Public Programs @ the Institute
Series: The Roberta and Richard Huber Colloquium
Miriam M. Basilio Gaztambide, Delia Solomons, Taína Caragol
Latin American and Latine Art at MoMA and Beyond
Wednesday, December 3, at 6:00 PM
This panel discussion is held on occasion of the publication of Latin American Art at The Museum of Modern Art: The Power of the Canon (Routledge 2025) by Miriam Basilio of NYU’s Department of Art History and the Museum Studies graduate program. This important volume sheds light on an as-yet unstudied aspect of The Museum of Modern Art’s (MoMA) preeminent role in establishing the definition of the problematic term “Latin American art” in the United States from the 1930s to the present through its collection displays. In examining the shifting categorization of Latin American works according to stylistic and geographic taxonomies, we gain a greater understanding of the organization of the Museum’s collections as a whole during the 1940s and 1950s. This book is the first to document these institutional precedents, crucial for the understanding of the articulation of a Modernist canon and its contested legacy today.
The program will be moderated by Edward J. Sullivan, Helen Gould Shepard Professor in the History of Art at NYU. Participants include Dr. Basilio, Delia Solomons (PhD IFA), Associate Professor of Art History, Westphal College of Media Arts & Design, Drexel University, and Dr. Taína Caragol, Curator of Painting, Sculpture, and Latino Art and History at the National Portrait Gallery, Washington D.C. A reception follows the panel.
Miriam M. Basilio Gaztambide is Associate Professor of art history and museum studies at New York University. As a former curatorial assistant at The Museum of Modern Art, she co-curated Tempo (2002) and MoMA at El Museo: Caribbean and Latin American Art from the Collection of The Museum of Modern Art (2004). She was lead curator of Fighting Fascism: Visual Culture of the Spanish Civil War from New York University’s Tamiment Library Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives (NYU Kimmel Windows, 2023). Her books include Visual Propaganda, Exhibitions, and the Spanish Civil War (2013) and Latin American Art at The Museum of Modern Art: The Power of the Canon (2025) and an artists' book Retratos Hablados/Spoken Portraits (2020).
Taína Caragol is Senior Curator of painting and sculpture at the National Portrait Gallery. Since joining the museum in 2013, she has built one of the premier national collections of portraits representing Latine artists and historical figures, contributing significantly to creating a more polyphonic American history. She has curated or co-curated twenty exhibitions, including UnSeen: Our Past in a New Light, Ken Gonzales-Day and Titus Kaphar, which was recognized by the Art Association of Museum Curators with a Mention of Honor in their 2019 Curatorial Awards for Excellence. Her co-curated show 1898: U.S. Imperial Visions and Revisions, received SECAC’s 2024 Award for Excellence in Exhibitions, and was referred to by Phillip Kennicott of the Washington Post as: “…the best and most engaging work the National Portrait Gallery has done in a decade.” Caragol directed The Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition, resulting in 2022 and 2025 editions of The Outwin: American Portraiture Today museum triennial. In 2023 she was guest curator of the Arizona Biennial at the Tucson Museum of Art.
Caragol has a B.A. in Modern Languages from the University of Puerto Rico, an M.A. in French Studies from Middlebury College, and a Ph.D. in art history from the Graduate Center, City University of New York.
Delia Solomons is an Associate Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art History at Drexel University. She published her first book Cold War in the White Cube: U.S. Exhibitions of Latin American Art (1959-1968) in 2023 with Penn State University Press. Her current book project, Marisol’s Containment Culture, explores Marisol’s sculpture of the 1960s in relation to containment discourses proliferating in foreign policy, domestic agendas, and psychological fields. Solomons has also published essays in The Art Bulletin, Marisol: A Retrospective, Alex Da Corte: Mr. Remember, The Americas Revealed, journal of visual culture, MoMA’s post: notes on art in a global context, and Journal of Curatorial Studies.
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