The Unfolding Art History in Latin America Project – carried out through the Connecting Art Histories Initiative of the Getty Foundation in Los Angeles – is coordinated by the Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (UERJ, Rio de Janeiro) jointly with the Universidad San Martin (UNSAM, Buenos Aires) and the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM, Mexico City), with the Universidad San Francisco (USFQ, Quito), the Universidad de los Andes (Bogotá) and the Universidade Federal de São Paulo (UNIFESP) as partners. Its two main goals are the constitution of a Latin American academic sustainable network and the consolidation of the postgraduate and undergraduate programs in Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico, as well as their implementation in Colombia,and Ecuador.
The main theme of this project is the investigation of the transit of art objects, artistic practices, and art historical discourses in the visual arts in Latin America from 1800 to 1920 – the “long 19th century” - from the changes in the political status of former colonies to the modernization of cities, territories, bodies and minds. The concept of “unfolding”, as it is understood here, embraces that of reception in a broad sense, taking into account various forms of circulation of knowledge and visual values as, for example, crystallization, transmission, transmutation, transposition, borrowing, appropriation, and transformation. This expanded notion of reception is being examined in the realm of three Latin American artistic and art historical traditions - namely the classical, the modern, and non-Western traditions. The project does not aim at necessarily and exclusively studying objects of art produced on Latin American soil, but rather to investigate how these traditions have been changed and how they affected each other, surviving with different intensities and cultural power in the social space.
Unfolding Art History has two main lines of action. One, international meetings and seminars, conceived as arenas for an ample debate between professors, post-graduate students, and undergraduate students on the proposed themes. Two, six sessions of intensive one-week courses promoting interchange of professors, as well as the rotation of postgraduate and undergraduate students among the universities involved.
Arnaud Julien Pallière (Bordeaux, 1784-1862, France)
View of Rio de Janeiro, c. 1817-1826
Oil on canvas. Collection Fadel, Rio de Janeiro