NEW ORLEANS, LA.- The New Orleans Museum of Art (NOMA) has announced the appointment of Orlando Hernández Ying as the museum’s Lapis Curator of the Arts of the Americas. This is the first permanent curatorial role at the museum dedicated to an expanded look at the arts of North, Central, and South America. Hernández Ying began the position in February 2024, and in the coming years, he will have a major role in the full reinstallation of the museum’s permanent collection of American art spanning from prehistory to present day.

“With this post, the museum inaugurates a new curatorial role dedicated to the research, care, and presentation of Latin American art across time within the broader banner of the arts of the Americas,” said Susan M. Taylor, The Montine McDaniel Freeman Director of NOMA. “Hernández Ying has distinguished himself as an expansive thinker and rigorous curator within the field, and we are thrilled to welcome him back to New Orleans as NOMA’s first Lapis Curator of the Arts of the Americas.”

Hérnandez Ying comes to NOMA from the Hispanic Society Museum and Library, New York, where he was a Curatorial Associate (2022–24), National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow and Rockefeller Curatorial Fellow (2021–22), and Curatorial Intern (2006–10). A native of Panama, Hernández Ying was the head curator of the Museo Antropológico Reina Torres de Araúz (MARTA) and held the position of National Coordinator of Museums in Panama, where he coordinated a country-wide master plan of 18 museums.

Hernández Ying has worked on projects with the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Dallas Art Museum; the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore; and the Historic New Orleans Collection, where he was a guest curator in 2010–11 and organized the exhibition The Golden Legend in the New World: Colonial Art of the Spanish American Viceroyalties, which drew in part from NOMA’s Spanish viceregal collection.

Hernández Ying has taught at New York University, City University of New York, Tulane University, and the National University of Panama. He holds a PhD in Art History & Criticism from the Graduate Center, City University of New York, and an MA in Museum Studies from New York University.

“I am glad to be back in this historically rich city and state. I look forward to digging deeper into its interconnected multi-cultural artistic roots: Native American, Spanish, Afro-Caribbean, French, Asian, and many others,” said Hernández Ying. “I am very grateful for the trust that has been given to me in this curatorial role and to New Orleans for receiving me with open arms once again. Coming back via NOMA reminds me of a quote by St. Teresa of Avila: ‘Trust God that you are exactly where you are meant to be.’”

Hernández Ying’s areas of research include the dissemination of metallurgy throughout the Americas before the conquest; art in the Spanish American viceroyalties, when artists blended Indigenous and European styles to create their own visual languages; and modern and contemporary Latin American art within and beyond US borders.

The first major project during Hernández Ying’s time at NOMA will be the permanent installation of the museum’s Art of the Americas collection, taking an expansive look at how museums define “American art” across time and culture. The new galleries will open over the course of several years—beginning in 2025—and present Mesoamerican and Indigenous art alongside painting and sculpture from the colonial era through the 21st century. This project is supported by a grant from the Terra Foundation for American Art.

“This new curatorial role provides a unique opportunity to think beyond traditional museum categories and consider the arts of North, Central, and South America as a dynamic collection of interrelated histories,” said Lisa Rotondo-McCord, Deputy Director at NOMA. “Hernández Ying’s appointment offers an important opportunity to present and re-interpret these important areas of NOMA’s permanent collection to tell a more inclusive story that considers Precolumbian and Indigenous art as integral parts of American visual culture.”