PRESS RELEASE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: June 2, 1997
Media Contact: Samantha Cheek, Public Relations Assistant, 512-232-1988
Curator of Latin American Art
Awarded Prestigious Grant
The Archer M. Huntington's acclaimed Curator of Latin American Art, Mari Carmen Ramirez, was awarded a 1997 Peter Norton Family Foundation Curator's Grant. Dr. Ramirez will receive $50,000 toward art acquisitions for the Huntington's nationally recognized Collection of Contemporary Latin American Art and relevant exhibitions.
"The Norton Family Grant will allow me to further my curatorial vision for the Huntington's collection at a time when this institution is about to enter into a new era signaled by a brand new building and a renewed sense of purpose and identity" Dr. Ramirez states. "I thus look forward to purchasing works by contemporary Latin American artists that will significantly enhance the collection while celebrating this period of accomplishment."
Dr. Ramirez has been Curator of Latin American Art at the Huntington since 1988. Prior to this position, she was Director of the Museum of Anthropology, History and Art at the University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras (1985 - 1988). She has curated numerous exhibitions and published extensively on the topic of modern and contemporary Latin American art. She has organized internationally traveling exhibitions such as The School of the South: El Taller Torres Garcia and Its Legacy (1991) and Re-Aligning Vision: Alternative Currents in South American Drawing which opened May 7th at El Museo del Barrio in New York City and will travel to Austin January 1998. She was also selected as Special Curator for Latin America for the 1996 Bienal de São Paulo and is currently a co-curator for the exhibition Global Conceptualism (to open at the Queens Museum of Art, New York in 1999). Dr. Ramirez holds her Ph.D. in art history from the University of Chicago.
This is the ninth year of the Peter Norton Family Foundation's Curator Grants Program. The program is designed to support the work of innovative curators by providing resources for contemporary art acquisitions and exhibitions. This year's other recipient is Ellen Lupton of the Cooper-Hewitt, National Museum of Design in New York City.
BACKGROUND INFORMATION
The Archer M. Huntington Art Gallery at The University of Texas at Austin, with a permanent collection of approximately 12,000 works of art, is among the most respected university art museums in the nation. With its encyclopedic collections and wide range of touring exhibitions and educational programs, the Huntington also serves as the only comprehensive fine arts museum in central Texas.
The museum has two locations on the University of Texas campus. The Huntington Art Gallery presents permanent exhibitions with important selections drawn from its collections of twentieth-century American art, Western American art, contemporary Latin American art, European painting and sculpture and antiquities in its gallery space on the first and second floors of the Harry Ransom Center building on the corner of 21st and Guadalupe. The Huntington¹s permanent collections of prints and drawings and changing temporary exhibitions are located in its gallery space in the Art Building at 23rd and San Jacinto.
Admission to all exhibitions is free. All galleries have barrier free access. The gallery is open Monday through Saturday 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sunday 1 to 5 p.m. The gallery is closed on all University holidays. For more information, please call (512) 471-7324.
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