Archiving Modern Latin American Art

In January 2012, the International Center for the Arts of the Americas (ICAA) at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston launched the Documents of 20th-Century Latin American and Latino Art Digital Archive and Publications Project. Available online (icaadocs.mfah.org), the Documents Project is dedicated to the recovery and dissemination of primary source materials related to modern and contemporary Latin American and Latino art. A working group was established in the greater Washington, DC area last July, and the University of Maryland is part of a consortium of institutional partners that includes the Archives of American Art (Smithsonian Institution), the Organization of American States, the Inter-University Program for Latino Research (University of Notre Dame), and George Mason University. This talk will introduce the ICAA Documents Project and its recovery initiative in the Washington area. Undergraduate and graduate students at the University of Maryland have worked on this project over the academic year 2012-13, and their contributions – from archival discovery to digitization and scholarly analysis – will be profiled as part of the group’s work. The Documents Project is at the forefront of digital initiatives in the field of modern Latin American art history, and it has tremendous potential for use in teaching, research, and collaboration among scholars across the Americas. The talk considers these different functions of the archive and reflects as well on its role in shaping the discipline at institutional, regional, national, and international levels.