News: ICAA Documents 20th-Century Latin American and Latino Art

Established as the research arm of the Department of Latin American Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH), the International Center for the Arts of the Americas (ICAA) is currently in the midst of the multi-year Documents of 20th-century Latin American and Latino Art: A Digital Archive and Publications Project, which seeks to consolidate Latin American and Latino art as a field of study and to place it on equal footing with other established aesthetic traditions. This monumental program encompasses the recovery, translation into English, and publication of primary texts by Latin American and Latino artists, critics, and curators who have played a fundamental role in the development of modern and contemporary art in their countries or communities. A three-year recovery stage is well underway with ten professional research teams actively surveying locations throughout the United States and Latin America for relevant primary source documentation. These critical documents are currently being cataloged and digitized into a Web-based virtual archive at a rate of approximately 1,500 documents per year. Upon completion of the project’s recovery phase, all full-text documents and their corresponding cataloguing records will be made available free of charge to researchers and students through the World Wide Web.

In addition to creating a digital archive of artists’ writings and other critical texts, the end product of the Documents project will be a series of fully annotated book anthologies published in English. By focusing on thematic rather than chronological compilations, researchers will be able to compare and contrast how artists from different countries and communities approach aesthetics, social issues, and cultural tendencies. This open-ended framework will serve the teaching and research needs of both academic and professional communities in the United States, Europe, and Latin America and will lead to a redefinition of the current map of Latin American and Latino Art.

The project's administrative team is based at the MFAH. Working under the auspices of the museum, the ICAA employs six full-time staff members including Dr. Mari Carmen Ramírez, ICAA Director, Helvetia Martell, Project Director and Chief Bibliographer, and Mar´i;a C. Gaztambide, ICAA Research Coordinator. The ICAA’s efforts are supported by a broader team of museum personnel, who are equally invested in the center and the project's success.