ONLINE PRESS RELEASE AND OTHER RESOURCES

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
August 1, 2016
Additional images available

CONTACT:
Greg Svitil | T: 202.370.0147
[email protected] | AMAmuseum.org

AMA | ART MUSEUM OF THE AMERICAS
Organization of American States (OAS)
Secretariat for Hemispheric Affairs (SHA)

201 18th Street, NW
Washington, DC 20006

Muchedumbre: Photography by Jorge Brantmayer
On view August 18-October 9, 2016

José Gómez Sicre’s Eye: Works from AMA’s Collection
On view August 18, 2016-August 6, 2017

Opening Reception: Thursday, August 18, 2016 6-8pm

WASHINGTON, DC – The OAS AMA | Art Museum of the Americas presents Muchedumbre: Photography by Jorge Brantmayer, a contemporary art exhibition organized with the Embassy of Chile in Washington DC. This exhibition is curated by art historian Camilo Yañez. Simultaneously, AMA presents José Gómez Sicre’s Eye: Works from AMA’s Collection, a selection of outstanding works from its revered collection of modern and contemporary art of the Americas. These exhibitions are part of AMA’s celebration of the birth centennial of its founding director, Cuban-born José Gómez Sicre.

Muchedumbre (crowd) is a large-scale and ongoing photographic archive. With this work-in-progress, Brantmayer aims to document social and cultural connections among Chilean people today. The work pretends to unveil, through detailed portraiture, the micro untold stories of each citizen photographed.

Muchedumbre reviews collective identity, both visual and anthropological. Brantmayer has recorded the portraits in different moments of contemporary Chilean history. However, they each record a similar glance, method, lighting, and framing. Artists, slum dwellers, hapless individuals, the congenitally blind, civil servants, people suffering from illness, sex workers, scholars, politicians, beauty queens, poets, housemaids, beggars, students, media workers, people devoted to spirituality and religion, people who are cross-dressing, environmentalists and land advocates, vegans and naturists, athletes, firefighters, boy scouts, paramedics, and caretakers.

Muchedumbre constitutes a visual and ethnographic cadastre which establishes a “natural” relationship with each human being’s search for identity. To show this vast typological archive of Chilean faces in the United States exposes the glances, desires, and hopes of one people to another, from one culture to another, from one human being to another.

With these projects, the OAS aims to bring nations together through art and culture.

A half-century ago, Cuban-born curator José Gómez-Sicre took the reins of the OAS’s art program, thrusting himself head-on into the rapidly expanding Latin American art world, bringing young and emerging talent to the OAS’s budding exhibition space. Impassioned by the arts, Gomez-Sicre planted the seeds of what is today considered among world’s finest collections of modern and contemporary Latin American and Caribbean art. AMA will be celebrating the centennial of Gómez-Sicre’s birth throughout 2016, honoring his contribution to the legacy of art of the Hemisphere.

In addition to the exhibition, on September 15, 2016 AMA will host a symposium that will seek to juxtapose Gómez-Sicre’s promotion of Cuban art and the efforts scholars, modern and contemporary art museums and other institutions, both in Cuba and the United States, are making to support of contemporary Cuban art.

The OAS AMA | Art Museum of the Americas is part of the Organization of American States and its Secretariat for Hemispheric Affairs. AMA’s work is based on the principle that the arts are transformative for individuals and communities. AMA promotes the core values of the OAS by providing a space for cultural expression, creativity, and learning, highlighting themes such as democracy, development, human rights, justice, freedom of expression, and innovation. AMA’s work advances the inter-American agenda, drawing on the arts to showcase a constructive vision of the future of the Americas via local and hemispheric cultural exchange. This is achieved by showcasing cutting-edge exhibits of artists whose output creatively combine aesthetics with topical social and political issues.

For more information on AMA, please visit AMAmuseum.org

Accessibility: AMA’s first floor is wheelchair accessible by a ramp that our security officers install per use, at the back entrance to the museum. There is a gravel pathway leading to the back entrance. There is one half-step leading from the first room into the first-floor galleries. There is a flight of winding stairs leading to the museum’s second floor. Restrooms are located on the second floor. For more information on accessibility, please contact 202 370 0147 or [email protected]