The boost from private collectors to Latin American art

Mari Carmen Ramírez and the impulse of private collectors to Latin American art

The curator of Latin American Art at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston tells the origin of the institution's link with Malba, where she now exhibits a large exhibition on Gyula Kosice.
And she analyzes the role of research and the market to dethrone myths.
"Institutions reacted to the role of collectors," she says.

A long tradition of collaborations frames the relationship between Malba and the Museum of Fine Arts of Houston, which includes the large exhibition dedicated to Gyula Kosice. Intergalactico, which opened this month at the Malba, is curated by Mari Camen Ramírez, curator of Latin American Art at the Houston Museum and Director of the International Center for the Arts of America (ICAA), who shares this project with María Amalia García, Chief Curator from Malba.

From the beginning, the collaboration between both institutions focused on Latin American avant-garde artists. The Xul Solar exhibition, which was exhibited in both museums, was a breakthrough in that sense. Then came Gego, the retrospective by Carlos Cruz Diez (2010-2011), the exhibition by Antonio Berni that here and there was the axis of the Juanito and Ramona series and now Kosice.
View of "The Hydrospatial City" of Kosice in Malba. View of "The Hydrospatial City" of Kosice in Malba.

The architect of all this is Mari Carmen Ramírez, someone who since the 80s has strived to make known the complexity of Latin American art in the United States through intense dissemination that aimed to dismantle stereotypes and misunderstandings around many of its great artists. . Most of them unknown and undeserving. We talked with her about these issues during her visit to Buenos Aires, on the occasion of the opening of the exhibition.

-The link between the Museum of Fine Arts of Houston and Malba has been fruitful that it exists, do you agree?

-It could be said that the coincidence between the birth of Malba and the inauguration of the International Center for the American Arts (ICAA) in the United States was the starting point. The MFAH is an encyclopedic museum that turns one hundred years old this year but was the first to establish a curatorial department and a research center focused on the arts of Latin America and the Latino communities of the US. As well as a research center of the arts of the Americas. I was the founding curator of that department, invited by Dr. Peter Marzio, who at that time was director of the museum. A visionary of Italian origin who had a special predisposition towards everything that was Latin art. He was also one of the first North American directors to travel extensively throughout Latin America; He met all the directors and curators and agents of that time and also became fascinated with the Río de la Plata. At one point he wanted to hold an exhibition of masters from the Río de la Plata, I'm talking about the 80s. That's how I came into contact with him. He hired me to do a consultancy on that exhibition. So I was very close to Marcelo Pacheco (I am still a friend and colleague) who was the first curator of Malba. We had a close collaboration, in fact I have always had a very close relationship with him. We are linked by interests in issues related to curatorship, the Latin American avant-garde and Latin American art in general.

-I understand that Marcelo Pacheco had an important role in the emergence and development of the ICAA.

-By the way. When we created it we had the idea of doing conferences, symposiums, artist talks, something like that. But Dr. Marzio wanted something that would have a transformative effect on the field of Latin American art. We are talking about the year 2000-2001, when the field of Latin American art in the United States was still incipient. The academic apparatus that we have today did not exist: more than a hundred people are writing doctoral theses on Latin American art. Only a few universities dealt with Latin America then. Marzio thought it was an opportunity for the MFAH to do something that would have an impact beyond its walls. So we called on those who knew something about Latin American and Latino art in the United States.
"Colonial House", by Xul Solar. / Courtesy Malba."Colonial House", by Xul Solar. / Courtesy Malba.

Basically curators and art historians and the occasional museum director. We met and began to discuss what type of projects could be promoted. The topic of archives came up, which was very hot at that time, connected to the need to preserve the memory of what the processes of 20th century art and contemporary art in Latin America had been. Everyone began to dream of acquiring important files. But other issues that were impossible to ignore also arose. Archives require infrastructure, specialized personnel: a project of that nature exceeded the dimensions of an entity within the museum.

We were discussing how to develop an archives project and it was Marcelo Pacheco who gave me the key. “Look at what's happening in the technology area so that you don't have to acquire or collect files,” he observed. He was attentive to the entire process and was also a core person for that debate here in Argentina.

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