Speaking on behalf of the librarians and staff of the Harvard University libraries, and especially on behalf of all of us here at the Fine Arts Library,
Welcome to the Department of History of Art & Architecture and Congratulations on your recent appointment to the HAA faculty! We are eager to serve and support your research and teaching endeavors at Harvard. As the Latin American Art & Architecture History subject librarian, my primary focus and priority is to assure that you -- and by extension, your graduate students and PhD candidates -- have access to the latest, highest quality scholarly resources available! So in anticipation of your arrival, I put together a list of recommended resources that recently have caught my eye:
1. Smarthistory, a newcomer to the Kahn Academy's constellation of educational resources and services,
and
2. Art History Teaching Resources (AHTR) are two relatively new pedagogical resource websites that have developed a set of prepared lessons/suggested lesson plans that guide users through the entire art historical canon spanning the ages from prehistory to the present day. Each lesson is painstakingly curated using a combination of scholarly essays, selections of representative art works usually with an online digital image, links to audiovisual materials providing further knowledge enhancement, and bibliographical lists of recommended supplementary reading. While not appropriate to your or your students' more advanced and expert research needs, these websites equip teachers of undergraduate-level introductory art history survey courses with many useful and necessary state-of-the-art resources and tools; for example, the Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History (courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art) and Jacqueline Barnitz' standard-setting college textbook -- an updated version available as of October 30, 2015 --
Twentieth-century art of Latin America: revised and expanded edition
The lessons that are relevant to the teaching of 19th and 20th century Latin American art history:
Art of the Americas After 1300
illustrate all too well the paucity of scholarly recognition and/or documentation of the contributions of Latin American artists in the 1800s and 1900s, with the scant coverage that exists focusing almost exclusively on Mexican artists! These omissions certainly provide fuel for lively discussion and debate!
In the category of New Additions to the WDL collections, I'd like to call attention to the February 18, 2015 contributions by the National Library of Colombia (Biblioteca Nacional de Colombia) from their Colección Comisión Corográfica of 19th century watercolors by Manuel Maria Paz (1820-1902) (17 items: http://www.wdl.org/en/item/9096-http://www.wdl.org/en/item/9112) and by Carmelo Fernández (1809-1887) (8 items: http://www.wdl.org/en/item/9113-http://www.wdl.org/en/item/9120).
Another fascinating collection that's new to WDL are the 966 political cartoons and caricatures drawn from the pages of the El Mosquito Newspaper Collection contributed by the National Library of Argentina (Biblioteca Nacional de la República Argentina).
4. Boundless Reality: Traveler artists' landscapes of Latin America An ongoing exhibition at Hunter College as part of the Cisneros Initiative for Latin American Art, supported by the Fundación Cisneros, Collección Patricia Phelps De Cisneros
5. Latin American Network Information Center (LANIC)
This self-described "Trusted Internet portal for Latin American Studies content since 1992" is veritably encyclopedic in scope and provides users three research pathways by which to navigate its vast holdings: Resource Guide by Subject, Resource Guide by Region (interactive map), and Digital Initiatives. Art, Architecture and Museums appear among the options listed under the Resource Guide by Subject's Humanities subcategory. The lengthy list of institutions and their links displayed under each of these headings are organized into three further groupings: Countries, Regional Resources, International... Although most of the links work and the comprehensive institutional directory is still up-to-date and authoritative as of this writing, LANIC's visitors are greeted with this disclaimer:
This self-described "Trusted Internet portal for Latin American Studies content since 1992" is veritably encyclopedic in scope and provides users three research pathways by which to navigate its vast holdings: Resource Guide by Subject, Resource Guide by Region (interactive map), and Digital Initiatives. Art, Architecture and Museums appear among the options listed under the Resource Guide by Subject's Humanities subcategory. The lengthy list of institutions and their links displayed under each of these headings are organized into three further groupings: Countries, Regional Resources, International... Although most of the links work and the comprehensive institutional directory is still up-to-date and authoritative as of this writing, LANIC's visitors are greeted with this disclaimer:
Please note that as of July 2015, this page is no longer being actively updated or maintained. The page remains at this address as an archival and research resource. If the page is updated in the future, this notice will be removed. You can view the history and evolution of this page by copying and pasting the URL above into the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine. You may also wish to consult the list of currently supported
6. LLILAS Benson Digital Collections.
6. LLILAS Benson Digital Collections.
7. International Center for the Arts of the Americas at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas -- Documents of 20th-century Latin American and Latino Art: A Digital Archive and Publication Project The ICAA@MFAH, like LANIC and LLILAS, is an invaluable and almost exhaustively comprehensive font of the representative 20th century art historical documentation from practically every country and region of Latin America and the Caribbean! Two of the latest News items that furnish good examples of this remarkable resource are:
- Now on view: The Adolpho Leirner Collection of Brazilian Constructive Art at the MFAH at Google Art Project! As of July of this year, this enormous collection
Perhaps the most exciting ongoing ICAA@MFAH project is the Critical Documents of 20th-Century Latin American and Latino Art (Book Series). The ICAA projects an ambitious 13 volumes of this anthology series comprising all the most seminal documents written by and/or about 20th century Latin American artists and the critical issues, aesthetic philosophies, manifestos, reviews, etc. that informed their art. The first volume, Resisting Categories: Latin American and/or Latino? was published in 2012; volume II, National Imaginaries/Cosmopolitan Identities, is scheduled for immanent publication at the end of 2015; and volume III, New World Geometric and Constructive Utopias, anticipates publication in Winter 2017. A PDF of the Table of Contents for volume I, Resisting Categories is available for download.
8. The constellation of institutions that make up The Getty have a couple of interesting projects from the last 5 years and many still in the offing:
Introduction by Dawn Ades
and
Surrealism in Latin America: Vivísimo Muerto
Edited by Dawn Ades, Rita Eder, and Graciela Speranza
This past exhibition (@Getty Research Institute -- GRI -- October 2, 2012-April 14, 2013) examined and celebrated three Parisian ex-patriot Surrealist writers and artists who founded the Dyn journal in Mexico City, and the Mexican Surrealists with whom they collaborated on the six Dyn issues that appeared from 1942 to 1944. You are invited to browse the exhibited works via a slideshow, and to take a virtual tour of the gallery. In addition, the webpage provides links to two related publications:
Annette Leddy and Donna Conwell
Introduction by Dawn Ades
and
Surrealism in Latin America: Vivísimo MuertoEdited by Dawn Ades, Rita Eder, and Graciela Speranza
and a plethora of multimedia links to material related directly to the exhibition or related to the broader theme of Surrealism in Latin America.
And two further Active Projects at the GRI piqued my interest:
Brazilian Art History
Reframing the narrative of art history in ways that respond to the specific conditions of Brazil, this project emphasizes the country's dynamic cultural encounters both internally and beyond its borders, as opposed to an older model that sought to identify what was essentially Brazilian about Brazilian art. Project participants are scholars of different periods of Brazilian art, ranging from precontact through the 20th century, and they specialize in media as diverse as feathers, architecture, painting, and new media. Outcomes Publication: The Art and Art Histories of Brazil: Reconnecting Traditions (forthcoming) |
The Material of Form: Abstraction and Industrialism in Mid-Century Argentina and Brazil
Outcomes
Workshop: forthcoming
Conference: forthcoming
Exhibition: forthcoming
Publications: forthcoming
9. These two Yale University LibGuides really stand out for the superior guidance, coverage, and usability they offer researching scholars:
and
Home - Arts Research in International Collections - LibGuides at Yale University / Latin America, Caribbean, & Iberia - Arts Research in International Collections - LibGuides at Yale University
A guide to international arts resources, with a focus on contemporary art and architecture.
10. MoMA Multimedia | Latin America in Construction: Architecture 1955-1980 - The Poetics of Development, pt. 1
and The Poetics of Development, pt. 2
A 2013 film project on 7 screens, simultaneously depicting architectural and cultural developments in 7 major Latin American cities:
and The Poetics of Development, pt. 2
A 2013 film project on 7 screens, simultaneously depicting architectural and cultural developments in 7 major Latin American cities:
Buenos Aires, Montevideo, São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Caracas, Havana, and Mexico City.
And there is so so much more still to evaluate, share, and discuss! I look forward so very much to working with you in the coming years!
Sincerely,
Teresa Peacock, Harvard Fine Arts Librarian
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