Archiving Latin American Art
There’s a new resource for artists and art historians looking for information on Latin American art. The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and several other organizations teamed up to preserve “the stories behind Latino art” (see New York Times article here). What they’ve created is a database of written materials that relate to Latin American art. These are the scraps of paper that surround art: preliminary sketches for artwork, notes and diaries by artists, flyers advertising new exhibitions. The new database will digitize and preserve all these items.
The motivation behind the creation of this database is to preserve the context of the art world. While artwork is carefully preserved in museums or collections, paperwork is usually thrown away. That’s unfortunate because that paperwork tells the story of how the art was created, who was involved, where it was shown, and why all of that happened.
The best part of the new database is that it’s available online and for free. So go check it out here!