ABSTRACT
Since the late nineteenth century, art museums have played crucial social, political, and economic roles throughout Latin America because of the ways that they structure representation. By means of their architecture, collections, exhibitions, and curatorial practices, Latin American art museums have crafted representations of communities, including nation states, and promoted particular group ideologies. This collection of essays, arranged in thematic sections, will examine the varying and complex functions of art museums in Latin America: as nation-building institutions and instruments of state cultural politics; as foci for the promotion of Latin American modernities and modernisms; as sites of mediation between local and international, private and public interests; as organizations that negotiate cultural construction within the Latin American diaspora and shape constructs of Latin America and its nations; and as venues for the contestation of elitist and Eurocentric notions of culture and the realization of cultural diversity rooted in multiethnic environments.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part I|58 pages
Art Museums and State Politics
chapter 1|14 pages
From Universalist to National Art
chapter 4|14 pages
Incendiary Objects
part II|43 pages
Art Museums as Constructions of Modernity
chapter 6|13 pages
A Museum without a Venue
chapter 7|13 pages
The Architecture of Mexico's Museo de Arte Moderno
part III|59 pages
Local Dynamics of Internationalism
chapter 9|12 pages
Local Processes and Transnational Circuits
part IV|42 pages
National and Regional Perspectives from the United States
chapter 12|13 pages
Latin American Art at The University of Texas at Austin
chapter 14|14 pages
Museum as Battleground
part V|46 pages
Reimagining the Art Museum