NEW YORK, NY.- For its September 2022 edition held at the state-of-the-art Javits Center, The Armory Show announces its curators for the Focus and Platform sections and the Curatorial Leadership Summit. For the first time in the fair’s history, The Armory Show will bring together three curators with similar fields of curatorial practice, that of Latin American and Latinx art, offering a distinct, unified vision for the fair’s initiatives. Carla Acevedo-Yates, Marilyn and Larry Fields Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) Chicago, will curate the Focus section; Tobias Ostrander, Estrellita B. Brodsky Adjunct Curator, Latin American Art at Tate, London, will curate the Platform section; and Mari Carmen Ramírez, Wortham Curator of Latin American Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, will chair the fifth annual Curatorial Leadership Summit.

Each section offers a unique perspective through which visitors can engage with critical issues and culturally significant themes in the context of modern and contemporary works of art. Following the success of the fair’s inaugural year at the Javits Center, Focus and Platform will once again join Galleries, Solo, and Presents under one roof in a cohesive, integrated floorplan designed to optimize the fair experience for exhibitors and collectors alike.

Nicole Berry, Executive Director of The Armory Show, said:

“We are delighted to partner with such important voices in the curatorial field for the 2022 edition of The Armory Show. Carla, Tobias, and Mari Carmen each offer unique perspectives that will continue to enhance the distinguished vision of each section. As New York’s Art Fair, it is important to reflect the communities that make up our city. We look forward to seeing their presentations come to fruition, shining a spotlight not only on the diverse New York art community, but a broader representation of global artistic practices.”

Curated by Carla Acevedo-Yates, Focus will be dedicated to solo- and dual-artist presentations that examine the intersectionality of issues surrounding the environment, focusing on personal and political climates as they interact with race and gender. Encompassing artists that foreground South-South ecologies, the section will introduce a transcultural conversation around art production grounded on abstract, representational, and conceptual approaches.

Previous curators of Focus have included Jarrett Gregory, Associate Curator, Los Angeles County Museum of Art (2017); Gabriel Ritter, Curator, Minneapolis Institute of Art (2018); Lauren Haynes, Curator of Contemporary Art, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville (2019); Jamillah James, Curator, Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2020); and Wassan Al-Khudhairi, Chief Curator, Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis (2021).

Curated by Tobias Ostrander, Platform will be dedicated to large-scale installations and site-specific works under the theme of Monumental Change. The section will examine how recent revisionist practices, which are part of dramatic cultural shifts occurring throughout the world, are influencing artists’ engagement with sculptural form. In recent years the public has witnessed the dismantling, defacing, and replacement of public monuments as central to de-colonizing strategies that look to revise the commemoration of figures and events related to histories of slavery and racism, the attempted extermination of indigenous populations and appropriation of their lands, and the subjugation of women. These displaced monuments have traditionally been sculptural and figurative in style, depicting their subjects in portrait or allegorical formats. Platform will ask: What subjects might we collectively look to commemorate now? With which materials? And in what form?




Introduced in 2017, Platform has previously been curated by Eric Shiner, Director, Andy Warhol Museum (2017); Jen Mergel, former Senior Curator of Contemporary Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (2018); Sally Tallant, Director, Liverpool Biennial (2019); Anne Ellegood, Executive Director, Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2020); and Claudia Schmuckli, Curator-in-Charge of Contemporary Art and Programming, de Young Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (2021).

Mari Carmen Ramírez will chair the fifth annual Curatorial Leadership Summit. Under Ramírez’s leadership, the program will welcome curators from around the world to a day-long, invitation-only symposium focusing on the differences and affinities between Latin American and/or Latinx art. Noting that these subjects are two complex fields of study and collecting that share many similarities but remain different, the program will acknowledge common misconceptions amongst museum professionals as well as the public-at-large about what each field represents both for the present moment and moving forward. The program will ask: Who is considered “Latin American” or “Latinx”? What are the historical bases for those distinctions? How do they relate to the broader field of contemporary art? How do they relate to current debates about race and gender?

A public keynote presentation follows the closed-door session. In addition to the on-site summit, Ramírez will be chairing the Virtual CLS event in the spring of 2022 leading up to the fair. Previous chairs of the CLS have included Naomi Beckwith, Curator, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (2018); Dan Byers, John R. and Barbara Robinson Family Director, Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, Harvard University (2019); José Carlos Diaz, Chief Curator, The Andy Warhol Museum (2020); and Valerie Cassel Oliver, Sydney and Frances Lewis Family Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (2021).

Carla Acevedo-Yates

Carla Acevedo-Yates was born and raised in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and has worked as a curator, researcher, and art critic across Latin America, the Caribbean, and the United States. She is the Marilyn and Larry Fields Curator at the MCA Chicago, where she curated Carolina Caycedo: From the Bottom of the River and Chicago Works: Omar Velázquez. She is currently working on a major group exhibition, Forecast Form: Art in the Caribbean Diaspora 1990s – Today, opening in November 2022. Previously, she was the Associate Curator at the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University, where she curated over fifteen exhibitions, including solo presentations of new work by Johanna Unzueta, Claudia Peña Salinas, Jesús “Bubu” Negrón, Duane Linklater, and Beatriz Santiago Muñoz. She curated Fiction of a Production, a major exhibition by Argentinian conceptual art pioneer David Lamelas, and cocurated Michigan Stories: Mike Kelley and Jim Shaw. Major group exhibitions include The Edge of Things: Dissident Art Under Repressive Regimes. She earned an MA in curatorial studies and contemporary art from the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College, where she was awarded the Ramapo Curatorial Prize, and a BA in Spanish and Latin American Cultures from Barnard College, where she received the Clara Schifrin Memorial Spanish Prize in Poetry. In 2015, she was awarded a Creative Capital | Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant for an article on Cuban painter Zilia Sánchez.

Tobias Ostrander

Tobias Ostrander is the Estrellita B. Brodsky Adjunct Curator, Latin American Art at Tate. He is additionally Curatorial Advisor for the Aichi Triennale 2022, Japan. His survey exhibition, Cisco Jiménez: ANATÓMICA, is currently on view at the Museo Amparo, Puebla, México. He is the former Chief Curator and Deputy Director for Curatorial Affairs at the Pérez Art Museum Miami (2011—2019). Major exhibitions developed for PAMM include Beatriz González: A Retrospective; Beatriz Milhazes: Jardin Botânico; On the Horizon: Contemporary Cuban Art from the Jorge M. Pérez Collection; Ebony G. Patterson: …while the dew is still on the roses…, Mario Garcia Torres: R.R. and the Expansion of The Tropics; and Poetics of Relation, a group exhibition inspired by the writings of Édouard Glissant, among others. Ostrander was a founding member of Tilting Axis, a platform for artists, curators, and creatives from the greater Caribbean region (2014—2019). Ostrander served as the Director at the Museo Experimental El Eco (2009—2011) and Chief Curator at Museo Tamayo (2001—2009), both in Mexico City, and Associate Curator of inSITE2000 in San Diego and Tijuana (1999—2001). He was a founding member of the inter-institutional Museum of Hub initiated by the New Museum (2007—2012). He has additionally held positions at XXIV Bienal de São Paulo, El Museo del Barrio, and the Brooklyn Museum of Art.

Mari Carmen Ramírez

Mari Carmen Ramírez is the Wortham Curator of Latin American Art and founding Director of the International Center for the Arts of the Americas (ICAA) at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. A globally renowned authority on modern and contemporary Latin American art, Ramírez has published extensively and curated numerous exhibitions, including the award-winning Inverted Utopias: Avant-Garde Art in Latin America (2004, with Héctor Olea); Beatriz González: A Retrospective (with Tobias Ostrander, 2019); Hélio Oiticica: The Body of Color (2006); Contingent Beauty: Contemporary Art from Latin America (2015); HOME, So Different, So Appealing (with Chon Noriega and Pilar Tompkins, 2017); Joaquín Torres-García: Constructing Abstraction with Wood (Menil Foundation, 2009). In addition to her work with Latin American art and artists, Ramírez has published widely on a broad range of topics that include the relationship of this art to identity politics, multiculturalism, globalization, and curatorial practice. She’s also conceptualized and implemented the ICAA Documents of 20th Century Latin American and Latino Art Project, a major digital archive and book series focused on primary sources. In 2005, Ramírez received the Award for Curatorial Excellence granted by the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College. That same year, TIME magazine named her one of “The 25 Most Influential Hispanics in America.”