Between August 2009 and November 2012, for three and a half years, I was Chief Curator and Vice-President of Curatorial Affairs and Education at the Museum of Latin American Art, MoLAA, in Long Beach, California. During the first two years of my tenure, we received the support of Richard Townsend, the director of the institution advancing MoLAA’s transformation into a progressive and visionary museum. Under his leadership we initiated exhibitions such as Siqueiros Paisajistax and Mex/L.A.: “Mexican” Modernism(s) in Los Angeles, 1930-1965, and traveled to Long Beach shows such as Sites of Latin American Abstraction.

My role in this institution was cut short in 2012 for the rejection to the critical, ambitious and forward-thinking role that I and my colleagues envisioned for the museum, and in particular to the exhibition Radical Women: Latin American Art, 1960-1985 which came to fruition at the Hammer Museum in 2017. Another objection to my role, was my interest in opening up the museum to Latinx art. As the memory of this period has been erased by the institution, I hope that this website will recover some of the work done together with many colleagues and the extraordinary art shown.

As a professional committed to Latin American art, our role was to advance our field, to counter stereotypical narratives about Latin American art and culture. In this sense, I conceived the Symposium Rethinking Latin American Art in the 21st Century, to discuss the new paradigms, models and challenges facing the field of Latin American art. Central to the symposium was the discussion of the theoretical and critical frameworks for both writing the historiographies and curating Latin American art. This symposium which took place in Spring and Fall of 2011 between California -MoLAA and Getty, Los Angeles- and MALI, Lima, with the support of the Getty Foundation, was meant to function as a critical platform for MoLAA’s role in the future.

The curatorial team at MoLAA, Cecilia Fajardo-Hill, Idurre Alonso and Selene Preciado, as well as Gabriela Martinez as curator of education, was experimental, ambitious, imaginative and enthusiastic. It is for this reason that I have included some of their curatorial projects and the educational guides by Martinez. During this short period, we presented many first exhibitions at the museum, introducing abstraction, conceptual art, video art, interactive art, art historical surveys, as well as launching the Project Room for experimental contemporary art, with the support of the Andy Warhol Foundation. I have additionally included key exhibitions by guest curators that contributed in important ways to shaping a dynamic understanding of Latin American art at MoLAA between 2009 and 2012.