PRDREAM’S COMMENT ON RIVERA AND KENNICOTT “DEBATE”
The arguments here are at cross-purposes and the two gentlemen are both right. There is a need for focused exhibitions, with specific curatorial themes. Ironically, the value of the current exhibition at the Smithsonian is in manifesting this issue in a highly visible way. The quality of the work displayed cries out for a series of exhibitions that take on the oeuvre of several of these accomplished and highly skilled artists on their own turf. This is a major challenge and opportunity for curators, scholars, artists, institutions, and galleries.
We have a small new media gallery in New York City’s Spanish Harlem called MediaNoche, which exhibits works by new media artists worldwide–including Latino digital artists. As the founder and chief curator of MediaNoche, and as a Latina, I have always sought to articulate a clear curatorial theme to our exhibitions that eschews identity as a basis for exhibition, though identity does figure into our artistic practice through our ethos, our history, our philosophical and political view of the world, and our gallery’s mission. We have shown many Latino new media artists and many Asian and European ones as well. We have also shown non-Latino American new media artists.
Our shows focus mostly on individual artists. That presents its own set of issues around selection. When they have been group shows, the curatorial vision was absolutely critical. Actually, it always is. What is the raison d’etre for the exhibition? Is it enough to be simply shown?
From the perspective of the artists, the answer is yes—especially in an institution such as the Smithsonian. And so “Our America: The Latino Presence in American Art” is valid in attempting to be inclusive of as many of the “best” Latino American artists as possible within the scope of their curatorial aim. Problem is an all-inclusive agenda of the “best” Latino artists always results in leaving out some of the “best”. It is simply too broad. Curators might also wind up selecting artists through criteria unsuitable to curatorial integrity, such as population proportionality or quotas of representation. This is at best a dubious practice better left to activists trying to right a historical wrong, or politicians or museum heads who are chasing audiences and pandering to the masses. It is corrupting and can negatively impact real scholarship –especially if this criteria is not explicitly stated and addressed. It usually is not.
Given the dismal historiography of American art history, the absence of a truly comprehensive and inclusive scholarship, (which admittedly would be hard but not impossible to do), and given the years of exclusion of Latino artists in our nation’s major galleries and institutions, one can expect exhibitions such as “Our America” to be inevitably polemical and politically charged, at once encouraging and disappointing. That explains but does not excuse the need for a rigorous curatorial trajectory. We hope “Our America” is only the beginning of a new unfolding narrative in which all currents of American Art flow freely into a confluence of themes and visions. Then and only then can we speak of a truly American Art. Then and only then can it be said that the category of Latino Art is meaningless.
Till then, the dialectic created through exhibitions such as “Our America: The Latino Presence in American Art” can lead to exchanges that engage scholars, curators, artists, and the public to explore freely and openly what is called American Art.