NEW YORK, NY.- The Whitney Museum of American Art has named Marcela Guerrero the DeMartini Family Curator. In her new role, Guerrero will continue her pioneering work on acquiring and exhibiting contemporary and historical Latinx artists in the Whitney’s program and collection. She will also play a key strategic role in working cross-departmentally to broaden the Whitney’s engagement with Latinx audiences and community partners while supporting overall strategic planning for the collection. She begins her new position on February 18, 2023.
Guerrero has worked at the Whitney for nearly six years and was the Museum’s first curator to specialize in Latinx art. She currently serves as the Jennifer Rubio Associate Curator and has curated landmark exhibitions like no existe un mundo poshuracán: Puerto Rican Art in the Wake of Hurricane Maria. That show, on view at the Museum through April 23, explores the impact of the devastating storm on contemporary Puerto Rican art. This powerful and renowned exhibition is the first survey of Puerto Rican art at a major U.S. art museum in fifty years.
Guerrero was also part of the curatorial team that organized Vida Americana: Mexican Muralists Remake American Art, 1925–1945 at the Whitney in 2020, and curated Pacha, Llaqta, Wasichay: Indigenous Space, Modern Architecture, a 2018 exhibition that featured the work of seven emerging Latinx artists. This summer, Guerrero will co-curate an exhibition of artist Ilana Savdie’s latest work, including paintings and drawings, as well as new works produced for the Whitney. Guerrero is responsible for many major acquisitions of work by prominent Latinx artists to the Whitney’s collection, including Laura Aguilar, Patrick Martinez, and Freddy Rodriguez. She has also been instrumental in the Museum’s digital and on-site Spanish language initiatives.
“Marcela is a visionary curator who has truly transformed the field of Latinx art not just at the Whitney but internationally through her passionate advocacy for living artists, brilliant scholarship, groundbreaking exhibitions, and care for our audiences,” said Scott Rothkopf, Senior Deputy Director and Nancy and Steve Crown Family Chief Curator. “Her new senior role demonstrates the Whitney’s growing commitment to Latinx art, artists, and audiences as one of our core priorities.”
The Museum also announced that current Assistant Curator Jennie Goldstein has been named the Jennifer Rubio Associate Curator of the Collection. In this role, Goldstein will focus primarily on building the Whitney’s collection and its displays, deepening the productive exchange between collection stewardship and exhibitions. She will support ongoing efforts to strategically develop the collection—an area where she has already made an impact, acquiring works by Darrel Ellis and Marie Watt, among others—and the artists, objects, and ideas that fuel the Museum. She will continue to work on exhibitions; her most recent curatorial project, In the Balance: Between Painting and Sculpture, 1965–1985, is on view at the Museum through March 5.
“Jennie has been an extraordinary champion of the Whitney’s collection and has a rare range of knowledge spanning from its earliest to most recent works. Her exhibitions Making Knowing: Craft in Art, 1950–2019 and In the Balance reframed key themes and moments in American art history with great flair and originality,” Rothkopf said. “In her new role, she will expand our efforts around the collection and contribute further to our exhibition program.”
Marcela Guerrero came to the Whitney from the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, where she worked as a Curatorial Fellow from 2014 to 2017. At the Hammer, she was involved in the much-lauded exhibition Radical Women: Latin American Art, 1960–1985, organized as part of the Getty Foundation’s Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA initiative, and guest-curated by Cecilia Fajardo-Hill and Andrea Giunta. Prior to joining the Hammer, she worked in the Latin American and Latino art department at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, where she served as Research Coordinator for the International Center for the Arts of the Americas. In her current role as Assistant Curator at the Whitney, Guerrero has organized important exhibitions and worked to foreground the contributions of Latinx artists in the U.S. and increase the presence of their works in the Whitney’s collection. Most recently, she curated the landmark exhibition no existe un mundo poshuracán: Puerto Rican Art in the Wake of Hurricane Maria, the first survey of Puerto Rican art at a major U.S. art museum in fifty years, and organized a public art installation on the facade of 95 Horatio Street by Martine Gutierrez. Previously, she was part of the curatorial team that organized Vida Americana: Mexican Muralists Remake American Art, 1925–1945, and curated Pacha, Llaqta, Wasichay: Indigenous Space, Modern Architecture, an exhibition featuring the work of seven emerging Latinx artists. Guerrero has served as co-chair of the Whitney’s Emerging Artist Working Group and has been instrumental in the Museum’s recent Spanish language initiatives both digitally and on-site.
Born and raised in Puerto Rico and now a Brooklyn resident, Guerrero holds a Ph.D. in art history from the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
Jennie Goldstein has worked in various positions at the Whitney Museum of Art, beginning as a Curatorial Assistant before pursuing a graduate degree. Most recently, as Assistant Curator, a position she has held since 2015, she has focused on collection building and collections-based and loan exhibitions. Goldstein has curated several prominent exhibitions, including the currently on-view In the Balance: Between Painting and Sculpture, 1965–1985. She also curated or co-curated Making Knowing: Craft in Art, 1950–2019; Christine Sun Kim: Too Much Future; and An Incomplete History of Protest: Selections from the Whitney’s Collection, 1940–2019. Goldstein recently served as a member of the Museum’s Equity and Inclusion Steering Group, which centered staff voices in the institution’s Equity and Inclusion Plan. Prior to her current role, she worked as a Joan Tisch Teaching Fellow at the Whitney.
Goldstein holds a master’s degree in art history from Stony Brook University in New York.
