This Must Be the Place: Latin American Artists in New York, 1965–1975

Americas Society presents the second part of This Must Be the Place: Latin American Artists in New York, 1965–1975, a group exhibition exploring the work of a generation of migrants from Latin America and the Caribbean who created and exhibited in New York City between 1965 and 1975. The exhibition maps the connections and spaces these artists created in the city and offers a much-needed reevaluation of the 1960s and 1970s American art. Embracing experimental practices such as Happenings, minimalism, conceptualism, performance, and video art, the artists featured in the show created artworks centering on issues of community, identity, and belonging that brought unique perspectives to the neo-avant-garde art scene in New York. 

It was in New York that many of these artists recognized themselves as Latin Americans, something they did not necessarily realize back home. By being in contact with migrants from other parts of the continent, they forged a new sense of self as Latin Americans that resisted the stereotypes imposed on them by American culture. 

Part II of the exhibition presents new works by the same artists and focuses on this exploration of identities; many of the new works on view utilize the body as theme and medium. Located in-between spaces of belonging and occupying a unique political subjectivity, these artists made work in the interstices of traditional cultural categories and advanced ideas about identity that would not be discussed until the arrival of multiculturalism in the 1980s.

This exhibition puts collectives and artists from diverse backgrounds in South America metropolises, the Caribbean, and New York into dialogue. This Must Be the Place centers the efforts made by communities of creators to assert agency over their social and cultural identities, working collaboratively and in solidarity with one another. Then as now, these artists transformed the overwhelming experience of migration into the continuous search for a home, a constitutive process in the construction of imagined communities.

Part I of the exhibition was on display from September 22 through December 18, 2021, and was named one of the best art exhibitions of 2021 by The New York Times. 

Part II opens on February 2 and will be on view until May 14, 2022. 

The exhibition is accompanied by two publications: an illustrated guide to the exhibition featuring a curatorial text along with the full exhibition checklist, and the book This Must Be the Place: An Oral History of Latin American Artists in New York 1965-1975 to be released in March 2022 with the support of our co-publisher, the Institute for Studies on Latin American Art (ISLAA).

The presentation of This Must Be the Place: Latin American Artists in New York, 1965–1975 is made possible, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council. Additional support is provided by the Smart Family Foundation of New York, Fundación Ama Amoedo, and The Cowles Charitable Trust. 

Americas Society acknowledges the generous support from the Arts of the Americas Circle members: Estrellita B. Brodsky, Virginia Cowles Schroth, Emily A. Engel, Diana Fane, Galeria Almeida e Dale, Isabella Hutchinson, Carolina Jannicelli, Vivian Pfeiffer from Phillips, Gabriela Pérez Rocchietti, Erica Roberts, Diana López and Herman Sifontes, and Edward J. Sullivan.

Curated by Aimé Iglesias Lukin, Director and Chief Curator of Visual Arts at Americas Society

Press: please contact mediarelations@as-coa.org