Luis Camnitzer - Connection To El Museo Del Barrio

Connection To El Museo Del Barrio

In many ways, Luis Camnitzer’s career reflects El Museo del Barrio’s own trajectory. Camnitzer arrived in New York just before the Museum’s founding, immediately joining the fomenting dialogue about representation and culture at that time, including pivotal roles in the city -based New York Graphic Workshop, Museo Latinoamericano, and Movimiento por la Independencia Cultural de América (MICLA). On one hand, The New York Graphic Workshop (founded by Camnitzer, José Guillermo Castillo, and Liliana Porter, 1964-1970) sought to redefine art objects in Conceptual terms through printmaking by creating disposable, serial objects whose ideas invoked accessibility and participation. On the other hand, artists in New York founded the Museo Latinoamericano and MICLA in 1971, to respond to the way they were being represented, share resources, and later, join forces internationally to object to dictatorships or repression in Latin America and the Caribbean.

For nearly five decades, Camnitzer has persevered as an influential creator, critic, writer, theorist, teacher, and curator—a true “artist’s artist.” His activism on many fronts mirrors the political, social, economic, and artistic challenges that have faced our broader communities over this time. His life has been lived in Spanish and English, crossing artistic and cultural boundaries and troubling any stereotypes of what a “Latin American” artist should be.

El Museo has featured Camnitzer’s work in many past exhibitions. Of particular note is his retrospective Luis Camnitzer (2011) organized by Daros Latinamerica, his solo exhibition, AMANAPLANACANALPANAMA in 1995, as well as the presentation of his Uruguayan Torture Series (1983) in The Disappeared (1997), an exhibition organized by the North Dakota Museum of Art. Camnitzer also co-curated an exhibition for El Museo with Lowery Stokes Sims, The Latino Papers: Posters, Prints and Works on Paper from El Museo del Barrio's Permanent Collection (1994), presented at the Equitable Gallery, NY. In addition, El Museo holds in public trust several of his works in its own Permanent Collection.