in the Siete pintores Boquenses exhibition, organized by Galería Feldman. Diomede died in Buenos Aires, on October 15, 1974, a little after the closing of this retrospective exhibition at Galería Lorenzutti, Artes y Antigüedades S.A. (LAASA).

-Centro Virtual de Arte Argentino

09/06/2024

Carlos Colombino (Paraguay, b.1937, d. 2013)
Ícaro, 1966
Xilo-painting, 63 x 63"
OAS AMA | Art Museum of the Americas Collection

The mythological figure of Icarus, who out of hubris flew too close to the sun on wings of feather and wax, plummets towards the ocean. A trail of smoke seems to issue from charred and misshapen form, a large biomorphic mass suggestive of the deformation of both body and soul. Colombino’s suggestive title represents his existential despair over Paraguay’s future in an age overshadowed by the authoritarian regime of Alfredo Stroessner Mattiauda, who applied martial law, committed severe human rights abuses, and limited the freedom of the press.

Tal como el título lo indica, el retratado en la pieza es la figura mitológica de Ícaro, cuya arrogancia lo lleva a acercarse demasiado al sol, derretir así sus alas de cera, y caer en picada hacia el océano. El sugerente título representa su desesperación existencial ante el futuro de Paraguay, en una época eclipsada por el régimen autoritario de Alfredo Stroessner Matiauda, quien aplicó la ley marcial, cometió graves abusos a los derechos humanos y limitó la libertad de prensa.

-Mark White

09/05/2024

Joyce Wieland (b. 1931, d. 1998, Toronto)
Soroseelutu Cape Dorset, 1977
Lithograph / lithographie
OAS AMA | Art Museum of the Americas
Gift of the Canada Council for the Arts

Joyce Wieland is a renowned Canadian feminist visual artist and filmmaker, with a long career in socially-engaged art practice. Described by the National Gallery of Canada as “an icon of Canadian art history,” Weiland produced work that critiqued the structural sexism of Canadian (and global) media, cultural institutions, and social norms. Challenging the supposed distinction between “high art” and “craft” practices, Weiland’s ground-breaking 1971 exhibition, True Patriot Love, uses collaboratively produced domestic materials such as quilts, cake decoration, scrapbooking, and tapestries to subversively engage in debates around national identity.

Wieland’s work in the 1970’s, such as this lithograph, engaged deeply with how Canada understood itself, and how non-Canadians understood Canada. In this work, Wieland depicts an influential Cape Dorset based Inuit artist, Soroseelutu Ashoona. By paying homage to the lithographic techniques and visual style developed by Inuit artists during this timeframe, Wieland draws attention to an underrepresented community and the artists within it producing innovative artwork in a co-operative, collaborative working environment. In doing so, Weiland challenges the expectations set out by the predominantly white male art establishment she sought so consistently to critique.

09/04/2024

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09/03/2024

Diago: The Pasts of this Afro-Cuban Present
Now on view
Curated by Alejandro de la Fuente

Gallery photo by Rafa Cruz Photography

08/31/2024

Diago: The Pasts of this Afro-Cuban Present
Now on view
Curated by Alejandro de la Fuente

Gallery photographs by Rafa Cruz Photography

08/30/2024

Juan Roberto Diago (b. 1971)
Sin título (Untitled), 2022
Bronze sculpture
Private collection

Diago: The Pasts of this Afro-Cuban Present
Now on view
Curated by Alejandro de la Fuente

08/29/2024

Juan Roberto Diago (b. 1971)
Aquí Nadie Gana (Nobody Wins Here), 2000
Mixed media on canvas
Private collection

Diago: The Pasts of this Afro-Cuban Present
Now on view
Curated by Alejandro de la Fuente

08/28/2024

Juan Roberto Diago (b. 1971)
Ofrenda a mis dioses
(Offering to my Gods), 2001
Mixed media on canvas
Private Collection

Diago: The Pasts of this Afro-Cuban Present
Now on view
Curated by Alejandro de la Fuente

08/27/2024

Juan Roberto Diago (b. 1971)
Algo Está Creciendo (Something is Growing), 2004
Mixed media on canvas
Courtesy of Cernuda Arte

Diago: The Pasts of this Afro-Cuban Present
Now on view
Curated by Alejandro de la Fuente

08/26/2024

Juan Roberto Diago (b. 1971)
El Poder no se Regala se Lucha (de la Serie Un Lugar en el Mundo) (Power is Not Given Away but Conquered, from the Series: A Place in the World), 2009
Mixed media on canvas and wood
Courtesy of Cernuda Arte

Diago: The Pasts of this Afro-Cuban Present
Now on view
Curated by Alejandro de la Fuente