For one of the largest exhibitions in its history, the MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst Frankfurt am Main is cooperating with the Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires (Moderno) in Argentina.
The presentation includes 500 works from private and public collections by over 100 artists from Latin America, the USA and Europe.
The exhibition is dedicated to the dialogue between two artistic movements in Western contemporary art from the 1940s to the 1980s: the European-North American canon and the experimental art of Latin America. The project, which primarily takes a Latin American look at art, was conceived over the past year and a half in close collaboration between Buenos Aires and Frankfurt. Never before have curators of Latin American art been invited to question and re-evaluate the collection of a European museum to such an extent. With this project, the MMK is responding to the call of the German Federal Cultural Foundation for major museums in Germany to put their collections into a global perspective.
For several years now, the MMK has been opening up to non-Western perspectives of international contemporary art in its exhibition program and collection policy, critically examining the changing socio-political conditions under which art is created in a globalized world.
The interwoven perspectives of two continents and cultures that become clear in A Tale of Two Worlds give MMK the opportunity to see its own collection in a new light. Although the works on display were created under a wide variety of political, economic and historical conditions, the exhibition reveals remarkable parallels in developments, points of intersection and internal contradictions.
While most of the works on display in the MMK collection date from the 1960s and 70s, the Latin American works span a longer period: the oldest works were created in 1944, the year Concrete Art began in Argentina, and the most recent works date from the late 1980s, which marked the end of Latin America's last military dictatorships. By juxtaposing numerous avant-garde works by Latin American, European, and U.S. artists, an attempt is made to pinpoint the turning point between modern and contemporary art.
Mutual sympathies, shared interests, and intellectual connections among artists from different parts of the world are illuminated, as are the challenges and tensions inherent in cultural exchange between regions with diverse historical backgrounds.
Crucial to the project is the close collaboration between the curators of the Moderno and the MMK: both institutions allow their previous views of art to be reassessed and, as a result, their collections tell stories never heard before. This process allows the museums to rethink their content positioning and collection traditions, as well as recent art history itself.
Image: Cildo Meireles, Inserções em circuitos ideológicos: 1- Projeto Coca-Cola, 1970, Daros Latinamerica Collection, Zurich, Photo: Dominique Uldry, Bern, © Cildo Meireles
Source and further information: http://mmk-frankfurt.en/en/nc/exhibitions/exhibition-details/article/a_tale_of_two_worlds_experimental_art_latin_america_in_dialogue_with_the_collection_of_mmk/
