I'll turn over to you
and you guys take it away!
Ok, well thank you Neil and also thank you to Jennifer Giuliano
with whom I've corresponded but not met.
Thank you for helping me set up today but also for the invitation
to share a work in progress
on the documents of 20th century Latin American and Latino art
in shorthand, just The Documents Project
is probably a bit easier.
I'm Abbie McEwen, Assistant Professor in the department of Art History
here at Maryland.
I'm very pleased to have two co-presenters this afternoon.
Olga Herrera who is our team leader
here in Washington DC
hosting an inter-university program on Latino research
currently at Notre Dame but moving to Texas?
Moving to the University of Illinois in Chicago, July 1st.
Ah, ok.
And then also [unclear] an undergraduate student at Maryland.
Already a graduate, back for his second degree
in Art History.
He's a student, enrolled in a directive study with me
this spring, engaged with the documents at the Archives of American Art.
And then folding his research into a paper I've hijacked
for our art course.
I've imagined this dialog I'm holding maybe in four parts today.
First we would like to introduce the larger project
based at the International Center for the Arts of the Americas
the ICAA, at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.
A project that was first conceived back in 2002.
It's absolutely an international, inter-American kind of initiative
and we'll speak a bit, too, of the project's scope
as a whole
in part through a film, which actually explains it
visually in much greater detail than I can.
Then we'd like to talk
about the work of the Washington working group.
Olga and I met, I think, just about a year ago.
We kind of talked about this collaboration
we officially launched our project in July.
And so we're more than halfway through the recovery project
and we'll speak a bit to our work and what we have targeted
as the archives, the documents to recover from this area.
And third, I'd like to speak a bit to the pedagogical aspect
of this project.
Not all of the teams have engaged students
both undergraduate and graduate students, but here
hopefully first in Colombia, but certainly in Washington
that has seemed to be an essential part of our work
and we have a number of students
not only at Maryland,
but at George Mason, and American University,
who are real contributors to this project.
And it's been exciting and really rewarding, I think
for all of us to involve our students and our roles in teaching
along with this kind of project.
At the end, we would hope to have a real dialog about...
certainly on the one hand the role and the purpose
of this kind of recovery project
but also with the challenges that we have faced.
Certainly conceptually, structurally.
It is, after all, an edited archive.
But also practically, on the ground.
Fundraising, scanning, all of the nitty gritty details
that can be challenging, I guess.
So, I guess we can get started.
I should say, just on a kind of...
of a primer to introducing the work of the team at Houston
this is I think the most recent poster which presents the documents
as real art objects, almost in themselves.
The sub-field of modern Latin American art even within the field of Art History
is rather new.
It's come into its own perhaps only in the last two decades
or so.
Certainly now it's one of the hotter fields.
We hope it's still continuing to trend upward within the discipline.
But what has impeded, or held back scholarship
has been the lack of access to primary sources.
And the lack of a kind of basic taxonomy of the field.
Who were the key players?
Not only the artists, but the critics, the curators
from all of these parts of, I guess we'll call it, art world
that have shaped the 20th century of the Americas.
And that this impediment to scholarship,
this lack of access and knowledge was, I believe,
really the jumping off point for this archive.
Which was conceived by a real leader in our field
Mari Carmen Ramirez, a curator, since 2002
at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.
She has really pioneered her scholarship in the field
in a way, shaped current trends in research
around modern and contemporary Latin American art.
Based through her real research.
And it's a credit to her exhibitions that she's put out
in the past three years in Houston,
and previously at the Blanton Museum in Austin,
that her shows have been bracketing,
and really built up by her serious scholarship
In 2002, just about 10 years ago,
she assembled, or began to assemble
different teams across the Americas.
And these are two maps.
One, the more topical, looking at the art movements
and the other, with more speaking about--
looking at the different teams that have been assembled
in these different cities
stretching across the Americas, from the United States
down into Argentina and Chile.
A couple of these teams have already reported.
- I think Mexico has reported? - Ah, yes.
Mexico and the US team, the component from UCLA
that managed the activities in Puerto Rico, in Miami
and New York and California, as well.
And the other day we did the Mid-West section of the country
We have Mexico and Argentina as well.
All the teams have completed the work,
but it has the process
of this documentation, takes 2 years approximately, per team.
So these are the documents that have been uploaded now
and are accessible to the public.
The other teams have completed the work such as the teams
from Venezuela, from Peru
and as well as Brazil
that will be coming up in the next two years
we'll be adding periodically to the database
to building the digital archive.
So, the work is in progress.
I suppose we, in Washington, are part of a second generation
of teams that have been planned,
and I think more teams, more projects
already are targeted for coming years.
I guess now, I'll check now...
Certainly I can answer questions that you may have
about the larger project.
It may be more helpful to hear about the project from the creators
just to say, Mari Carmen Ramirez and you'll hear a few other voices
in this film.
♪ (Latin American guitar music) ♪
(Mari Carmen Ramirez) The ICAA stands for
the International Center for the Art of America.
This is the only center of its kind in the world.
And initially we established the center to promote the work
of Latin American and Latino artists.
To organize exhibitions, to organize symposia
and really serve as a kind of think tank
about Latin American and Latino art.
One of the main problems is the lack of proper infrastructure
commended to archives.
And out of that came the idea to establish a very ambitious initiative
which is the ICAA Documents Project.
(Peter Marzio) One of the very important aspects of this project
is that the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston is not collecting these documents.
The documents are staying in their home countries
under the care of the archivists or the librarians who are in charge of them.
That's the beauty of the new technology.
(Mari Carmen Ramirez) It's a kind of super highway
that allows us to connect
all the major countries of the region
through a network of professionals that are dedicated
towards recovering the intellectual production
of the artists and movements of the region.
Since 2004, we've had ten teams
working as part of the ICAA Documents Project.
These teams have been operating out of Buenos Aires, Argentina
Santiago, Chile
Sao Paolo, Brazil
Lima, Peru
Bogota, Colombia
Caracas, Venezuela
Mexico City, Mexico
and in the United States, out of Los Angeles at UCLA
and Sound Bend, Indiana at Notre Dame University.
There have also been researchers
affiliated to the UCLA and Notre Dame teams
operating out of San Juan, Puerto Rico
New York, Washington DC, and Miami.
The research from all these teams is then funneled
to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, which is the headquarters for the ICAA.
They were housed and supported by a number of partner institutions
that range from universities to museums.
Those teams are responsible for recovering documents.
Documents that have been written by artists, critics and curators
of the 20th century.
And that provide us with the insight
into the intellectual foundation of that art.
The central team in Houston is responsible for processing those documents
and putting them up into a website
where they will be available to anyone who wants to have access to them
free of charge, anywhere in the world.
(Peter Marzio) You get the information out there,
it touches a nerve, it excites people.
People want to study more.
Eventually they want to collect,
they want to collect, trust me, there'll be dealers there
who will want them to collect.
Eventually those works of art, or some of them, anyway
will find their ways into museums.
You'll begin to develop departments
of Latin American art across the United States.
With the departments of Latin American art,
you'll get more students.
More students will lead to more patrons, more patrons will lead to more dealers
and so forth.
It's almost like a forest fire
if you get it going in the right way,
and all starts with this simple project
here at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
and that's what excites me about it.
is that it's so catalytic.
(Dr Edward Sullivan) Latin American art certainly should become
part of the worldwide project of Modernism.
And understanding the role of the modern world
in the manifestations of art throughout the world
whether it be Asia, Australia, or the US, Americas
and certain Latin America is a critical component of this discourse
this history and the access to documents and the access to the actual material
written at the moment when the art was happening
is a major tool.
(Mari Carmen Herrera) In addition to the digital archive
we're also publishing a 13-volume book series
that accompanies the digital archive.
It's called "Critical Documents of Latin American and Latino Art"
the books, in many ways, serve as a guide to the archive.
(Peter Marzio) There will be 13 published volumes, which will be translated
which serve as the leading primary documents in the various fields
of Latin American art.
And my hope is that students in college,
particularly freshmen who don't have Portuguese or Spanish
will be able to take a course in 101 level Latin American art.
That hasn't been possible until now.
(Mari Carmen Herrera) We have some of the sketches
and particularly the color charts, that Helio Oiticica used
in the creation of his Grand Nucleus which is a work
that has been partially lost.
So, these things will be of use to researchers in the future.
I'll go back and try to recreate what this work was all about
and how the artist made it work.
We have other instances, for instance,
in relation to the artist Leon Ferrari
where we have a number of documents in the archive
where he is performing sketches or other works
or writing down thoughts that pertain to works
that he was in the process of creating.
And there are many more instances
of these kinds of documents in the archive.
♪ (Latin American guitar music) ♪
I wouldn't say that there are new movements and artists
that have been discovered, so much as artists
that have been re-assessed
as a result of this project.
And, for instance, I can cite the specific case
of the Guatemalan artist Carlos Merida.
who did most of his career in Mexico City.
And he's an artist that most of us in the field knew
as having been a producer.
But I think very few people knew the extent of his writing.
And it turns out that he was a very prolific writer.
He had some very, very illuminating ideas about the art of his times.
And he was also writing about the art of his contemporaries.
People tend to associate Latin American art
with so-called "magic realism".
The reality is, that ever since the 1920s and 30s
there have been many important Latin American artists
and many important groups of artists
who set out to recover
and to assimilate important aspects of the avant garde
in Europe and North America.
And these artists not only assimilated those principles
but they also did something new with it.
And in many cases, they anticipated developments
in the United States and Europe
so that there has been, in Latin America,
original thinking and production of art.
And that is, perhaps, the biggest accomplishment
that I hope this project can achieve.
It's one thing to say, "Latin American art is not derivative"
but to really show why it's not derivative
and to provide the evidence, the concrete evidence
what these artists were thinking.
That is what we are setting out to do.
♪ (Latin American guitar music) ♪
(Dr. Edward Sullivan) For graduate students, this project will be
of immense use and immense interest.
The access to documents, and the access to the actual material
written at the moment when the art was happening
is a major tool to understand the developments
of these art movements in Latin America.
(Mari Carmen Herrera) I see the ICAA Documents Project
as being really just the beginning of this effort.
We would like to find ways to continue to expand the project.
And it will be up to future scholars
to really make something out of this
and to continue to build what could become a really true amazing resource
for the development of the field.
♪ (Latin American guitar music) ♪
Ok, so that was their presentation of the film.
The film is available on Vimeo
and also on the MFA Houston's webpage,
should you wish to re-watch it.
Certainly we can go now or even later this afternoon
to the webpage.
This is a screenshot from last week.
This is what it actually looks like when you login to the document's homepage.
There's a bit of background history of the project.
The documents, certainly,
3,700 or so catalogued to date.
I think the queue, Mari had told us, was a few thousand this summer.
I imagine it's even longer now.
But this is some of the homepage of the Documents Project
as it has looked since the digital archive launched a year ago January.
So, we're just into the second year.
Mari Carmen in the film mentioned that there was also a print publication as well
and I have this, below Olga.
I've just a copy of the book.
It's a pretty hefty volume!
- Should I pass it? - Yeah, absolutely.
I will say it is a tremendous value to have these sources translated.
Certainly, for teaching, these are documents
that otherwise have not at all been available.
Certainly in this way.
So this is the digital side, that's the print version.
This is probably the most important
part of the webpage, which is to say it's the search engine.
I'll show you our cataloging system, our protocols,
so you can see how we're trying to identify
keywords artists so that our documents will appear in these searches.
But the archive is searchable by artist name, by language
by date, by country.
With all of these different filters.
Just as a kind of example
I have pulled this document
it's one by the Argentine artist Leon Ferrari,
just to show you what it actually looks like
with the cataloging and information at the top
and a synopsis and also an annotation.
If you click over on the very top right-hand corner
you can also have this information in Spanish, so it is a bilingual webpage.
If you were to click on underneath this small image
of the document full text
this is what one of the document, that appears for you.
Again, this is just as an example.
And it comes up as a PDF with the ICAA cover sheet.
And then you do get within the document, the image itself.
Which is, for graduate students, for scholars,
actually a huge asset to this site.
Mari Carmen referred to, in the film,
the editorial framework of the archive
and to these different categories.
I think it's worth noting that researchers haven't been
necessarily asked to go and draw up all sorts of documents.
And in fact, we've been tasked to look more deliberately
for documents that fall within these categories.
Certainly, these are quite broad categories
but there is certainly a curatorial or curative aspect to the archive.
Olga, did you want to speak to some of these--
Yes, these are some of the categories that will form in the publication
so these are, as Abbie said, pretty broad.
They include, if you take them one by one
they include all the possibilities within Latin American art
but they're not limited to this.
In fact, researchers are asked to suggest new ones
depending on the cases, depending on the collections
that we are looking at.
For example, the collection that we're looking at
here in Washington DC, the Jose Gomez Sicre
and the Organization of American States
that falls very much into existing categories
Latin American and Latino.
He was an art critic that was based here in Washington DC.
He joined the Pan American Union in 1946
and retired in 1991.
So he had a very long career of promoting young talent
from Latin America
and introducing them
as part of the mission of the Pan American Union until 1948
and then from 1948 on, the Organization of American States.
So, in his role, he's falling into this looking at the hemisphere
from the location of the US.
Looking down at Latin America.
But as he travels back and forth, he is taking his knowledge.
He's going to Argentina, going to the [inaudible] Gallery
collecting information, presenting the artists here in Washington
then going to São Paolo Biennial exchanging information.
So he's creating all this network that goes
into these different categories of what is Latin American and Latino.
In the first volume that is circulating, the concluding remarks
about this idea of Latin American and Latino
is that these are constructions.
They do not exist.
But they're very much constructions to put together groups.
Very heterogeneous groups.
So, we think this project, this category,
the documents are challenging those assumptions.
In the National Imaginaries/ Cosmopolitan Identities
that's the second volume
that is looking very much at the idea of the global and the local.
Cosmopolitanism versus nationalism.
The organization, the construction of the modern nation states
and how the artists are addressing this building of the nations.
Are they assuming a very nationalist tone? Or do they want to be international?
It's that national/international binary.
Recycling and hydrating the arts of Latino America
that is something that relates to the US Latino populations.
Appropriating icons and appropriating histories
and recreating histories and myths such as the mythical land of Aslam.
And making it part of that nationalism.
And others that follow along those lines
in terms of pop art, as well, in Argentina.
In issues of race, class and gender, that's very much what is happening
in the different countries.
One of the big issues here that looks at
is the presence of Afro-Latin American, the Caribbean
not only Caribbean, but other countries that do not fall
within that Caribbean basin.
Art activism and social change.
And that goes a little bit with this idea of...
graphic arts.
This idea of graphic arts as a more popular medium
to pass on messages about art
or using art to convey messages.
Then super-realism, magic realism and the fantastic.
That is a category that would look as an example
the role of Roberto Matta, Wilfredo Lam
and the relationship that they had with Breton.
Or Breton in Mexico with Frida Kahlo or the others, and creating
and putting together the first realist exhibitions
in Mexico in 1939 -1940.
New world, American constructive utopias, that's really Abbie's alley
but it looks at those developments that Mari Carmen mentions
about the Argentinian Madi group, 1940s,
really foretelling developments that happened in the 1960s in the US.
The breaking of the frame, art experimentation with colors,
sculptures, all these things that were being explored
not only by Argentinian artists but by Brazilian as well, and others.
And Venezuelans.
Abstracts and figuratives in the Cold War period.
This is where Gomez Sicre wanted to collect the collections
that we're looking at in Washington.
Really most of the documents fall into this.
He was...
really the point for him became the Cuban Revolution
he had promoted a lot of figuration during the 1950s.
Beginning in 1960, you start seeing the promotion
of more abstraction in the artists
even to the point that he, for example,
taking the case of Ecuador, you have Guayasamin
as one of the key artists.
To the point that he presented an exhibition of Guayasamin in the 1950s
and then 1960s is a different generation, totally obliterating
the contribution of Guayasamin in this debate
and this documentation that he provides.
But then again the graphic artists,
this idea of art activism and social change
in a way they interrelate.
Then we have the exile displacement diaspora that has to be very much
with artists from Latin American countries coming to the US, moving to Europe.
As part of self-exile or forced exile displacement
and the diaspora, the construction, the migration to the US.
These new diasporic communities that start growing
from the 1970s, 1960s on.
Conceptualism, the reference to Oiticica and others.
Mass-media and technology in art
what is happening, especially with the groups in Argentina
in late 1960s and early 1970s.
That idea of using computers,
using certain formats could be regenerated.
Very basic early 1970s technology and traveling these exhibitions
and putting a collective of world artists together.
Globalization and its Latin American discontents.
This really looks at more recent developments
in terms of the infrastructure of the art field.
In terms of the new fairs, the new biennials.
The circulation of global artists.
So, those are really very few examples of what we could encounter
in these different categories.
But they're broad in their description and they try to follow
more a model of identity, very fluid, very organic coming in, out
and in the document series, they sometimes do not fit
neatly into one category.
So they fit into several ones and it's a way to present
a more wider perspective of the movement of art
in Latin America.
The diversity of these topics really speaks to the point
that Mari Carmen made in the film about moving the idea
of Latin American art away from its stereotyped identity
is just being about art activism and social change
or as being so closely connected to Diego Rivero, Frida Kahlo.
Though certainly major figures within this history
but certainly they weren't the only actors
in the Americas across the 20th century.
And the idea
coming out of Houston, I think expressed
by all of these different teams has been
to allow a more expansive idea of what
American or Latin American, or Latino art
might actually have to offer, and to say.
There are four pages of the cataloging entry forms
and I just thought I would show them here to you just to give you a sense
of what the actual work is to get a document if we find
for instance, an exhibition catalog that is only five sentences of text,
how that actually becomes part of the documenting process.
These are the empty documents that we're giving to our students here
at Maryland and elsewhere and asking them
to categorize within this editorial framework
but also to do some of this other data analysis
as it were, to think of these documents and to catalog them.
And to do this work as well as the interpretive analysis.
This is the second pages,
the third and fourth page of our entry form.
This is shifting over to our...
with our Washington team and our working group here.
I suppose if there are any questions about the larger project in Houston
this might be a good time to answer--
Yes?
(audience member 1) So I saw on the main webpage
it said something sorta, I think "my", it said something "my"...
- my argu-- - (Abbie) Oh, my documents
- (audience member 1) My documents? - (Abbie) Yes.
(audience member 1) And looking at the categories,
I wonder, is it possible to resort,
can a user coming there, can they effectively...
as carefully as you've worked out these categories
can they start to play with, and stretch, and re-stretch the categories
and make things fit into different--
because I see the "my documents" and...
And sort of a related question was,
you're going through the different collections,
and I'm wondering if there are some things
that just fit no categories,
and so they don't end up in this, even though they're part of...
identified, and part of a rich collection,
but there may be some things that are just so much ephemera?
So, those are two kind of questions.
(Abbie) I can try to answer them, I suppose.
My documents, we can play with that a little bit on the webpage.
If you create a user account and it's absolutely free to do this,
then you can tab the documents and sort them into...
different larger folders, as it were,
and we give them a heading.
So, if you wanted to look at just Mexican muralism
or Cuban abstraction you could create a folder
and then insert these documents there.
And you have the option of making these folders public
and sharing them.
So, if you wanted to say, "Well these are all documents
pertaining to muralism in the 1930s",
I've gone in and found them and I'm going to make them available
to you, just as a collegial thing to do, that's one option.
I've done this on a small scale for my teaching.
If I've wanted to go in and ask students to work
on this question of Latino versus Latin American identity
and say, "Well, these are a few documents,
perhaps select two out of these and construct an argument.
What are these different authors saying?"
There's that possibility.
I don't know that users can change categorizations
although that might be an interesting feature.
But that's the "my documents" is only a personal site
within the larger project.
This other question about ephemeral or one-off documents
is one that I also have thought about.
I think that the answer that Maria Gaztambide,
she's the head of the ICAA at Houston,
she gave to us last summer when she oriented me in the project,
all that has been oriented probably many times
she's a real veteran.
Was if there does seem to be a document that doesn't have an obvious artist
who is maybe kind of to the side of one category or the other,
perhaps the strategy might be to collect
a small set of documents, four or five,
that would allow this artist or this topic to be
in a way, more fully-explained that one document in itself
might be able to do
and then to add those documents together.
I don't know if this has happened, but Maria says it's on the way
is for documents to link to each other.
And so if you pull up a document on Frida Kahlo
there might be a way to bracket off another document.
And so for artists, especially artists who are lesser-known than Kahlo
to be able then to link an artist who's an awkward fit, perhaps,
to something that is more major or even to other documents
that explain this moment, or this history
it's a way of including sideways, as it were,
these even more marginal figures within the larger narrative.
Does that sound about right?
You know your question is very important because these categories
that were decided in 2004, so it's nine years ago.
The field is changing and definitely,
but they are very open, that is something that of my understanding
there is a way to communicate with them to suggest new categories.
And I think this is going to generate new categories by itself.
The availability of the documents,
the new reassessments of the collections of artists
will generate newer themes.
For example, one of the last categories
that we had was the globalization and its discontents
but you don't hear so much about globalization
at the end of neoliberalism.
Now it's the idea of the backwards globalization, no longer there
so it's just where is globalization right now, and that's one of the points,
because that's one of my fields of research, globalization.
So, right now it's very difficult.
So, is that the valid field right now? Maybe it isn't.
So that's something that I think it is set up to be more fluid,
and absolutely, they would consider new fields
something else for the researchers to suggest.
In terms of the documents, that's something that we usually
if there's no--
if they don't fit neatly within these categories
we write a note to the project and then they reassess
and figure out where to put it.
For example, in the publication, the book,
there are some documents that are not really art-related,
but they're more into the concept of what Latin America was.
For example, they have the original poems from 1856
of Caicedo, Jose Maria Caicedo, when he refers for the first time
to the continent as Latin America.
It's very much, it comes from--
It's a French construction rather than an American,
The American usage of the Americas
was the older American republics up until 1945.
And that's what you see in the official documents from the national archives
related to art exchanges with Latin America.
It's very much the older American republics.
So it is definitely changing, but that's something very interesting.
So if you are using it in the future and see something that you want
to suggest, by all means, that would be very welcome!
If there are no more questions about the Washington part of it.
We can certainly cycle back.
This is just a brief overview of the Washington team.
I guess it's an introduction of the different partner institutions
of their research team and then an incomplete list of students.
We have still to add the six students in my graduate seminar this term.
The idea of bringing the Documents Project to Washington was really Olga's.
And perhaps you would want to speak to your idea of bringing it here?
Well, yes, this is something very interesting
and it's a conversation that has been going on since about 2006.
When the current director of the Documents Project, Maria Gaztambide
worked for the Archives of American Art in the late 1990s,
she completed surveys of Latin American, Latino artists
in New York and Puerto Rico,
and someone else did it for Florida.
So there was that foundation, previous year of work
Previous years always come together, so Maria was very much aware
of what was at the Archives of American Art
in terms of this Mari Carmen was very knowledgeable
about the work of Jose Gomez Sicre and the lack of documents
about his criticism.
There were some articles in newspapers as well as some of the essays
that he would write for the bulletin, the Artes Visuales
of the Pan American union of the OAS.
But other than that there was not much
and when he passed away in 1991,
he retired from the Museum of the Art of the Americas in 1981
and fortunately, and this is the issue with archives
and with the technology that really is amazing
there's usually one person that really values
these collections of papers at the same time.
So, in this case, they were put in bankers' boxes,
13 of them, and we, for this project,
the idea was to go over these 13 boxes,
catalog them, put them in archival boxes,
create the finding aids, and then scan them and digitize them.
So, that's been the work that we've been doing since July.
So, the knowledge of these collections at the Archives of American Art was there,
Washington was an important point for the introduction
of Latin American artists.
Of course, we have that connections from Mexico to New York,
the galleries, the development of the 1920s
the interest in the mural movement and priority at the World Fairs.
Those were really huge windows into showing Latin American culture
from different countries to the world.
But Washington was that special place
and the idea, the conversation really started in 2006.
They tried to engage the Smithsonian Institution,
were not very successful, and at that time,
at the University of Notre Dame,
we were doing the Midwest project, and recording
which was really going house-to-house, visiting artist-to-artist,
organizations, and going to the basements, pulling the archival collections,
digitizing them.
So, we had that experience and this was a conversation
that continued after that.
Why don't we do Washington DC?
So, the opportunity really arose last year,
and we said "if we don't do it this year, it's not going to get done."
And this, the DC Project,
along with the Uruguay Project are the last ones.
They were planning to do one in New York, but it hasn't been solidified
in looking at the different Latin American organizations
that existed, and galleries.
Some papers strong, very fragile galleries,
very small control centers that are always at risk of disappearing.
So, this is one of the freelance projects that we're doing.
And with this, the idea for the consortium was Maria's
based on the success of the Colombian team project
that engaged students from Universidad de los Andes,
from Universidad Jorge Tadeo Lozano,
they were very involved, and that was part of the goal of the project itself,
to try to bring new scholars, to try to engage students
into the project.
So, this has been the idea to include the universities.
Michelle Greet is at George Mason University.
She was out... she has had...
she is working on a project, so she had one year off.
So, I taught a class at George Mason University
on 20th century Latin American art last semester
and engaged the students from George Mason.
We still have one working with us this semester
so that has been the participation with George Mason.
With the University of Maryland, we're very thankful
to Abbie and to the department because we have wonderful our students
working along, and one of them is Eloy,
who is working with the collections of the Archives of American Art.
And basically we're engaging Alejandro Anreus
who's the chair of the art department at William Paterson.
He worked at the Organization of American States
he did conduct some long interviews with Gomez Sicre
so he has followed that idea of publicizing what his curatorial vision was.
Michelle Greet, as I mentioned, George Mason University,
Liza Kirwin, who is the acting director of the Archives of American Art,
Adriana Ospina, who is the registrar at the Art Museum of the Americas
I've been working with her in terms of cataloging the archives.
We have a list of some of the consortium of graduate students as students,
we had Rebecca Cosgrove from Maryland as well, last semester.
And we have this semester, Eloy, and a longer list that Abbie has
of the names of the students from Maryland.
(Abbie) These are just, again, some screenshots
of the Archives of American Art
where Eloy is working on the Giulio Blanc papers.
Blanc was a major curator and writer of Cuban, Cuban-American art.
Unfortunately passed away very young, but his archive
is actually quite a tremendous asset.
And this is just the webpage,
as it looks at the Art Museum of the Americas,
just off the National Mall in Washington.
In addition to the Gomez Sicre archives,
they do actually have incredible country files, artist files.
Unfortunately, not cataloged and not very well organized,
but as a resource for Latin American art the actual documents,
newspaper clippings, from all of the OAS offices across these cities,
across the Americas, are actually incredibly valuable.
But this is just if you were to go to these sites, you could click through
and see the different papers and records
and archives and so on.
This is just an example of one document that one of our graduate students,
Caroline Shields, is actually working on.
The documents are often quite short.
There isn't always a lot of text.
But in a way, in targeting Gomez Sicre, in making him the big focus
of the project in Washington,
even what seemed to be almost a minor document
with very little analysis
seen in numbers of 20 or 50, they begin to articulate
a curatorial vision, or even an agenda.
Gomez Sicre is often criticized as being a Cold Warrior, as it were.
But we can see that shifts in his own ideas
in his own philosophy about abstraction and figuration
through the changing in the tone of some of these texts.
And so, to have them not just as a one-off, but as 20, as 50,
you begin to get a bigger picture of him as a writer.
But this is just one example.
This is another example, this is one that I'll be writing up.
I'll say that, particularly I'm very excited
to be part of the Documents Project.
For me, it's been a bit of a reacquaintance
with actually some of these documents
because I've already gone through the archives
or have seen these documents in the course of my own research
and, certainly the idea of the Documents Project
isn't just to kind of assemble the documents
but also to see them as a catalyst for research, scholarship and publication.
to get the document, and a way, to put the documents
into art historical use.
Albizu was a Puerto Rican artist who Gomez Sicre
was really the first to introduce to the United States-based audience.
She fell, almost immediately, into a kind of obscurity.
This is a very early exhibition.
Albizu, I think is about to have a bit of a resurgence.
This is a work of art, a fantastic painting
that JP Morgan has just donated to the Smithsonian,
I think just earlier this year.
It will be a real highlight of the exhibition of Our America
that Carmen Ramos is preparing right now, as we speak,
scheduled to open in October of this year at the Smithsonian.
It's significant, in part, because Albizu
has not always been considered an American artist
even though Puerto Rico is certainly a commonwealth.
She's an artist who spent her career in New York.
But to see her becoming recognized through acquisition
but also through, and at the documentary level,
have seen the history of Albizu in Washington or New York.
It's a way of rounding out a former picture of this artist
and who she was.
This is another example, again, of a document
that I'll be writing up, of again, for me, a Cuban artist,
Agustin Fernandez, who also had one of his very early
and important exhibitions at the Pan-American Union,
as it was.
Then I've featured Fernandez, in part,
to also mention the Agustin Fernandez Foundation.
One of the great opportunities that the Documents Project has afforded
is for otherwise obscure, and very little known artist foundations
and estates, to have a bit of extra publicity.
It's possible, and certainly this will be the case
where Fernandez, for the document entries to make reference to the estate
to a foundation, for them to be listed as also a collaborator.
And for so many of these artists' families, the artists themselves
the foundations, it's a real boost to have this kind of recognition
and attention, which can otherwise be very difficult, unfortunately,
to come by.
These are two documents that Eloy has actually identified
from the Archives of American Art.
Both on a Cuban artist, again, Amelia Pelaez.
(Eloy) Yeah, I was going to say.
Basically there was a lot of information there,
so I really had to narrow it down to something that is doable.
And I narrowed it down to the Julio Blanc papers.
Which has a lot of information about different Latin American artists.
And further, there, I had to narrow it down
to one particular artist.
I actually looked at Wilfredo Lam
and there's some interesting material there for him.
And there was actually some audio material that I listened to
that was by Lydia Cabrera, who is actually a sociologist
in Afro-Cuban culture,
and collaborated very much with Wilfredo Lam,
and has some of his works.
And that was actually interesting, listening to her.
Of course, at the time when the interview was made
she was probably in her eighties at the time.
But then I began to concentrate on Amelia Pelaez
mainly because I wasn't sure
how much material there was out there.
And the collection has
a series of things from catalogs, exhibition catalogs
including her first exhibition in Paris back in 1933.
And it goes on through different exhibitions
including some posthumous exhibitions here in the United States.
as well as one in Cuba, starting in the late 60s,
'68, after she died.
Newspaper clippings, articles.
So what you see here is, believe this first one is...
is actually by Giulio Blanc, a paper that Giulio Blanc started writing.
And this is his draft, obviously, and that's recorded there.
The next one that you see was one that was actually written by Jose Gomez Sicre,
in a...
I guess it was a journal called The Metropolitan
which is actually associated with the--
it was actually not in New York, that's one of the things I found out,
because it involves a lot of research
when you start writing the annotations later.
But it's in Miami, it started actually in Coral Gables
and then later became part of
the Museum of Modern Art in Miami.
And then that section got closed and that was part of the...
FIU in Miami.
So, what I do is I go through these
and I basically end up filling out the forms
that were shown earlier.
And what really takes a lot of the work aside from just the description
is the actual looking at the annotations and doing the research, and trying to--
But it's very interesting.
in some of them I was telling Olga earlier, that I saw one of the catalogs
that was actually done in Cuba in November of 1968,
shortly after she died.
It was very comprehensive.
And it actually has pictures that go back to her time in Paris
along with other Cuban artists there that were co-students
with her in Paris.
It also shows her, aside from a lot of the paintings that she has done
she also did ceramics and she had a workshop in Havana
so it shows a lot of her ceramics.
That's something that a lot of times you don't get to see.
So, it's been very interesting.
I, myself, come--I'm a neophyte, really, to this, to the art history.
I come more from the practicing artist end
and so it's very interesting to see all of these works
which actually end up influencing you as an artist, as well.
- Yes? - (audience member 2) Can I jump in?
So, I was fascinated listening to how
you narrowed down to this particular artist
and it sounds like you are swimming in a sea of documents
and trying to bite off and masticate that one portion.
Are you making notes about all the other things
that you don't end up focusing on?
So that others can narrow their searches?
(Eloy) That's a good question, it's a very difficult one to answer
because there is so much material in there as you go through it.
And some of it is a little bit clearer to see
than others, just because of the quality of the microfilm
but I'm basically using my own judgment in there
And I talk with Olga sometimes and there are some things that--
I make a list of different things and then she can call it further,
and say "This, I think it's good to concentrate on."
But it's very easy to spend tons of time on that
so at some point, in order to actually be productive
and produce something you have to use your own judgment.
I should tell you a little bit why I chose--
why I narrowed it down to these two artists,
and especially to Amelia Pelaez.
I'm originally from Cuba, so I have some knowledge
about the culture.
I grew up there and then came to the United States in the 60s.
So, some of the things that I read are a little bit easier
to associate with and to understand.
A lot of the material is actually in Spanish.
These two happen to be in English,
but there's a lot of others that are in Spanish.
Some of it is also in French.
So, as I write about the documents I also end up translating them.
But yeah, you're right, it's a matter of choice
and judgment.
I don't know if I've answered your question.
(audience member 2) No, no, that's perfectly fine.
That's what I figured you were going to say!
I was just curious how the--
You don't want those little, that flotsam and jetsam
to be flotsam and jetsam, to be lost forever--
(Eloy) And some of it's a little bit... of a reputation, for example,
I read something, and then I read something later,
another newspaper article and it repeats it.
For example, the case of Pelaez, later in the 90s, I believe,
when they started doing some shows in Miami
there was some antagonism from a certain group
a more conservative group of the Cuban community
that opposed that,
because she was obviously from Cuba and she died in Cuba.
And there were some newspaper articles on that.
But then there was also movement from within the Miami community
that said, "Hey, you know, this is not fair, this is not right.
Let's...Let's...
Let's pay homage to this woman."
And I think one of the things that Olga mentioned about Jose Gomez Sicre,
I think you implied that there was a--
I think you used the term Cold Warrior...
in there, and there was also some articles about him.
For example, he actually was very favorable towards Amelia Pelaez
because most of her art is really non-political.
He was not as favorable, I think in some cases
than was [Wilfredo Lam], who tended to be more...
leaning socialist, and all that.
So that's one of the things that I do find in doing this research
is how the politics begin to play in here.
(Mari Carmen) Yeah, and for Gomez Sicre, the politics,
you have to take into consideration
that he is of the Organization of American States,
he is an employee,
so he has to follow this political position
within the organization itself,
even though he worked from 1946 on, but he's so many things.
He was part of, he saw McCarthyism, then he saw the Cold War
the changes to the Alliance for Progress in Latin America and those shifts.
So, he would see money coming in, money taken out,
money coming in...
The foundations themselves, the Rockefeller Foundation
giving him money in the 1960s,
and the Rockefeller Foundation giving money in 1945,
prior to him joining the Pan-American Union
to create the archive, the actual archive
to what we see today at the Art Museum of the Americas
that came as a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation
during World War II.
So, that is something that we, in reading between the lines,
as Abbie said, these are very short documents,
but when we put them together as a group
we start seeing what was happening in terms of his politics.
One of the surprises in the archives for us
was finding newspapers from Cuba
from between 1963 and 1964 which at the time
seems that he was being investigated at the FBI, at the CIA.
But he had this relationship with Alejandro Carpentier
that went all the way 20 years back and he was the one
sending these newspapers that were coming to his residence
and he would move into the OAS for protection.
So, there's a little bit of that Cold Warrior...
in the public imagination, but I think this opened more lines of inquiry
to really looking at what is, from the institutional point of view,
what is happening and how he's choosing his politics.
Hard to understand certain curatorial normals that he's following.
(Eloy) And there's that, and there's other issues,
for example, one newspaper article, I didn't actually document that,
but then I found it was from Wilfred Lam's wife,
in which she basically said that in Cuba, actually,
in a hotel, I think it was, it probably used to be the Hotel Nacional,
and now it's called Habana Libre,
in a store there they were selling fakes of Wilfredo Lam.
And so that came to her attention and she ended up writing a letter
that basically said unless it has a seal that I have actually signed,
do not consider it to be a genuine Wilfredo Lam.
So it's... I'm just kind of giving you some of the things I find
that may not make it into all of this information.
But it's just interesting to see that it's going on,
that it's happening.
I will say that this year-long project has focused on the Gomez Sicre papers
and to a small degree, with [inaudible] Eloy and the Giulio Blanc papers,
but at both the Archives of American Art and certainly
at the Organization of American States,
there are many other archives, and for this project
to be funded for additional years, there's actually an incredible amount of work
and documents to be recovered.
But that's forecasting a bit ahead to the future.
But certainly, even in a year,
we hope to have contributed almost 400 documents
but there are three and four times that many, potentially,
that could fall into this project.
And just to kind of go on with teaching a little bit.
These are the six students who are in my graduate seminar
this spring, and these are their assignments.
And they each have, I guess, between four and five documents
I know Lindsey Muniak, she's an undergraduate student
in the department, who's hoping to actually take on a bit more
after her honors paper is concluded, and perhaps to write a bit
over the summer as well.
And their topics range from someone like Torres Garcia
to a more contemporary figure, Juan Downey, for instance,
a video art pioneer.
They are from the later 1940s through the 1980s.
I think in each case the documents correspond at least in some way
to the conference paper the resource that they're putting together
for the seminar.
So I tried, in a way, to assign or to suggest documents
that have a significance beyond just the Documents Project
but that could, in a way, feed into their other work,
and their work for their coursework,
and for me, within the department.
I have to say, it's been interesting for me to have had these students
to involve in this project.
It seemed like a good opportunity for graduate students
to give them an opportunity to publish and to contribute to
what I think is going to be a real key document and archive in the field,
and for them to be credited as authors, both in the digital version
and in the print form of the Documents Project,
but also to expose them
to this digital humanities initiative in general.
To see what the process is for cataloging
even if they don't get into the selection of documents.
And then to write them up, in two parts.
I don't know if we explained this.
There's a short synopsis, perhaps 100-200 words
and then a longer annotation, 300-400 words
in which the students--and I think the drafts I have received
have been quite intelligent--
The students then put their document into the larger context
both within the Gomez Sicre papers, in their case,
but then within the field itself, of Latin American
or just of modern art.
So, I enjoyed working with these students.
I'm just beginning to get the first drafts of their documents in.
We have a session coming up in a couple of weeks
where we'll workshop these entries together in seminar,
and kind of polish them to refine them, before sending them to Olga!
And then she will eventually send them down to Houston
and we'll look forward, of course, to seeing them come out
in digital and in print form.
That's really the end of the presentation,
my part, or our part of the presentation that I had planned.
These are just, again, taking familiar images.
I guess in the time that we have left, I'd love to have a conversation about
the challenges,
the real meaning, the importance of this kind of project,
not only for Art History but within the humanities.
I'll say, I think I mentioned this to someone earlier,
this has been my first venture
into anything digital in Art History.
And I have to say, I confess to a real ignorance on my part.
I don't know that there are comparable archives elsewhere in the humanities
and how something like this at a Museum of Houston
might actually correlate to other efforts within Latin America,
as you were saying earlier, with the libraries or other projects.
Certainly more [unclear] to take questions!
(audience member 4) We only have a few minutes left,
but if you do have a question or a comment
please feel free.
(audience member 5) I have a question just about student participation
in the project.
It's always a tricky thing when students are doing intellectual work for a project
to make sure that they get sufficient credit
for the work that they do.
So how will their work be recognized in the larger archive
once it moves through to it?
(Mari Carmen) We are giving them credit if the entries are outstanding.
They appear as researchers.
If they're fine, they appear as collaborators
after the name of the person who looks at the reviews.
So, for example, the synopsis and annotations from Maryland
if they're outstanding, they would be by themselves.
If not, they would have Abbie's name and then their name, as collaborator.
And that is part of the publishing idea, and part of the project
in motivating the engagement or artists, of students,
and creating these very young scholars to start developing,
and providing that foundation for them
in terms of publication and participating in larger projects
that are recognized in a scholarly point of view.
(audience member 5) I think this kind of work is really important.
(audience member 4) Any other questions, comments, before we wrap?
(audience member 6) You all mentioned the importance of linking the documents,
and that there was beginning to be some work in that.
I was curious as to, how is the group considering linking them?
Is it going to be in a more curatorial process?
or do they directly connect this work to this other work explicitly?
Or will it be through a tagging system possibly?
like grouping together categories via tags?
(Mari Carmen) In the forms that are filled out,
because this is digital, but there's a lot of handwriting
a lot of typing that goes into the actual papers that we see.
There are certain keywords that we include for each document,
so we're asked that we, the researchers, include as many,
could be locations, could be workgroups
could be dates, could be the countries.
So there are wider keywords for the searchable part
of the search engine to work.
That's the way that it is, in terms of if you write...
for example, a country, Chile,
so that will pull all the documents from Chile.
If you say Downey, then that will connect Downey
with his presence, not only in Chile but in Washington, DC.
And the other way that we're doing it, in looking at the overall, for example,
for Washington DC, especially these collections
that interconnect, we are writing in the annotation,
"if you're interested in this topic, see document..."
and we provide the number of the document, the database number,
so people can look at those documents as well.
But I think that will be the next stage of the development of the database
which is a custom-made database out of Sao Paolo, Brazil
with a team of database designers.
So, that's something that is constantly evolving and I guess
with the changes in technology, we hopefully will see it.
And I think they're considering it at this moment.
And, if not, we will let them know...
(audience laughs)
...about this presentation, about these suggestions.
(Abbie) Olga and I are working also on adding a couple of sentences
a short paragraph to all of the entries that are coming out
of the Gomez Sicre papers.
Just so that the people who maybe happen upon
one of these documents, not necessarily looking for them
would know actually the site, the repository from where it came.
And so that they just don't see these documents as well,
this exhibition on Downey, maybe it actually did come out of Santiago
in fact, there's a very specific site, site-specificity as it were,
for these documents, and we want to actually retain that in our annotation.
Just to kind of recognize that, and even call attention to it,
even if it's given in the cataloging information
just to highlight its location.
You had a question?
(audience member) They're on next.
(Mari Carmen) I wanted to comment something on digital humanities.
This project, there is a project out of the University of Houston
and it's Latino literature.
And it follows certain similarities in terms of the format
of this project.
That was started by Nicolas Kanellos in the 1990s
and it looks at US-Latino production in literature.
So, there's a conversation between the Houston Museum
and the University of Houston in terms of exchanging the know-how
and also the best practices.
And [inaudible] Martin, who was the first cataloger,
she worked for the project
and in fact she was recruited after working there
to come to work on this project. So there's a little bit
of that interconnection in terms of the digital humanities.
Well, with that, let's thank our presenters
for a very interesting presentation.
(audience applauds)