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Retratos: 2,000 Years of Latin American Portraits is the first comprehensive exhibition of Latin American portraits, with approximately 115 paintings and sculptures drawn from the holdings of lead ing museums and private collections across Latin America, Europe, and the United States. In conjunction with the exhibition, a number of national and local education initiatives have been developed to provide a greater understanding of Latin American culture and history in each of the communities visited by the exhibition on its national tour.
This exhibition is organized by the San Antonio Museum of Art; the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.; and El Museo del Barrio, New York.
This project, and all related national and local programs and publications, are made possible by
Ford Motor Company Fund.
The education materials for this project have also received support from the Smithsonian Center for Latino Initiatives.
BILINGUAL EDUCATION MATERIALS
- Teacher Resource Guides will provide educators with materials and strategies for incorporating exhibition works and themes of identity into the classroom. The guides will include national education standards, historical and cultural background information, learning objectives, vocabulary terms, looking exercises, a timeline, and map of Latin America. Teachers will be encouraged to use this guide to explore connections between history, social studies, world geography, visual arts, and other disciplines as they relate to the exhibition.
- Family Guides will be available at each museum for parents and children to explore the exhibition together, answering questions to learn more about particular portraits through “Learning to Look” exercises and historical and cultural background information. “Hands-On @ Home” art projects for children and families will extend the lessons learned in each section of the exhibition through activities such as creating a family portrait gallery or a tin miniature frame.
- A web site (www.retratos.org) with additional content and images will reach audiences nationally. Materials from the Teacher Resource Guide will also be available online for use by educators across the nation.
NATIONAL PORTRAITS IN MOTION OUTREACH PROGRAM
A traveling art trunk community outreach project will accompany the Retratos exhibition at each venue on the national tour. The traveling trunk will contain six period costumes directly inspired by the clothing found in the exhibition. Three life-sized canvases will be painted and framed to use as backdrops for instant portrait sessions, produced on-site with a digital camera so that students and children will have an opportunity to take their self-portraits home the same day of their visit. The trunk will travel to sites throughout the community in the Ford Art Reach Van.
By dressing up in costumes, students and children will explore the concept of creating one’s identity through clothing choices, and will also learn to look closer at portraits for clues that detail the lives of the sitters and the time periods in which they lived. In addition, community schools will be encouraged to develop classroom exhibitions of the portraits created by their students.
In addition to these initiatives, each museum will host specialized programs and classroom outreach to directly benefit the local communities.
CLASSROOM AND MUSEUM PROGRAMS
El Museo del Barrio: Retratos Classroom Connections
In conjunction with their long-running “Classroom Connections” initiative, El Museo del Barrio will offer a series of programs for high school students throughout New York City. El Museo will develop a three-part artist-led program conducted both in the classroom and at the Museum. The program will link the thematic content of the Retratos exhibition with classroom curricula in social studies, English, and art, and will include a collaborative curriculum-planning session, two visits to the classroom by an artist educator, a visit to the Museum, and a final student portrait project. El Museo will also offer free admission to the Museum on Thursday evenings throughout the run of the exhibition and free exhibition tours to visitors during these extended hours.
El Museo will sponsor a series of educator workshops and open houses that will give local teachers strategies for incorporating Latin American history and art into their curricula. A Family Day will bring together families and residents of the community for bilingual guided tours, art workshops, and other free activities.
Bass Museum of Art
The Bass Museum of Art will present three education programs that will include projects for children and youth facilitated by professional artists using new media technology.
- Children and teens can create HeadScans – portraits without cameras – at the Bass Museum School of Art/Media Lab. Using a scanner as an all-in-one canvas, photo studio, and darkroom, participants will place their faces, heads, and hands directly on the scanner bed and import the resulting image into Photoshop to alter it and create a unique portrait. Students will be encouraged to add special objects that they carry in their pockets and backpacks to the portrait to create symbols of their identities.
- The Portrait of Miami program will allow teens from the Bass Museum ’s Art-to-Work program to travel to community and recreation centers during the summer and schools in September in a mobile digital photo studio. Using digital still cameras and laptop computers, teens will capture individual faces and neighborhood groups in Miami ’s Hispanic neighborhoods and hang them on painted backdrops at the centers, evoking portrait studios from the era of daguerreotypes to the present.
- Video Carta weekend events at the Bass Museum School of Art/Media Lab will provide families with an opportunity to create video letters to communicate with relatives in Latin America. They will receive easy hands-on demonstrations on how to use a digital video camera, edit their video letters, and email them to relatives.
COMMUNITY PORTAITURE EXHIBITIONS
San Antonio Museum of Art: Community Outreach Programs
The San Antonio Museum of Art, working in partnership with organizations across San Antonio, will present three community portrait exhibitions designed to reach teens, college students, and adult audiences.
- The San Antonio Central Library’s Youth (wired) program, an after-school teen initiative, will organize See Me: Mírame, a portrait exhibition introducing youth to concepts of portraiture using computer technology and literature. Through a museum visit and a series of workshops, students will create portraits of themselves or other members of the community for a web site and presentation in the community.
- Photographer Kathy Vargas, chair of the University of Incarnate Word (UIW) Art Department, will curate an exhibition of works by university students and/or a contemporary Latino photographer for the UIW’s gallery space, where it will be accessible to both university students and the general public.
- The Centro Cultural Aztlan will develop Nuestras Caras: Our Faces, an exhibition exploring self and community portraiture through paintings, sculpture, photography, printmaking and other media from a group of local and regional Latino artists.
San Diego Museum of Art: Young Art 2005: Portraiture
The San Diego Museum of Art will present Young Art 2005: Portraiture, a year-long series of activities culminating in an exhibition of San Diego County student works at the museum and in the community. Through Artist-in-Residence programs in county schools and educator workshops that will help teachers incorporate portraiture concepts into classroom curricula, the program will give the San Diego community an opportunity to explore its diverse history and cultural roots. During the exhibition, free lectures and tours will take place at the Museum, portraiture classes will be offered through the Museum Art School, and storytelling events related to the portraits on display will be held at the Museum and local libraries.
National Portrait Gallery: Retratos, Posing With Dignity: Portraits of a Community
The National Portrait Gallery will present Retratos, Posing With Dignity: Portraits of a Community, a local student photography project. The work of three Latino photographers from the National Portrait Gallery Collection – Osvaldo Salas, Jose Maria Mora, and Benedict Fernandez – will be used as a touchstone for Latino students to create their own photographic portraiture of themselves and others in their communities. The student works will then be developed, framed, and displayed at a local venue.
For further information or images, please contact:
Ilana B. Simon
Ph: 212-671-5176
Fax: 212-595-8354
Email: isimon@resnicowschroeder.com
Casey L. Barber
Ph: 212-671-5179
Fax: 212-595-8354
Email: cbarber@resnicowschroeder.com
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