Buffalo AKG announces Let Us Gather in a Flourishing Way, a new exhibition of contemporary Latinx painting
David Antonio Cruz, iknowyou’vebeenwonderingwherei’vebeen:adrift,adraft,astare,atilt,asigh, exhale.but,icamebacktoletyouknow,gotathingforyou,andican’tletitgo_the raft., 2024. Oil, acrylic, and ink on wood panel. Two panels, each 72 × 48 in. (188 × 121.9 cm). Overall 72 × 98 1/2 in. (188 × 250.2 cm). Collection of Igor DaCosta. Photo: Robert Chase Heishman, courtesy of the artist and Monique Meloche Gallery, Chicago.
BUFFALO, NY.—
The Buffalo AKG Art Museum announced Let Us Gather in a Flourishing Way, an exhibition that explores contemporary Latinx artists’ innovations and interventions within established traditions of painting. The project celebrates painting from the Latin American and Caribbean diaspora, inviting discussion on a variety of themes and revealing the diversity and expansiveness present within the field today. The fifty-eight artists in the exhibition—and those in the Latinx field more broadly—encourage us to interrogate the continued relevance of boundaries, from political borders to disciplinary confines. The exhibition is organized by the Buffalo AKG Art Museum and curated by Associate Curator Andrea Alvarez. It will be on view at the AKG from March 6 to September 6, 2026, and will be followed by a national tour including presentations at the Des Moines Art Center, the Phoenix Art Museum, and the Frye Art Museum, Seattle.
Inspired by former U.S. Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera’s poem “[Let Us Gather in a Flourishing Way],” the exhibition’s title celebrates the abundance of these artists’ diverse contributions and advancements to the discipline of painting and frames the show’s vision of Latinx art that is, like the diaspora itself, infinitely complex. Let Us Gather in a Flourishing Way showcases artists whose expressions are personal and subjective, but which also enrich the histories of American and contemporary art, two fields from which such artists have been historically excluded.
“It has been the honor of my career to work closely with so many innovative and outstanding artists to organize this exhibition,” said Andrea Alvarez, Associate Curator at the Buffalo AKG Art Museum. “Taken together, the works in Let Us Gather in a Flourishing Way demonstrate the remarkable breadth and depth of contemporary painting by Latinx artists, and the many ways in which those artists continue to interrogate established traditions of painting. This exhibition affirms that these artists are key figures in American contemporary art, and that they and their predecessors have helped shaped that discourse for decades.”
Let Us Gather in a Flourishing Way takes its cues from the artists themselves and embraces cacophony and heterogeneity in its narratives. These are artists actively cultivating the landscape of contemporary painting while visitors experience these significant examples in the museum. Rather than telling a finished story, the exhibition invites audiences to enter into a vibrant and active network.
A robust bilingual catalogue featuring scholarly investigations of topics related to contemporary Latinx art, an artist roundtable discussion, newly commissioned poetry, and illustrations of all works in the exhibition will be available in the AKG’s Shop during the exhibition. The book reveals the richness and diversity that characterizes contemporary Latinx painting and offers a panoramic overview of the field at a crucial moment in its history.
