“Show & Tell”: Systems in the 1960s, exhibitions in the 1990s, projects for 2020

Friday, March 17, 2017

Centro Cultural Chacao
Av. Tamanaco, El Rosal
Caracas, Miranda 1060
Venezuela

www.coleccioncisneros.org

Why and what does a cultural institution show? What and how does a show tell? These are some questions the international conference “Show & Tell” will address on March 17, through a variety of case studies. Organized by the Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros (CPPC), this sixth edition of the annual Seminario Fundación Cisneros examines influential cultural producers and groundbreaking exhibitions in Latin America, and presents cultural proposals for the near future in Venezuela. Case studies will provide historical context to consider cultural work and projects retrospectively, comprehend the ways in which their repercussions are manifested today, and inspire visions and plans for the future. In conjunction with this one-day conference, an editorial program and several activities are underway.

The first part of “Show & Tell” draws attention to artistic communities, art exhibitions, and cultural institutions active in the 1960s and 1990s. Presentations about the 1960s will focus on three key figures—Miguel Arroyo in Venezuela, Lina Bo Bardi in Brazil, and Jorge Romero Brest in Argentina—whose work contributed to build and develop new systems to create and organize the aesthetic experience and cultural institutions. Presentations about the 1990s will focus in three ground breaking exhibitions—Ante América in Bogotá, CCS 10 in Caracas, and Mesótica II in San José, Costa Rica—that proposed new gazes and meanings of art. Presenters include: Lupe Álvarez, José Luis Blondet, Tomás Toledo, Inés Katzenstein, Tamara Díaz Bringas and Patricia Velasco.

The second part of “Show & Tell” is devoted to imagining projects that might be created in Venezuela in the 2020 decade. Whether pragmatic, speculative or lyrical, proposals have been prepared by an inter-generational and multidisciplinary group of speakers: Grisel Arveláez, María Bilbao and Diana Rangel, Ignacio Cardona, Lourdes Peñaranda, and Norberto José Olivar; their ideas will be publicly discussed by Carmen Hernández and Sofía Hernández Chong Cuy. “Show & Tell” also presents a unique edition of The Hypnotic Show by Marcos Lutyens and Raimundas Malašauskas. Developed in collaboration with Martha Durán, Augusto Gerardi and Jacqueline Goldberg, this show will invite you to experience, under hypnosis, historic and future exhibitions in Venezuela.

Screened throughout the day of the conference is a series of interviews with artists in or from Latin America, commenting on the exhibitions that were influential to their practice. The interviewed artists are: Alexander Apostol, Tania Bruguera, Eduardo Costa, Natalya Critchley, Minerva Cuevas, Regina José Galindo, Alfredo Jaar, Ana María Millán, Marta Minujín, Jorge Pineda, Raúl Quintanilla, Antonieta Sosa, and Javier Téllez. All brief and casual, all shot through online meetings from their home or studios, or, in some cases, during artistic residencies elsewhere, these videos will be progressively posted in the CPPC website.

Additionally, an array of texts about exhibition makers and exhibitions from the 1960s and 1990s in Latin America have been commissioned for the CPPC website. Contributors include Magalí Arriola, Miguel López, Mauricio Marcín, Gabriela Rangel, Costanza De Rogatis and Aixa Sánchez. The day of the conference, public round-table discussions with speakers and audiences will be offered, too. Definitely, there are many types of participation in “Show & Tell”—and we invite you to partake in it all!

“Show & Tell” is open to the general public and free of charge. On Friday, March 17, 2017, the CPPC website will be live-streaming the conference; soon after the event, video documentation will be published there. You can review the program details and the day’s itinerary here.

Begun in 2011 by the CPPC, the Seminario Fundación Cisneros is held annually, and “Show & Tell” is its sixth edition and is conceptualized by Sofía Hernández Chong Cuy, curator of contemporary art at the CPPC. Program information and video documentation of all past editions of the seminar is available in the CPPC website.

With offices in New York and Caracas, the mission of the Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros is to enhance appreciation of the diversity, sophistication, and range of art from Latin America; advance scholarship of Latin American art; and promote excellence in visual-arts education. Its art collection is organized in five areas of study: ethnographic (Orinoco), colonial, traveler-artists, modern, and contemporary.