The Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Collection

Patricia Phelps de Cisneros receives the ARCO Foundation Honorary “A” Award for her support of art
The ARCO Foundation recognizes Patricia Phelps de Cisneros' commitment to the preservation and promotion of art and culture in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Santo Domingo, March 5, 2025.- Patricia Phelps de Cisneros has been awarded the ARCO Foundation Honorary “A” Award for her support of art at the twenty-ninth edition of the International Contemporary Art Fair. This award, presented yesterday at a ceremony held at the Círculo de Bellas Artes in Madrid, recognizes her career in the promotion, preservation and dissemination of art and culture in Latin America and the Caribbean, a commitment that she has consolidated through the Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Collection (CPPC).
“It is a great honor to receive this award in such a special year for ARCO,” says Phelps de Cisneros. “Today we can say that the public is much more aware of Latin America’s cultural contribution to the world, and I am so happy to see how Spain has opened a productive dialogue with the region. I see in this room today so many people who have been key in this effort, and it is only fair that ARCO brings us together because it has been a fundamental piece in this whole process.”
The Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Collection

Founded in the 1970s by Patricia Phelps de Cisneros and Gustavo Cisneros, the Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Collection (CPPC) has the mission of promoting democratic education and preserving and promoting the art and culture of Latin America and the Caribbean. With offices in Caracas, the Dominican Republic, Madrid and New York, it has been chaired since 2008 by her daughter, Adriana Cisneros de Griffin. The CPPC encompasses five main areas, highlighting the 20th-century Latin American geometric abstraction and the Orinoco Collection, the largest collection in the world that preserves the cultural expressions of indigenous communities in the Amazon. The other three cores house works by artists who captured the Latin American landscape between the 17th and 19th centuries, art from the viceregal era of Venezuela and the Caribbean, and contemporary works by Latin American and Caribbean artists. Since its creation, the CPPC has developed an extensive publication program, has participated in almost 400 exhibitions in more than 196 museums, and has donated more than 400 works to more than 20 museums in America and Europe. It also establishes strategic alliances with universities and museums to strengthen and promote research on Latin American art, among which the creation of the Cisneros Institute at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York in 2016 stands out.

On the other hand, last week The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) launched the Cisneros Research Guide, the first bilingual research tool developed by this museum, which offers the public more than 200 digital resources from the CPPC digital archive. This platform, in English and Spanish, guarantees long-term accessibility of materials on the art and culture of Latin America, and is available at https://research.moma.org/cppc-guide-es

Patricia Phelps de Cisneros has maintained a strong link with Spain for several decades. In 2013, La Invención Concreta: Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros was presented at the Museo Reina Sofía, and in that same year Orinoco: Viaje a un mundo perdido was presented at the Centro Gaiás, Santiago de Compostela. She is a founding member of the International Friends of the Museo del Prado and the Fundación Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Barcelona (MACBA). In addition, she promoted the creation of the Fundación Museo Reina Sofía, of which she served as founding patron. In Europe she has been awarded the Grand Cross of the Civil Order of Alfonso X the Wise and the Golden Lion of San Marco, among other recognitions.
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