The Museum of Modern Art
announced that it has received a major gift from the Colección Patricia Phelps
de Cisneros, which will add more than 100 works of modern art by major artists
from Latin America to the Museum’s collection, and establish the Patricia
Phelps de Cisneros Research Institute for the Study of Art from Latin America.
The Cisneros Institute will be dedicated to an expansive approach to the study
and interpretation of modern and contemporary art from Latin America.
The gift includes 102 paintings,
sculptures, and works on paper, made between the 1940s and the 1990s by 37
artists working in Brazil, Venezuela, and the Río de la Plata region of Argentina
and Uruguay, including Lygia Clark, Hélio Oiticica, Lygia Pape, Jesús Rafael
Soto, Alejandro Otero, and Tomás Maldonado. They join 40 works previously given
by Patricia and Gustavo Cisneros over the last 16 years; Mrs. Cisneros is a
longtime MoMA Trustee and a member of several acquisitions and funding
committees, including the Latin American and Caribbean Fund, of which she is
chairman and founder.
The Cisneros Institute, to be
located on MoMA’s Midtown Manhattan campus, will offer opportunities for
curatorial research and travel, host visiting scholars and artists, convene an
annual international conference, and produce research publications on art from
Latin America. It is poised to become the preeminent research center in the
field, building on MoMA’s history of collecting, exhibiting, and studying the
art and artists of the region, dating back to 1931. Today, MoMA’s collection
includes more than 5,000 works by artists from Latin America.
The breadth of this gift is
unprecedented, and the accompanying research initiative devoted to the study of
the works and their integration into the overall narrative of modern art will
greatly enrich MoMA’s collection and scholarly activities. As an integral
program of The Museum of Modern Art, the Cisneros Institute represents a
singular commitment to the region, and will foster intensive research on and
engagement with the region’s art and artists.
For more information and a full
list of works, please visit: www.moma.org/collection/works/groups/cisneros