NEW YORK.- Beyond Geography: Forty Years of Visual Arts at the Americas Society, an archival exhibition presenting paintings, sculptures, photographs, videos, installations and archival materials linking the organization’s history to crucial moments of art production in the Americas, will open July 14 at the Americas Society. The exhibition will launch the celebration of the Americas Society’s 40th Anniversary and features over 30 artworks and significant documents by artists from Canada, the Caribbean, Latin America and the U.S., all relating to the gallery’s history.

Founded by David Rockefeller in 1965, the Americas Society promotes the understanding of the political, economic, and cultural issues that define and challenge the Americas today. In his book Memoirs, Mr. Rockefeller noted that the Americas Society played a major role in introducing “New Yorkers and other Americans to the diversity, beauty, and sophistication of Latin American artists, musicians, and writers. Among (its) activities the (Americas Society) held the first one-man show in New York for Fernando Botero, the great Colombian painter; [and] sponsored the first New York auction of Latin American art at Sotheby’s, which inspired both Sotheby’s and Christie’s to begin their own auctions of Latin American art.” (Random House, 2002)

This retrospective exhibition takes the Americas Society’s mission statement as its conceptual core and explores its transformation through time. It examines the points of origin of collecting art from the Americas in the U.S., the institutionalization of this art, and its introduction to the public through exhibitions, public events and publications produced by the Americas Society over the past 40 years. Drawing on the gallery’s history of exhibiting Pre-Columbian, Colonial, Modern and Contemporary art, the exhibition gives special emphasis to themes of identity and to the specific achievements of the neo-avant-garde movement that expanded the Americas Society’s mission beyond nationalistic and geographic constructions.

Works on view include emblematic prints by Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siquieros and Omar Rayo. A painting by Fernando Botero references his first one-man exhibition at the Americas Society. Other groundbreaking works that will return to the gallery for this historic exhibition include Wilfredo Lam’s Ceux de la Porte Battante (1945), Kim Dingle’s Maps of the U.S. Drawn from Memory by Las Vegas Teenagers (1990) and Pietá by Melchor Pérez Holguín (c.1720). Portraits and documentary photography by Manuel Alvarez Bravo, Martin Chambi, Burt Glinn and Geneviève Cadieux are included, as well as works by Willys de Castro, Cesar Paternosto and Jo Baer, exhibited here for the first time. Experimental works that helped to build the Americas Society’s prestige as a visionary institution will also be presented, including Gego’s Tronco and her preparatory drawings for the Reticularárea (1969-70), Michael Snow’s W in the D (1971), archival materials of Marta Minujin’s performance Minucode (1967) and Eduardo Costa, John Perrault and Hannah Weiner’s Fashion Show Poetry Event (1969), as well as Juan Downey’s Map of Chile (1973).

Organized in three non-chronological sections, Beyond Geography reexamines the ideas, projects, and cultural agencies that emerged during the Cold War and were decisive in making visible art from Latin America, the Caribbean and Canada in New York. The section Points of Origin reflects the pivotal position of the Rockefeller family –most especially Nelson-- as pioneer collectors of Latin American art in the U.S. It includes works such as the prints by Diego Rivera, Omar Rayo and David Alfaro Siqueiros purchased through the endowment instituted by the Rockefellers as the Inter-American Purchase Fund at the MoMA. An Inca mask and Maya polychrome vase refer to past exhibitions, as well as new developments in scholarship and shifting notions of these objects from ethnographic material to art object. The Pietà by Potosi master Melchor Pérez Holguín marks the Americas Society’s outstanding exhibitions of Colonial Art that helped to set precedents for this field in the U.S. Wilfredo Lam’s 1945 Ceux de la Porte Battante, was displayed in the gallery in 1979 as part of the first Latin American Art auction in New York, proposed and co-organized by collector Barbara Duncan at the Americas Society’s gallery for Sotheby Parke Bernet Inc.