“Cultivate. Tribute to Carla Stellweg” and “The Paradoxes of Internationalism (narrated by the collection of the Tamayo Museum) Part I” are the two exhibitions that can now be visited at the Tamayo Museum of Contemporary Art, created in commemoration of the 42nd anniversary of the venue, inaugurated on May 29, 1981.
Curated by Pablo León de la Barra and Andrea Valencia, deputy director of the Tamayo Museum, “Cultivate. Tribute to Carla Stellweg” is an exhibition that showcases the relevance of the cultural manager and curator in Mexico, who also served as the deputy director of the museum.
The other exhibition, “The Paradoxes of Internationalism (narrated by the collection of the Tamayo Museum) Part I,” curated by Kate Fowle in collaboration with Andrea Valencia, brings together the work of over 60 internationally renowned artists such as Francis Bacon, Yto Barrada, Louise Bourgeois, Mariana Castillo Deball, Johan Grimonprez, René Magritte, Teresa Margolles, Larry Rivers, Antoni Tàpies, Francisco Toledo, Bruno Serralongue, Rufino Tamayo himself, among others.
In an exclusive interview with La Verdad Noticias, the deputy director of the Tamayo Museum, Andrea Valencia, and curator Pablo León de la Barra, spoke about the relevance of the Indonesian-born cultural manager.
“Carla Stellweg has a fundamental importance in the history of art in Mexico and in how the art scene has developed over the past 40 years. She introduced multiple artistic practices and presented the work of artists who were working in the United States in Mexico through the newspaper Excélsior,” said Valencia.
The deputy director of the museum, who supported the curation of both exhibitions, also emphasized that “with her work as an editor, writer, critic, coordinator, and manager in the magazine Artes Visuales, she also provided a platform for artists and thinkers to exhibit and showcase their work as well as delve into the current issues.”
For his part, renowned curator Pablo León de la Barra spoke about Stellweg’s importance for the Tamayo Museum since its foundation: “She worked very closely with Rufino Tamayo to form the collection and bring in the first artworks while she served as the deputy director of the institution.”
As a hypothetical scenario, León de la Barra contemplated a feminist approach to art and how Stellweg could have intervened: “We thought about what other museum Carla could have created if she had brought those ideas that she was already cultivating in Artes Visuales and if she had continued in this museum. We imagined a museum that would be more feminist, with a greater presence of women artists, not just ‘macho’ American and European male artists, but opening up the idea of what the museum could have been back then.”
“Based on this, she went to New York and continued to establish connections between Latin American artists and the New York art world. She became extremely important in matters of gender, feminism, and was one of the first to think about what Chicano art is and to create connections with it as well. She continued to forge connections and cultivate,” de la Barra concluded.
TYT Newsroom
