Join International Arts & Artists (IA&A) and Art Museum of the Americas (AMA) for Modern Movements Symposium—a convening of emerging scholars exploring the transnational exchanges, cultural diplomacy, and artistic innovations that shaped Latin American and Caribbean modern and contemporary art. This symposium accompanies the DC-based exhibition Modern Movements: Selections of Latin American and Caribbean Art from the Art Museum of the Americas (April 4 through May 31, 2026) on view at IA&A at Hillyer in Washington, DC. Visit our website to learn more.
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SYMPOSIUM SCHEDULE
SESSION ONE: MODERNISM AND ITS DISCONTENTS
9:00
Welcome and Introduction
9:30 am
Alejandro Soto Chaves
Three Theses on Central American (Modernist) Abstraction, 1936-1967
9:45 am
Ronan Shaw, The Face of Modernity: Germán Cueto’s Geometric Abstraction
10:00 am
Ginevra Bria, Against Modernist Primitivism: Cildo Meireles’s Cruzeiro do Sul (1969-70) and “The Savage Slot”
10:15 am
Marco Polo Juarez Cruz , Latin American or Latinoamericano? Reframing Hemispheric Modernism
10:30 am
Q and A
11:00 am
Break
SESSION TWO: REFRAMING THE HEMISPHERE
11:10 am
Panel Introduction
11:15 am
Ayelen Pagnanelli, Sarah Grilo and the Success of Women’s Abstraction
11:30 am
Rachel Remick, Ideas of Brazil: Maria Martins Art and Reception in the United States
11:45 am
Carlos Antonio-Colón, The Latin American Voice: Tracing the Relational Voice in the Work of Fernando de Szyszlo and Jesús Rafael Soto
12:00 pm
Q&A
12:30 pm
Break
SESSION THREE: INSTITUTIONS, EXHIBITIONS, AND CULTURAL DIPLOMACY
1:00 pm
Panel Introduction
1:15 pm
Sol Izquierdo, Andean Handicrafts at the Pan American Union: Elena Eleska and Cold war Cultural exchange
1:30 pm
Anamaría Garzón Mantilla, Exhibiting Precolombinismo: Ecuadorian Abstraction at the Pan American
1:45 pm
Abigail Lapin Dardashti, (De)materialized Archive: Brazil’s Exhibition at FESTAC and the Underpinnings of Afro-Brazilian Art History
2:00 pm
Q&A
2:30 pm
End and closing remarks
