Latin American art collection at the Metropolitan Museum

A donation turns the New York Met into a large archive of Mexican prints in the US

Metropolitan Museum of New York strengthens its collection of Latin American art
The Metropolitan Museum of New York (Met) announced this Monday that it has become one of the largest archives of Mexican prints in the United States after receiving a donation of more than 300 works of this type, made by artists from that country or who worked over there.

The prints, dated between 1890 and 2007, are signed by renowned and lesser-known Mexican artists, from Leopoldo Méndez and Diego Rivera to Adolfo Mexiac and Roberto Montenegro, while others are by Americans inspired by Mexico, some of them associated with the Taller of Popular Graphics.

The Met, one of the largest museums in the world, already had more than 2,000 Mexican prints and books dating from the mid-18th century to the mid-20th century, and now "closes important gaps in its existing collection" with unusual works, some of which They will be shown to the public in early 2025, a statement indicates.

The majority of works are relief prints with themes around social justice, which reflected the concerns of artists in Mexico in the first half of the 20th century, among which are 'Rio Escondido' by Leopoldo Méndez, 'Ten engravings in wood' by Isidoro Ocampo or 'Sharecropper' by Elizabeth Catlett.

The donation comes from the Pinkowitz collection, created mainly by JoAnn Edinburg Pinkowitz, a former volunteer at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston who died in 2022 and who, along with her husband Richard, recorded her willingness to hand over a good part of her works to the Met, the note indicates.

The curator of the Department of Drawings and Prints, Mark McDonald, said that JoAnn was "well known" at the museum, where she "spent a lot of time enthusiastically exploring" her Mexican works.

Met director Max Hollein described the donated works as emphasizing "revolutionary politics and aesthetics," noting that the institution is now one of the largest repositories of Mexican prints and is used as a fund for resources by artists. , academics and students.