Art Latin America: Against the Survey

Curated by James Oles, Adjunct Curator of Latin American Art at the Davis Museum and Senior Lecturer in the Department of Art at Wellesley College

This is the online version of an exhibition that was on view in the Davis Museum galleries from February 7 until June 9, 2019.

Art_Latin_America: Against the Survey sought to highlight the extensive collection of modern and contemporary Latin American and Latinx art at the Davis Museum. Since the 1990s, our holdings in these areas have expanded more than tenfold, strengthening the Museum’s teaching capacities, complicating the personal and historical narratives we can tell in the galleries, and bringing ever greater diversity to the permanent collection. 

Although seemingly self-evident, the definition of “Latin American art” has been the subject of contentious debate. Art_Latin_America takes a broad and inclusive approach, signaled by the underscores—blanks, but also bridges—in the title. The first underscore, between Art and Latin, means that the selection includes not only art from or made in Latin America, but art about or even just related to the region. The second, between Latin and America, allows us to join “Latin-American” artists with their Latino/a/@/x contemporaries: those of Latin American descent who live in the United States.