Shifting Curatorial Strategies for Art from Latin America and Latino Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston 1956 - 2004

This thesis explores changing curatorial strategies at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. This is preceded by an assessment of the Museum of Modern Art’s earlier role in systematizing and defining this field throughout the 1930s and 1940s. Three exhibitions of art from Latin America and Latino art will illustrate how the MFAH contributed to shifts in this field proposing parallel and expanded readings to those first introduced at MoMA. Firstly, the Gulf-Caribbean Art Exhibition (1956) was a collaboration with the Pan American Union. This exhibition was framed by Cold War modernist approaches and a re-imagined geographical conception of the Gulf region. Secondly, Hispanic Art in the United States- Thirty Contemporary Painters and Sculptors (1987) sought to include Latino art and reflect the community in Houston within this mainstream institution. This lead to traditional museum practices emphasising the quality of artworks, while the criteria for selection was based on the ethnicity of the artists. Finally, Inverted Utopias- Avant-Garde Art in Latin America (2004) revised curatorial structures that were based upon the geographical and national survey format. Six constellations emphasising nodal connections between movements from Latin America disrupted established narratives of this field. The extensive use of archival documents further aided this historical review. I will answer how political, diplomatic, social, and art historical contexts have influenced the curation of these exhibitions and the outcomes of each. I will argue that through the location of the MFAH in the south of the United States, this institution is able to experiment with curatorial approaches and contribute to reviewed readings of art and art history in the United States.