Amalia Pica, Venn Diagram (Under the Spotlight), 2011. Promised gift of Patricia Cisneros through the Latin American and Caribbean fund.
The Museum of Modern Art announces that it has received a major gift of 90 works of contemporary art from the Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros, significantly enhancing the Museum’s holdings of contemporary works by Latin American artists. Together with the establishment of the Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Research Institute for the Study of Art from Latin America in 2016 and the more than 140 works by Latin American artists previously given to MoMA by Patricia and Gustavo Cisneros and the Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros, the new gift reinforces the longstanding relationship between the Museum and the Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros and advances MoMA’s commitment to exploring and fostering Latin American art and artists.
The gift includes works by 48 artists representing 10 Latin American countries: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Guatemala, Mexico, Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela. In addition to works by major artists already represented in MoMA’s collection, including Luis Camnitzer, Gabriel Kuri, David Lamelas, Jac Leirner, José Leonilson, Cildo Meireles, and Miguel Rio Branco, 24 artists have entered into MoMA’s collection for the first time, including Feliza Bursztyn, Alejandro Cesarco, Eugenio Espinoza, Regina José Galindo, Mario García Torres, Cinthia Marcelle, Claudio Perna, Amalia Pica, Wilfredo Prieto, Mauro Restiffe, José Alejandro Restrepo, Yeni & Nan, and David Zink Yi. Two significant works addressing Latin American histories and concerns, one by the German artist Lothar Baumgarten and one from New Zealand artist Michael Stevenson, are also included in the gift.
While the core modern gift donated last year is renowned for its focus on geometric abstraction, this contemporary gift reflects a more recent shift by Latin American artists toward video, performance, photography, and more participatory forms of art. These new additions to the collection establish an important dialogue between an emerging generation of artists and the Museum’s outstanding holdings of Latin American works in photography, media and performance, and Conceptual art from the 1960s and 1970s.
A digital exhibition that presents a selection of the extraordinary artworks that have been given by Patricia Phelps de Cisneros, animated by the reflections of 16 MoMA curators can be found at: mo.ma/cisneros
