Course Connections: Latin American Art

Florencia San Martín, Assistant Professor of Art History

Latin American Art (ART 227/LAS 227) introduces students to artistic practices and intellectual debates in Latin America developed since the independence period through the present. This course recognizes "Latin" America as a cultural and colonial construct that goes from Mexico to Tierra del Fuego, including the Caribbean, diasporic communities around the world, and the Latinx cultures of the United States. By critically examining these cultures through the lens of visual arts, students are exposed to trans-national debates about race, class, gender, sexuality, migration, and coloniality.

This course includes two study sessions at LUAG. LUAG holds a diverse collection of Latin American art that is unique in a U.S. university art museum, allowing students a first-hand opportunity to experience key works by well-known Latin American artists. Built over the course of forty-four years (from 1974 to 2018) by the late Cuban American artist, curator, and museum director Ricardo Viera, the collection, focuses on modern and contemporary photography, and includes works by internationally acclaimed artists such as Diego Rivera, Wifredo Lam, Magdalena Campos-Pons and Ana Mendieta.

Classes carefully observed each work in order to connect their style, subject matter, and historical / political contexts to a longer history of socially engaged artistic practices and discourses in Latin America.

See the works on display for yourself, including The Raft/La Balsa by Sandra Ramos Lorenzo (the featured artwork above), in the LUAG Lower Gallery.