Permanent Seminar in Latin American Art

We are delighted to announce that next week (Wednesday, March 28, and Thursday, March 29) the Department of Art and Art History, and CLAVIS–Center for Latin American Visual Studies are hosting eminent curator and scholar of Latin American Art Dr. Mari Carmen Ramírez, Wortham Curator of Latin American Art and Director of the International Center for the Arts of the Americas (ICAA), at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

We hope you will join us for Dr. Ramírez’s public lecture on Wednesday, March 28 at 5 pm, and the session of the Permanent Seminar in Latin American Art on Thursday, March 29 at 6 pm.

Please find the details and important information about the events below.

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CLAVIS/Art History Lecture Series:

Dr. Mari Carmen Ramírez • Wortham Curator of Latin American Art and Director of the International Center for the Arts of the Americas (ICAA), at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

“Carlos Cruz-Diez: Color in Real Time”

When: Wednesday • March 28, 2012 • 5 PM

Where: DFA 2.204

The lecture will address the theoretical and practical aspects of Cruz-Diez’s innovative approach to color in the context of 20th century art.

For more than five decades, Franco-Venezuelan artist Carlos Cruz-Diez (born 1923) has experimented intensively with the origins and optics of color. His wide-ranging body of work includes unconventional color structures, light environments, street interventions, architectural integration projects, and experimental works that engage the response of the human eye while insisting on the participatory nature of color. The starting point for Cruz-Diez’s chromatic investigations is the unstable nature of color. His work combines color theory, science, kinetics, mechanical engineering, and the painter’s craft, and it defies easy categorization. In order to realize his artistic vision, particularly with regard to the innovative Physichromies series, the artist adapted or invented his own tools and machines. And he has involved his family and a large corps of assistants in the enterprise, with guild-style studios in Paris, Panama, and Caracas.

In 2011, The MFAH and the Cruz-Diez Foundation, Houston, presented the first large-scale traveling retrospective of this pioneering artist, Carlos Cruz-Diez: Color in Space and Time.

About the speaker:

Mari Carmen Ramírez is the Wortham Curator of Latin American Art and founding Director of the International Center for the Arts of the Americas at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH). Prior to this appointment, she was curator of Latin American art at the Jack S. Blanton Museum of Art and adjunct lecturer in the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Texas at Austin. Ramírez has also served as director of the Museo de Antropología, Historia y Arte de la Universidad de Puerto Rico. She has curated numerous important exhibitions of Latin American art, including Carlos Cruz-Diez: Color in Space and Time (MFAH, 2011, traveling exhibition); Joaquín Torres-García: Constructing Abstraction with Wood (The Menil Collection, 2009); Hélio Oiticica: The Body of Color (MFAH, 2006–7, traveling exhibition); Gego: Between Transparency and the Invisible (MFAH, 2005, traveling exhibition); Inverted Utopias: Avant-Garde Art in Latin America (with Héctor Olea, MFAH, 2004); Questioning the Line: Gego, A Selection, 1955–1990 (with Iris Peruga, MFAH, 2002); Heterotopías: medio siglo sin Lugar, 1918–1968 (also with Héctor Olea, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, 2000); Global Conceptualism (traveling exhibition, 1999–2001); Cantos Paralelos/Parallel Cantos: Visual Parody in Contemporary Argentinean Art (traveling exhibition, 1998–99); Re-Aligning Vision: Alternative Currents in South American Drawing (with Edith A. Gibson, traveling exhibition, 1997–99); the Latin American section of Universalis at the 23rd São Paulo Biennial (1996); and The School of the South: El Taller Torres-García and its Legacy (with Cecilia Buzio, traveling exhibition, 1990–92). In recent years her many honors and awards have included being named as one of the twenty-five most influential Hispanics in America, TIME Magazine (2005); the Award for Curatorial Excellence, Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College (2005); “Best Thematic Museum Show Nationally” (shared with Héctor Olea, USA) for Inverted Utopias, International Association of Art Critics (2004); and the Award for Curatorial Excellence, Peter Norton Family Foundation (1997). Ramírez received her Ph.D. in Art History from the University of Chicago in 1989.

The lecture is free and open to the public.
Please feel free to distribute this information among your contacts.

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Permanent Seminar in Latin American Art

A Conversation with Dr. Mari Carmen Ramírez:

“Have we truly arrived? A Critical Review of a Decade of the Rise of Latin American Art. / ¿Será que sí hemos llegado? Balance crítico de una década en ascenso.”

When: Thursday • March 29 • 6 PM

Where: CLAVIS (ART 3.434)

Dr. Ramirez’s presentation will be delivered in English, Q&A will be bilingual, in English and Spanish.

In order to fulfill Permanent seminar’s mission and to facilitate a lively discussion, the space is limited and registration is required.

Please email CLAVIS Coordinator, Dorota Biczel, dorota@biczel.com, in order to register.
If you have already registered, but your plans have changed and you no longer wish to attend, please let us know so that we can accommodate other guests.

Thank you. We look forward to seeing you!