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Arte en Colombia Magazine 42, year 1989. pp 54-59
Art in Latin America The Persistence of the Picturesque When the Europeans or North Americans hold exhibitions on Latin American art – or the art which is being done in Latin America – it is difficult for the artists and intellectuals south of the border to approve with much enthusiasm the curatorial criteria followed. Aracy Amaral
An art exhibition dealing with one cultural
group but organized by another is always a source of perplexity and hypersensitivity by the cultural group under scrutiny. If a European is the curator of an exhibition of Asian art, it will be difficult for the Oriental cultural group to accept its criteria; and, if we in Latin America were to prepare an exhibition of art in the United States in the twentieth century, the North American critics would smile ironically at such a project. Thus, when the Europeans or North Americans hold exhibitions on Latin American art or the art which is being done in Latin America it is difficult for the artists and intellectuals south of the border to approve with much enthusiasm the curatorial criteria followed. Such exhibitions have become frequent of late, perhaps because of the situation actually being
Manuel Manilla. Poisoning and the Jury. Zinc engraving. 3 x 5 ½ in.
experienced by art. In 1987, in the Indianapolis Museum, there was the show entitled “Art of the Fantastic: Latin America”, which even included Torres García. In 1988, in the Bronx Museum in New York, Luis Cancel presented a major project centered on the Latin American art shown in the United States between 1920 and 1970 – a project which in the final analysis attempted to provide a full view (1) of a partial aspect of Latin American art. “Modernidade”, despite all the criticisms that were made in Brazil and the noncriticisms and sympathetic articles which appeared in France in December 1987, was the only exhibition in which a European curator, Marie Odile Briot, wanted to share her work with Brazilian colleagues.
This year, once again and this time in London, at the prestigious Hayward Gallery on the banks of the Thames, there was another show, titled “Art in Latin America”, organized by the curator Dawn Ades, an art historian specializing in surrealism (her works include Dada and Photomontage) and lecturer at the University of Essex. And there is more: the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington has been preparing for some time an exhibition of art from our continent. The truth of the matter is that a curator will not, for a moment, give up his or her control over the conception of a show and the selection of the works, since his objective is to present an exhibition for “his” public and not for the public of the country or countries covered. And so, what