year of latin arts

In museums and alternative spaces

Latinx artists have been featured in multiple museum group and solo exhibitions surveying their artwork, demonstrating that institutions across the country increasingly continue to embrace the work of Latinx artists.

This year, three mid-career artists went on high-profile outings. The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, has dedicated a stunning exhibition to Firelei Báez, showcasing the breadth of her artistic practice, from captivating paintings to immersive installations. At the Dallas Contemporary Art Fair, Patrick Martinez displays his recent work as well as pieces made specifically for the exhibition, such as his seven-part cityscape, The fleeting landscape of bougainvilleawhich takes his unique use of materials—a combination of neon lights with stucco and acrylic paint that represents Los Angeles’ shabby vibe—to new heights. As part of the Public Art Funding Commission, Idra Soto has installed one of her famous “Transplant” sculptures in Central Park; it will be on display through August 2025 and has been activated through major programming such as Two Set for Domino Table Talk, a fun gathering and oral history project that is part of the Clement Center’s “History” program.

Further afield, Ryan Preciado, one of the standout artists at the Hammer Museum’s last Made in Los Angeles Biennial, offers Manuel Sandoval a A moving portrait of Manuel Sandoval, a nearly forgotten 20th-century Nicaraguan American carpenter who created sets of furniture for iconic architects such as Frank Lloyd Wright and R.M. Schindler. In a moving tribute, Preciado recreates some of Sandoval’s lost designs and pairs his pieces with those of Sandoval, blurring the lines of authorship and the distinction between fine art and design. limit. Crenshaw Dairy Mart co-founder noé olivas holds a stunning solo exhibition at an independent art space. Titled “Gilded Dreams,” the show explores labor issues related to the Mexican-American community on this side of the border—the dangers that come with getting here, and the broken promises of the so-called American Dream that never seem to Act like someone thinks they will.

Latino artists feature in three themed exhibitions at the museum. The first exhibition, “On the Edge,” is on display at the Laguna Museum of Art, showcasing the collection of Joan Agajanian Quinn and her late husband, Jack Quinn . The Quinns have been a centrifugal force in the Los Angeles art world for decades, their Beverly Hills home a salon where Warhol, Hockney, Ruscha and others spent time Countless nights. The Quinns were also major collectors of works by artists of color, at a time when most West End collectors would not have deigned to do so. Artists in their collection include Carlos Almaraz, Elsa Flores Almaraz, Joey Terrill, John Watt John Valadez and Yolanda Gonzalez, the latter of whom created a new portrait of Joan in the museum’s gallery. By placing their work prominently in the exhibition, the museum and Quinn demonstrate the importance of Latinx artists to the Los Angeles art scene, both past and present.

By contrast, “Where I Learned to See: Art from the Courtyard,” presented by Josh T. Franco at the ICA in Philadelphia, draws on two founding aesthetics of Chicanx art— Brutalism and Familism – and placing them within the wider context of courtyard art. . To me, this is a natural development and speaks to the wider acceptance of Latin art. While the focus here is not necessarily Latino artists, the exhibition is grounded in Franco’s experiences as a Chicano artist and art historian from West Texas. In the opening wall text, Franco writes that the courtyard art of his late grandfather Hipolito “Pole” Hernandez was “my earliest unexpected training ground for practicing close observation… …My grandfather’s yard is where I learned to see.” Franco opens the exhibition with a mixed-media work of his own, including a video introducing the concepts of Rasquachism and familialism. At the front of the video is a reconstructed courtyard altar by the Sanchez family, neighbors of Donald Judd in Marfa, Texas. Elsewhere in the exhibition we see works by Hernandez, a small courtyard painting by unknown Chicano artist José Esquivel, and Ruben Ortiz ·Torres’s advertising-cum-video piece, showcasing a souped-up lawnmower, sits a short distance from the work of Beverly Buchanan, John Outerbridge and Noah Purefoy.

The Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art’s major fall exhibition is dedicated to the photorealism movement. Rather than staging an expected exhibition about popular 20th-century fin-de-siècleism, curator Anna Katz subverts the movement. Its most famous proponents, such as Robert Bechtle, Vija Celmins, Duane Hanson, and Chuck Close, have present, but the curators have cast a wider net. Katz focuses on Jesse Trevino, John Valadez, Shizu Saldamando, Sayre Gomez Gomez and Vincent Valdez, who had not previously been closely associated with the movement. This is a trenchant curatorial essay supported by excellent writing.