In the Fall of 2001, Patty spoke with Paulo Herkenhoff about the Colección's origins, artmaking across the region, and Latin America's rich cultural heritage. Herkenhoff, a leading Latin American art scholar, is an Adjunct Curator at the Museum of Modern Art, New York and was the Artistic Director of the XXIV Sao Paulo Biennial (1998).

Paulo Herkenhoff: The Cisneros Group of Companies, the Fundación Cisneros, and the family itself are tightly interlinked. But in each case, there has been a process of defining certain aims, a mission, which we could describe as social. There exists an implicit goal of serving society in some way.

Patricia Phelps de Cisneros: The collection itself has, in effect, a social responsibility. We are very proud of our Latin American heritage, and it's up to us to preserve this heritage and tell the world about it, especially in the context of the current process of globalization. The collection aims to show the world that there is a Latin American art that doesn't fall within the stereotypes, an art that is not necessarily figurative, dramatic, or colorful. I want to show people that there is a refinement, an elegance of thought in Latin America, which has not been appreciated until now, either because people have not known about it or have not wanted to know about it.

PH: The pleasure of collecting is a personal experience. But collecting is also a learning process. Turning to the beginning of the Colección Cisneros, how did you acquire the first artwork?

PPC: It was only after many years of acquiring works according to a certain aesthetic that we thought, "This is a collection." Up until then, we had simply enjoyed the privilege of being able to live surrounded by beautiful things. In Latin America, where life is often tumultuous, this privilege is a very precious one.

Gustavo and I saw the first piece in Madrid, in 1970 or 1971. We had just gotten married. It was by a young Spaniard, Manuel Rivera. That small abstract piece was the beginning of the collection of geometric abstract art.

Sometimes I ask myself why the collection is so strongly rooted in geometric abstraction. I am very sensitive to the intellectual basis of these works and I believe that this symmetry, this sense of order, this precision, is something our society desires profoundly.

PH: I am thinking about the relationship that exists between the geometric style and our society, a very unstable society, with huge social differences. We always find that in Latin America, the rationality at the heart of geometric abstraction is tied to social values. We can see that in Gego, in Hélio Oiticica.

PPC: Yes, look at Oiticica. His works are often very formal, but they have earth, they have the colors of the shanty towns. These are the references to place. They are abstract works, but they are of the body - terribly so. As far as I know, this is only found in South America. Artworks may have the precision of abstraction or geometric form, but with a great sensuality, as well as all of the intellectual process that influences our perception of the piece.

The economic boom of the '50s in Venezuela was reflected in art, and there was also an extremely important architectural explosion. We grew up and thrived with that universal, modernist architecture. When I was going to school in Caracas, every day I would pass by murals by Jesús Rafael Soto and Carlos Cruz-Diez. At the exhibition of works from the Colección Cisneros at the Fogg Museum at Harvard, people looking at the works from the collection, looking at, for example, a work by Soto or Lygia Pape, would say, "This is Latin American art? What a surprise; how wonderful!"

We, on the other hand, grew up with pieces such as these, and they were part of our daily perception, our sensibility. Those people were experiencing the same thing I did when I went to Germany as a teenager and visited the Baroque churches. I was fascinated by how exotic the Baroque style was. The first time I saw a Titian I was spellbound. The same thing is happening now with Latin American art. Our perceptions are becoming globalized, and the world is discovering our art. This is not a fashion, because fashions go out of style. This discovery will retain its importance. It's here to stay.

PH: Traditionally, Latin American collections are national collections. The Venezuelans collect Venezuelan art, the Brazilians collect Brazilian art. Until now, collections did not take on the process of linking the art of each country with Latin American art in general. However, a Latin American focus is part of the Colección Cisneros.

PPC: That is 100 percent due to my husband, Gustavo. He has always had the vision to see Latin America as a whole, a marvelous whole, with great richness and diversity. He has never thought of only one country. Of course, we are Venezuelans; we love Venezuela and the Venezuelan collection is in itself complete and important. But the interesting thing is always seeing how the different countries of the continent have related to one another.

PH: Throughout your work as a collector, you have conveyed that each Latin American country has its own intellectual life, its peculiarity, and that specific movements exist within each country. This understanding is what allows us to uncover and communicate the fact that Latin American art has been left out of the history of Western art.

PPC: These are two faces of the same coin. On one hand, within Latin America, we have to get to know each other, with our differences. On the other hand, each country should be better known outside Latin America. I believe it is very important that people be able to appreciate the different qualitites of each country, that people can tell the difference between a piece of art made in Colombia or Brazil or Chile. We are not talking about a Latin American culture that is all the same. We don't want Latin American art to be seen like that. In fact, it bothers me very much that people talk about Latin American art in that way, which is as absurd as talking about a European art.

Why is Latin American art so unknown in the United States? Art teachers had not had the opportunity to see Latin American art and study it, so they were not teaching it in schools. Now they are. Previously you couldn't ask museum directors, curators, historians to talk about our art, because nobody was teaching it in schools, but that's changing. We must make the works more accessible to the people who want to see them. That's where our responsibility lies. None of the works in the collection stays in our home very long. They travel everywhere so they can been seen.

PH: There is a right to art just as there is a right to citizenship. This has to do with the strategy of promoting Latin American art. This is a social act, with the same importance for a child in a local neighborhood as for a Harvard scholar.

PPC: The collection is setting out to contribute both to the education of children in our schools and to training art historians and curators in other places in the world. In order to give people the opportunity to get to know our art, we are developing a program of loans to places like Harvard and the University of Texas in Austin, and we are holding exhibitions, giving seminars, and publishing books. At the same time, at the level of primary education, we are developing an educational program of visual thought with the Museum of Modern Art in New York, in which more than 3,500 children from Caracas schools are already participating.

The children, all from the fourth and fifth grades, have had very little previous opportunity to see works of art. They are able to have group discussions about works from our collection, from the Galería de Arte Nacional of Venezuela and MoMA, which they see on slides, and form their own interpretation of the works. The analytical skills the students acquire through these visual appreciation activities are useful to them in their schoolwork and their personal lives. The program has been very successful, and the teachers are very excited about it.

As you well know, in Latin America we are following the process toward democracy very carefully, and one of the bases of democracy is freedom of thought and expression. I believe that art teaches children to think for themselves, and that it also teaches them there are different forms of self-expression.

PH: In the Colección Cisneros, Latin American art is linked to the history of Western art, and is a product of the region, as well as a product of the individuality of the artist. This affirms the existence of a tradition that artists pass on from one to another.

PPC: There are commonalities among European and Latin American art masters, and it is evident that Europeans have truly been influenced by Latin American artists. Part of the educational mission of the Colección is to make this connection so people see that there really was a flow of ideas, and that art from Latin America is not a derivative art.

The Fundación Cisneros has several different collections, such as the Orinoco collection, which brings together ethnographic objects collected over 30 years during expeditions in the Venezuelan Amazon; the collection of Latin American landscape painting; and the collection of Latin American modernist and contemporary art. These are different aspects of Latin American culture.

What is the common thread that runs through all this? A love of our roots, and a determination to look after our historical heritage. To get to know it, to study it, and of course, to promote it around the world. All of this stems from an immense love of our culture.