WASHINGTON, DC.- The National Gallery of Art announced that Natalia Ángeles Vieyra will join the museum as associate curator of Latinx art. She will begin on June 30. This position is made possible thanks to a $500,000 grant from the Getty Foundation as part of the Advancing Latinx Art in Museums (ALAM) initiative with the support of the Mellon, Ford, Getty, and Terra Foundations.

Vieyra will play a vital role in supporting the museum’s work in collecting, researching, and exhibiting masterpieces across the broad spectrum of American art. As part of the department of modern and contemporary art, Vieyra will join a team of seven curators devoted to the museum’s 20th- and 21st-century collections and exhibition program. As a specialist and advisor in Latinx art, she will contribute to the museum’s continued acquisitions, exhibitions, permanent collection displays, scholarship, and public service in the field. The National Gallery’s collection includes works by significant Latinx artists such as Ana Mendieta, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Rupert García, Carmen Herrera, Daniel Lind-Ramos, Freddy Rodríguez, Christina Fernandez, Miguel Luciano, and Martine Gutierrez, among others. Vieyra will work to expand, study, and interpret this evolving collection of modern and contemporary Latinx art. As the field of Latinx art spans history and media, Vieyra will collaborate with other curatorial departments to integrate Latinx art and perspectives within the museum’s overall program.

“This is an exciting moment for the National Gallery of Art, as we inaugurate a new position that will increase visibility and scholarship of Latinx art and help us better serve our national community,” said E. Carmen Ramos, chief curatorial and conservation officer. “We are thrilled to welcome Natalia Ángeles Vieyra as our first curator of Latinx art. The span of Natalia’s scholarship and curatorial practice, from late 19th- to early 20th-century Puerto Rican art to contemporary art, is well suited to the National Gallery’s transhistorical collections. As a scholar of Latinx art myself, I look forward to supporting Natalia as she helps expand our collections and develops projects that illuminate the ideas and practices of Latinx artists and what they say about art and our world today.”

A curator and art historian, Vieyra has worked and studied extensively in the areas of US Latinx, Latin American, and Caribbean art, spanning from the 19th century to the present. Her dissertation focused on the Puerto Rican artist Francisco Oller within the larger context of the Americas. Over the course of her career, Vieyra has worked to place contemporary Latinx artists and communities in dialogue with historic works of art, drawing connections between the past and current issues. As the associate curator of American art at the Worcester Art Museum in Massachusetts, Vieyra led the acquisition and long-term loan of a variety of works by Latinx, Latin American, and African American artists, including close collaborations with the Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña and private collections in Puerto Rico. As the Maher Curatorial Fellow of American Art at the Harvard Art Museums, she developed innovative curatorial and educational programs that placed the work of important artists such as Ana Mendieta, Juan Sánchez, and Enrique Chagoya in dialogue with Latinx audiences. During her tenure she contributed to and curated numerous exhibitions, installations, and rotations, including De los Andes al Caribe: El arte americano desde el imperio español/From the Andes to the Caribbean: American Art from the Spanish Empire and Prints from the Brandywine Workshop and Archives: Creative Communities.

“I am incredibly honored to join the National Gallery of Art at this pivotal moment in its history. I am excited to connect with and inspire Latinx communities through art, and to champion Latinx artists on the national stage,” Vieyra said.

Vieyra has held fellowships at the Winterthur Museum, Garden, and Library, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. She has also worked as a guest curator and curatorial assistant at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and as a research and curatorial assistant at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. Vieyra holds a PhD in art history from Temple University and a BFA in graphic design from the University of the Arts, Philadelphia.