Please join us for a special evening focused on the perspectives and experiences of Latinx curators, convened by former MoMA Scholar in Residence C. Ondine Chavoya. This public program will gather a trio of esteemed curatorial voices—Marcela Guerrero, Maria Elena Ortiz, and Pilar Tompkins-Rivas—whose careers have consistently highlighted Latinx and Chicanx art. Inspired in part by the ongoing conversations and public forums in which they have collectively engaged in the past, this gathering proposes a dialogue between Latinx curators who have made an outstanding impact in the field and played a central role in shaping the museum and curatorial scene of today. Together, they will reflect on their experiences with exhibition making, collection building, and scholarship across different institutions; share strategies and methods for broadening representation within museums and art history; and collectively consider field shifts, challenges, and what remains to be achieved.
Presenters
C. Ondine Chavoya is the John D. Murchison Regents Professor in Art in the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Texas at Austin and was a 2023-24 MoMA Scholar in Residence. A specialist in Chicanx and Latinx art, Chavoya is co-editor of Chicano and Chicana Art: A Critical Anthology (2019). Chavoya’s curatorial projects have addressed issues of collaboration, experimentation, social justice, and archival practices in contemporary art. Previous exhibitions include Michel Auder: Chronicles and Other Scenes (with Lisa Dorin, 2004), Asco: Elite of the Obscure (with Rita Gonzalez, 2011), Robert Rauschenberg: Autobiography (with Lisa Dorin, 2017), Axis Mundo: Queer Networks in Chicano L.A. (with David Evans Frantz, 2017), and Teddy Sandoval and the Butch Gardens School of Art (with David Evans Frantz, 2023) on view at the Williams College Museum of Art through December 22, 2024.
Marcela Guerrero is the DeMartini Family Curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. In 2026 Guerrero, along with Drew Sawyer, will curate the 82nd edition of the Whitney Biennial—the longest-running survey of contemporary art in the United States. Most recently, she co-curated Ilana Savdie: Radical Contractions (with Angelica Arbelaez). At the Whitney, in 2022–23, Guerrero also curated no existe un mundo poshuracán: Puerto Rican Art in the Wake of Hurricane Maria and Martine Gutierrez: Supremacy, among other exhibitions. From 2014 to 2017, she was the curatorial fellow for Radical Women: Latin American Art, 1960–1985, organized at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles. Prior to joining the Hammer, she worked in the Latin American and Latino art department at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Guerrero’s writing has appeared in several exhibition catalogues and in art journals.
María Elena Ortiz is curator and writer at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, and organized Jammie Holmes: Make the Revolution Irresistible (2023) and Surrealism and Us: Caribbean and African Diasporic Artists Since 1940 (2024). She is also a co-curator (with Susana Temkin and Rodrigo Moura) of the upcoming Triennial at El Museo del Barrio, Flow States (2024). In 2023 she co-curated Puerto Rico NegrX with Marina Reyes Franco. For almost a decade, she was curator at the Pérez Art Museum Miami, where she curated the group shows Allied with Power: African and African Diaspora Art from the Jorge M. Pérez Collection and The Other Side of Now: Foresight in Caribbean Art and solo exhibitions of Firelei Báez, Ulla von Brandenburg, william cordova, Teresita Fernández, José Carlos Martinat, Carlos Motta, and Beatriz Santiago Muñoz. At the museum, Ortiz founded the Caribbean Cultural Institute, a curatorial platform dedicated to Caribbean art.
Pilar Tompkins Rivas is the chief curator and deputy director of curatorial and collections at the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, a new museum dedicated to the art of visual storytelling that is under construction in Los Angeles. Previously, she was the director of the Vincent Price Art Museum (VPAM) at East Los Angeles College, where she also served as chief curator, organizing numerous exhibitions, including solo presentations of such artists as Carolina Caycedo, Guadalupe Rosales, and Patrick Martinez. Prior to her tenure at VPAM, she served as coordinator of curatorial initiatives at LACMA, co-directing the institution’s UCLA-LACMA Art History Practicum Initiative and the Andrew W. Mellon Undergraduate Curatorial Fellowship Program in addition to co-curating exhibitions in partnership with the Getty’s Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA initiative.
The MoMA Scholar in Residence program is supported by the Ford Foundation.