EAST LANSING, MICH.- The Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University (MSU Broad Art Museum) is proud to present Kahlo Without Borders, on view now through Aug. 7, 2022.
Curated by photographer, and Frida Kahlo’s grandniece, Cristina Kahlo, MSU Broad Art Museum executive director Dr. Mónica Ramírez-Montagut, and Javier Roque Vázquez Juárez, Kahlo Without Borders includes photographs and facsimiles from family archives belonging to Cristina Kahlo and other collections such as the Oaxaca Museum of Stamp Collecting (Museo de la Filatelia en Oaxaca), and never-before-seen medical archives from the Medical Center ABC in Mexico City, where Frida Kahlo was interned on several occasions.
"We are delighted to contribute to Frida Kahlo's scholarship by making important primary sources, her clinical files, publicly available for the first time,” explains Ramírez-Montagut. “Equally important is that from this evidence of health challenges, we revisit the tremendous respect and appreciation Frida Kahlo had for her healthcare providers, a roster of doctors and nurses who are now recognized, giving them due visibility."
Kahlo Without Borders seeks to connect museum visitors to the intimate and creative world of Frida Kahlo and her unique support system of close friends, family members, and health care providers. By blurring the boundaries between her internal and external worlds, the exhibition focuses on the time towards the end of her life when she was a patient at the Medical Center ABC.
Recently revealed documents pertaining to her final hospital stay are publicly on view for the first time and are of paramount interest equally to biographers, specialists in the field of art history, healthcare workers, and the public at large. This unexpected, interdisciplinary (boldly traversing the fields of art and healthcare) yet intimate approach to the worlds of Frida Kahlo will be presented as a journey through images, documents, and family and clinical archives. The journey is similar to an enthralling experience of browsing through a family scrapbook or a trunk of memories. These photographs, letters, and clinical files bear witness to Kahlo’s personal and health challenges encouraging the visitor to give consideration on how, from a hospital bed and through the power of creativity and self-expression, she transformed the history of art for the 20th century.
Exhibition Credits: Kahlo Without Borders is organized by Cristina Kahlo, MSU Broad Art Museum executive director Mónica Ramírez-Montagut, and Javier Roque Vázquez Juárez. Further exhibition support in Mexico was provided by Nuria Sadurni and Mariana Sainz. Support for this exhibition was provided by MSU Broad Art Museum advisory board member Hari Kern, MSU Federal Credit Union Artist Studio Series Endowment, and the Eli and Edythe Broad endowed exhibitions fund. For this exhibition at the MSU Broad Art Museum curatorial assistance was provided by Dalina A. Perdomo Álvarez, curatorial assistant, and some translations were done by MSU student Cristina Alcantar.
The Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University (MSU Broad Art Museum) connects people with art through experiences that inspire curiosity and inquiry. Presenting exhibitions and programs that engage diverse communities around issues of local relevance and global significance, the MSU Broad advances the University values of quality, inclusion, and connectivity. Opened on November 10, 2012, the museum was designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Zaha Hadid and named in honor of Eli and Edythe Broad, longtime supporters of the university who provided the lead gift of $28 million.
Michigan State University has been working to advance the common good in uncommon ways for more than 150 years. One of the top research universities in the world, MSU focuses its vast resources on creating solutions to some of the world’s most pressing challenges, while providing life-changing opportunities to a diverse and inclusive academic community through more than 200 programs of study in 17 degree-granting colleges.
