Join International Arts & Artists (IA&A) and Art Museum of the Americas (AMA) for Modern Movements Symposium — a convening of emerging scholars exploring the transnational exchanges, cultural diplomacy, and artistic innovations that shaped Latin American and Caribbean modern and contemporary art. This online symposium accompanies the DC-based exhibition Modern Movements: Selections of Latin American and Caribbean Art from the Art Museum of the Americas (April 3–May 31st) on view at IA&A at Hillyer in Washington, DC.

Zoom registration link: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_6fCvfYt4QHSGMkwFBKQc1A

PROGRAM
April 14th, 9:00 am – 2:30 pm EST
9:00 am | Introduction

Session One: Modernism and its Discontents

9:30 | Alejandro Soto Chaves (University of Oxford)
Three Theses on Central American (Modernist) Abstraction, 1936–1967

9:45 | Ronan Shaw (University of Florida)
The Face of Modernity: Germán Cueto’s Geometric Abstraction

10:00 | Ginevra Bria (Rice University)
Against Modernist Primitivism: Cildo Meireles’s Cruzeiro do Sul (1969–70) and “The Savage Slot”

10:15 | Marco Polo Juarez Cruz (California Polytechnic State University)
Latin American or Latinoamericano? Reframing Hemispheric Modernism

10:30 | Q&A

11:00 | Break

Session Two: Identity and Reframing the Hemisphere

11:10 | Panel Introduction

11:15 | Ayelen Pagnanelli (Universidad Nacional de San Martín, Argentina)
Sarah Grilo and the Success of Women’s Abstraction

11:30 | Rachel Remick (Museum of Modern Art)
Ideas of Brazil: Maria Martins’ Art and Reception in the United States

11:45 | Carlos Antonio-Colón (Savannah College of Art and Design)
The Latin American Voice: Tracing the Relational Voice in the Work of Fernando de Szyszlo and Jesús Rafael Soto

12:00 pm | Q&A

12:30 | Break

Session Three: Institutions, Exhibitions, and Cultural Diplomacy

1:00 | Panel Introduction

1:05 | Sol Izquierdo (Spanish National Research Council; New York University)
Andean Handicrafts at the Pan American Union: Elena Eleska and Cold War Cultural Exchange

1:20 | Anamaría Garzón Mantilla (Universidad San Francisco de Quito; University of Essex)
Exhibiting Precolombinismo: Ecuadorian Abstraction at the Pan American Union

1:35 | Abigail Lapin Dardashti (University of California, Irvine)
(De)materialized Archive: Brazil’s Exhibition at FESTAC and the Underpinnings of Afro-Brazilian Art History

1:50 | Q&A

2:20 pm | Closing remarks