Victoria Noorthoorn

CIMAM 2018 Annual Conference, Stockholm
Day 1, Moderna Museet
Keynote 02: Victoria Noorthoorn, Director, Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires, Argentina.

The Proud South Mouth: Local Museums Rewrite World Art History

The Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires was founded in 1956 by critic Rafael Squirru with the aim of giving local and international visibility to the Argentine avant-garde community of the time, which included not only the visual arts but also the music, dance, literature and theatre scenes. Early on, Squirru established the Moderno as a museum of reference in the South Cone. The strength of the Museum drew from the vibrant artistic community that it had come to serve: a large community of experimental artists proud of their own roots who had come to develop poetics and proposals in critical dialogue with the world.

Today, 62 years later, the Moderno continues to affirm that path. Drawing its strength from the local scene, the Museum presents exhibitions and programs by Argentine artists whereby the diverse shows simultaneously on view may also include artists from afar who we believe enrich the conversation. In all cases, the Museum’s choice is to curate and edit all content in-house, be it by the Museum’s curatorial and editorial teams or by the Museum’s teams in conversation with the institutions it collaborates with, where the intention is to re-write the history of art from a Southern perspective.

From the Moderno’s current point of view, there are no major and minor artistic movements. There are powerful artistic currents that have at times run parallel, at others crossed or joined: independent in their identities and interactions with their diverse realities; interdependent in their collaborations, conversations and debates. In this new view of art history, Latin American art or Argentine art are not here to complete or complement, or check the box of difference, but to conform, in a fraternal equality that does not preclude rivalry, an art both global and diverse, combative and democratic.

Biography

Victoria Noorthoorn is the Director of the Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires where she has led a process of expansion and renovation of this historical institution founded in 1956, that today holds a collection of 7000 works with a strong focus on Argentine art.

In the past, she was Projects Coordinator of the International Program at MoMA; Assistant Curator of Contemporary Exhibitions at The Drawing Center; and Curator at Malba-Fundación Costantini in Buenos Aires. As an independent curator between 2004 and 2012, she curated the Biennales of Pontevedra (2006), Mercosul (2009) and Lyon (2011), among many other exhibitions. In 2011, she was nominated finalist for The Walter Hopps Award for Curatorial Excellence. In 2014, she was selected to attend the Global Museum Leaders Colloquium organized by The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Today, she celebrates the reopening of the new wing of the Moderno with the exhibition A Tale of Two Worlds: Experimental Latin American Art in Dialogue with the MMK Collection, 1940s-1980s, which includes 500 works by 100 artists from Latin America, Europe, and the United States, organized in collaboration with the MMK in Frankfurt.