The OAS AMA | Art Museum of the Americas and the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art of the University of Oklahoma present Libertad de Expresión: The Art Museum of the Americas and Cold War Politics, an exhibition showcasing a vibrant period of OAS art collecting. Curated by Mark Andrew White of the Fred Jones, Jr. Museum of art, this exhibition demonstrates the AMA's function as a critical branch of the OAS, promoting the arts and cultures of OAS member states through its collections and programs. This exhibition is part of an initiative led by AMA's current director, Andrés Navia, to internationally promote the museum's permanent collection and its relevance to the history of modern and contemporary Latin America and Caribbean art while linking it to fresher and more current critical analyses and perspectives.
The exhibition examines how the both the OAS and its cultural arm, AMA | Art Museum of the Americas, advanced Latin American and Caribbean art and democratic values during the Cold War. Ironically, Gómez Sicre's support for freedom of expression rarely included artists of a socialist or communist bent. The exhibition features more than 60 artists, including Joaquín Torres-García, Roberto Matta and Jesús Rafael Soto.
Among the Fred Jones, Jr. Museum's contributors to the shape and scope of the exhibition, Ghislain d'Humières, now director of the The Speed Art Museum, played a key role supporting this exhibition when he was the Bill and Wylodean Saxon Director of the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art.
The OAS, through Gómez Sicre, supported international modernism, a preference that allied him with U.S. cold warriors who used freedom of expression as a tool in the cultural and intellectual struggle against the Soviets. Freedom of expression was given a Latin cast through Gómez Sicre's exhibition and collection policies and Libertad de expresión, so to speak, serves as a lens through which this exhibition examines Gómez Sicre and AMA. AMA used art as a form of cultural diplomacy with the intention of further understanding and cooperation between the Americas and, in the process, it championed the international aspirations of Latin American culture under the influence of the U.S.'s position in the midst of the Cold War.This exhibition at AMA | Art Museum of the Americas is possible thanks to the support of the Fred Jones, Jr. Museum of Art, University of Oklahoma and the Friends of AMA.
Libertad de Expresión: The Art Museum of the Americas and Cold War Politics
AMA | ART MUSEUM OF THE AMERICAS
Organization of American States
201 18th Street, NW
Washington, DC 20006
Panel Discussion | Thursday, February 19 from 4-6pm
Ambassador Hugo de Zela Martínez
Chief of Staff of the Secretary General, OAS
Mark Andrew White
Interim Director and Chief Curator, Fred Jones, Jr. Museum of Art, University of Oklahoma and curator of exhibit
Claire Fox
Associate Professor of Spanish & co-director of the Latino Studies Minor, University of Iowa
Olga Ulloa Herrera
Director of the Washington, DC Office of the Inter-University Program for Latino Research (IUPLR), University of Illinois at Chicago
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