Abigail McEwen: Archiving Modern Latin American Art: Sites, Students and Collaboration in the Greater Washington Area

Abigail McEwen, Assistant Professor of Latin American Art
Department of Art History and Archeology, University of Maryland

Monday, April 1, 2013

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)