The Whitney Museum Names Marcela Guerrero the DeMartini Family Curator

NEW YORK, NY | WHITNEY MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART | February 16, 2023

— The Whitney Museum of American Art has named Marcela Guerrero the DeMartini Family Curator. In her new role, Guerrero will continue her pioneering work on acquiring and exhibiting contemporary and historical Latinx artists in the Whitney’s program and collection. She will also play a key strategic role in working crossdepartmentally to broaden the Whitney’s engagement with Latinx audiences and community partners while supporting overall strategic planning for the collection. She begins her new position on February 18, 2023.

Guerrero has worked at the Whitney for nearly six years and was the Museum’s first curator to specialize inLatinx art. She currently serves as the Jennifer Rubio Associate Curator and has curated landmark exhibitions like no existe un mundo poshuracán: Puerto Rican Art in the Wake of Hurricane Maria. That show, on view at the Museum through April 23, explores the impact of the devastating storm on contemporary Puerto Rican art. This powerful and renowned exhibition is the first survey of Puerto Rican art at a major U.S. art museum in fifty years.

Guerrero was also part of the curatorial team that organized Vida Americana: Mexican Muralists Remake American Art, 1925–1945 at the Whitney in 2020, and curated Pacha, Llaqta, Wasichay: Indigenous Space, Modern Architecture, a 2018 exhibition that featured the work of seven emerging Latinx artists. This summer, Guerrero will co-curate an exhibition of artist Ilana Savdie’s latest work, including paintings and drawings, as well as new works produced for the Whitney. Guerrero is responsible for many major acquisitions of work by prominent Latinx artists to the Whitney’s collection, including Laura Aguilar, Patrick Martinez, and Freddy Rodriguez. She has also been instrumental in the Museum’s digital and on-site Spanish language initiatives.

“Marcela is a visionary curator who has truly transformed the field of Latinx art not just at the Whitney but internationally through her passionate advocacy for living artists, brilliant scholarship, groundbreaking exhibitions, and care for our audiences,” said Scott Rothkopf, Senior Deputy Director and Nancy and Steve Crown Family Chief Curator. “Her new senior role demonstrates the Whitney’s growing commitment to Latinx art, artists, and audiences as one of our core priorities.”

The Museum also announced that current Assistant Curator Jennie Goldstein has been named the Jennifer Rubio Associate Curator of the Collection. In this role, Goldstein will focus primarily on building the Whitney’s collection and its displays, deepening the productive exchange between collection stewardship and exhibitions. She will support ongoing efforts to strategically develop the collection—an area where she has already made an impact, acquiring works by Darrel Ellis and Marie Watt, among others—and the artists, objects, and ideas that fuel the Museum. She will continue to work on exhibitions; her most recent curatorial project, In the Balance: Between Painting and Sculpture, 1965–1985, is on view at the Museum through March 5.

“Jennie has been an extraordinary champion of the Whitney’s collection and has a rare range of knowledge spanning from its earliest to most recent works. Her exhibitions Making Knowing: Craft in Art, 1950–2019 and In the Balance reframed key themes and moments in American art history with great flair and originality,” Rothkopf said. “In her new role, she will expand our efforts around the collection and contribute further to our exhibition program.”

MARCELA GUERRERO came to the Whitney from the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, where she worked as a Curatorial Fellow from 2014 to 2017. At the Hammer, she was involved in the muchlauded exhibition Radical Women: Latin American Art, 1960–1985, organized as part of the Getty Foundation’s Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA initiative, and guest-curated by Cecilia Fajardo-Hill and Andrea Giunta. Prior to joining the Hammer, she worked in the Latin American and Latino art department at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, where she served as Research Coordinator for the International Center for the Arts of the Americas. In her current role as Assistant Curator at the Whitney, Guerrero has organized important exhibitions and worked to foreground the contributions of Latinx artists in the U.S. and increase the presence of their works in the Whitney’s collection.

Most recently, she curated the landmark exhibition no existe un mundo poshuracán: Puerto Rican Art in the Wake of Hurricane Maria, the first survey of Puerto Rican art at a major U.S. art museum in fifty years, and organized a public art installation on the facade of 95 Horatio Street by Martine Gutierrez. Previously, she was part of the curatorial team that organized Vida Americana: Mexican Muralists Remake American Art, 1925–1945, and curated Pacha, Llaqta, Wasichay: Indigenous Space, Modern Architecture, an exhibition featuring the work of seven emerging Latinx artists. Guerrero has served as co-chair of the Whitney’s Emerging Artist Working Group and has been instrumental in the Museum’s recent Spanish language initiatives both digitally and on-site.

Born and raised in Puerto Rico and now a Brooklyn resident, Guerrero holds a Ph.D. in art history from the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

JENNIE GOLDSTEIN has worked in various positions at the Whitney Museum of Art, beginning as a Curatorial Assistant before pursuing a graduate degree. Most recently, as Assistant Curator, a position she has held since 2015, she has focused on collection building and collections-based and loan exhibitions. Goldstein has curated several prominent exhibitions, including the currently on-view In the Balance: Between Painting and Sculpture, 1965–1985. She also curated or co-curated Making Knowing: Craft in Art, 1950–2019; Christine Sun Kim: Too Much Future; and An Incomplete History of Protest: Selections from the Whitney’s Collection, 1940–2019 Goldstein recently served as a member of the Museum’s Equity and Inclusion Steering Group, which centered staff voices in the institution’s Equity and Inclusion Plan. Prior to her current role, she worked as a Joan Tisch Teaching Fellow at the Whitney.

Goldstein holds a master’s degree in art history from Stony Brook University in New York.

Cultura

Mellon, Ford, Getty, and Terra Foundations Announce New Initiative Designed to Advance Latinx Art in Museums

NEW YORK, NY | THE ANDREW W. MELLON FOUNDATION |

February 13, 2023- Mellon, Ford, Getty, and Terra Foundations today announced Advancing Latinx Art in Museums (ALAM)—the new initiative represents the second phase of a multi-year funding collaboration seeking to nurture and prioritize US Latinx art. The funding partners have committed a combined $5 million to the initiative, which will provide ten grants of $500,000 to institutions in support of the creation and formalization of 10 permanent early and mid-career curatorial positions with expertise in Latinx art.

“We are beyond thrilled to be selected as it represents a milestone for our institution to bring on more curatorial support in our projects specific to Puerto Rican artists in our collection,” explains Marianne Ramírez Aponte, executive director and chief curator of the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Puerto Rico. “With this funding, we will encourage greater knowledge about contemporary art by Latinx artists, expand our network with US-based Puerto Rican artists and other Latinx intersections, and build our support for artists on the island and in the diaspora.”

“Institutional change can happen when we have experienced and knowledgeable voices at the table. We are eager to support the new curator as they join our team and help shape our work, all while affirming the importance of Latinx art and artists in the wider story of art and reinforcing our commitment to engage and serve Latinx audiences,” says E. Carmen Ramos, chief curatorial and conservation officer of the National Gallery of Art. “Our renowned collection offers opportunities for Latinx art to be presented in dialogue with both the national and the global, and we anticipate that the curator’s work will benefit from the breadth and depth of our expanding holdings.”

Latinx artists—creatives of Latin American or Caribbean descent who live and work in the US—have made significant and vital contributions to American culture for generations. ALAM is a collaborative initiative that aims to bolster museums and visual art organizations that have shown a commitment to collecting, studying, exhibiting, and engaging with Latinx art and artists by ensuring they have the capacity to employ specialist curators. Funding will support the hiring of five new curators and the promotion of five curatorial staff into permanent roles at institutions across the United States and Puerto Rico. The grant program will also include opportunities to enhance and grow the existing community of curators with expertise in Latinx art, connecting the individuals supported at each participating institution to each other and to a wider circle of museum professionals working in this space.

“The deep knowledge and understanding of Latinx art these ten curators hold comes from rigorous expertise and commitment to the creative expression of Latinx communities in the United States and Puerto Rico,” said Elizabeth Alexander, president of the Mellon Foundation

“Through ALAM we are proud to help expand opportunities for Latinx art curatorship across the country, and to do our part in upholding the centrality of this work in our museums and arts organizations.”

“We need to invest more if we want Latinx art to be more broadly represented in our museums, with dedicated curators who can focus exclusively on building and stewarding these collections,” urges Joan Weinstein, director of the Getty Foundation. “ALAM is a decisive next step made possible through collaborative funding.”

People who identify as Latinx comprise nearly 20 percent of the U.S. population overall and considerably more in some of the country’s largest cities. Yet, Latinx causes and organizations routinely receive less than two percent of philanthropic funding. While annual funding for Latinx arts and culture has seen a gradual annual increase since 2020, Latinx artists remain the largest majority missing from most museum collections, exhibitions, scholarship, and programming. ALAM, and the greater Latinx Art Visibility Initiative, is part of a long overdue effort to support Latinx artists and to ignite a public conversation about the rightful place of Latinx art within American art. ALAM recipients include large institutions, college and university museums, and leading Latinx museums—spanning scale, modality, and location—all aligned in their commitment to building or expanding a curatorial focus on Latinx art and ultimately creating a more inclusive curatorial field.

The 2022 Advancing Latinx Art Museums Recipients Institutions are:

• 516 ARTS, Albuquerque, NM

• Arizona State University Art Museum in partnership with CALA Alliance, Tempe, AZ

• Blanton Museum of Art at the University of Texas at Austin, TX

• El Museo del Barrio, New York, NY

• Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Puerto Rico, San Juan, PR

• Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, San Diego, CA

• National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

• National Museum of Mexican Art, Chicago, IL

• Newark Museum of Art; Newark, NJ

• Vincent Price Art Museum at East Los Angeles College, Los Angeles, CA

Forty-eight museums and visual arts organizations from the US and Puerto Rico, that have shown a commitment to collecting, studying, exhibiting, and engaging with Latinx art and artists, were invited to apply. Applications were reviewed by a panel of five experts in Latinx visual art and museums.

For more information on Advancing Latinx Art in Museums, visit the mellon.org/programs/arts-and-culture/faq-advancing-latinx-art-museums