Transformative Gift to the Museum of Modern Art, NY: Modern art gift and the creation of the Cisneros Institute

Introduction
On October 17, 2016 The Museum of Modern Art announced a major two-part gift from the Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros (CPPC). Comprising almost 150 works of modern Latin American art as well as the establishment of a research institute at MoMA, the gift will deepen understanding of the integral role played by Latin America in the history of modern and contemporary art.

CPPC Gift to MoMA
The donated artworks encompass examples of modern art by important Latin American artists, made between the 1940s and 1990s. The artists represented in this gift were working in the language of geometric abstraction in Brazil, Venezuela, Argentina, and Uruguay, and include Lygia Clark, Hélio Oiticica, Lygia Pape, Jesús Rafael Soto, Alejandro Otero, and Tomás Maldonado, among others. The paintings, sculptures, and works on paper add to MoMA’s significant holdings of art from Latin America. Together, these almost 150 works reveal a whole chapter of international Modernism, allowing a more complex understanding of Modern Art as an international, multifaceted movement.

Cisneros Institute
A complementary component to the gift of artworks is the establishment of a research institute devoted to the study and interpretation of modern and contemporary art from Latin America. The Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Research Institute for the Study of Art from Latin America (Cisneros Institute) will be located on MoMA’s campus. The Cisneros Institute will support curatorial research and travel, host visiting scholars and artists, convene an annual international conference, and produce research publications on art from Latin America. Poised to become the preeminent research center in the field of Latin American art, it will build on MoMA’s history of collection, exhibition, and study of the art and artists of the region. The Cisneros Institute will foster long-term strategic partnerships with other art institutions throughout the world that are interested in Latin American culture, and will publish, in both printed and digital formats, the results of its research, making its findings available to a broad audience. The Cisneros Institute will further develop the program of research conducted by the Latin American component of C-MAP (Contemporary and Modern Art Perspectives in a Global Age), which MoMA initiated in 2009, and will facilitate the initiatives of the Museum’s Latin American and Caribbean Fund in providing for the study of works of art.

Featured Press
A selection of featured press:

The New York Times, 102 Latin American Artworks, and a New Institute, Will Go to the Modern (October 17, 2016)

The Wall Street Journal, Cisneros Gift to MoMA Will Boost Latin American Holdings, Research (October 17, 2016)

The Economist, An important gift will transform MoMA's holdings of Latin American art (October 17, 2016)

Forbes Mexico, Libertad y espiritualidad, estandartes de Patricia Phelps de Cisneros (June 27, 2018)

Terremoto, Entrevista a Glenn Lowry, director del Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), Nueva York (March 9, 2019)