smithsonian latino art collections - Smithsonian Latino Center

The 1960s-1990s: Expanding Decades for the Smithsonian Institution
With the opening of the Museum of History and Technology in January 1964 the Smithsonian
Institution began a new period of institutional expansion and collecting. In 1965 the National
Museum—now called Museum of Natural History—transferred Hispanic artifacts and collections to the
Museum of History and Technology’ Division of Cultural History. An updated version of Watkins’s 1957
National Museum exhibit became the Hall of Everyday Life in the American Past at the new museum. As
Ahlborn recalls upon joining the Smithsonian in 1965, it “included cases of European nations that
strongly influenced the United States: [first,] it included a case on SPAIN with musical instruments,
vestments, furniture and utensils. 2 nd : the Hall also had rebuilt a late 18 th C. Spanish New Mexico living
room (sala) with furniture Indian ceramics, wooden beams (vigas) and mica windows, weapons,
utensils, una espuela and una reata. The walls were made of adobe and the earthen floor was sealed
with ox blood. There were religious subjects on panels (retablos) and a chest (caja) with Mexican and
local woven woolen textiles such as blankets (colchas, fresadas) and checkered twill-weave rugs
(jergas).” 9
These Hispanic collections were later assigned to Alhborn’s own Division of Ethnic and Western
History. Some of these artifacts were also on display in the Hermanos and Santos exhibit, 10 as well as in
a second platform exhibit on Spanish Catholic Southwestern artifacts which included “a huge copper
font (pila) and an iron, scissor-action device with two engraved faces for making Mass hosts or wafers
una hosteria.” 11
Since the passing of the Congressional Act of May 1938 for a museum of art on the National
Mall—as a response to the earlier act of 1937 when the U.S. Congress authorized the establishment of
the self-governing National Gallery of Art to house Andrew W. Mellon’s collection of Old Masters—the
Smithsonian had been considering its own museum of contemporary art on the National Mall. Even
though design competitions were held in the 1940s, the museum never materialized until May 1966
when, after two years of negotiations, Joseph H. Hirshhorn presented his collection of modern and
contemporary art as a gift to the people of the United States, in addition to funds for the construction of
a modern building, and an endowment for further acquisitions for the collection. 12
Although the statute was not voted upon by the United States Congress until 1967 and the
groundbreaking for the new museum in the site of the Old Army Medical Museum did not take place
until January 1969, the 1966 Joseph H. Hirshhorn gift of 6,211 works of modern art and contemporary
art by living artists contributed to the growth of collections of Hispanic and Latin American art of the
Institution. 13 His initial 1966 gift included works by Emilio Cruz, Hugo de Marco, Horacio García Rossi,
Rómulo Maccio, Alicia Peñalba, Antonio Scordia, Antonio Seguí, Fernando Botero, José Luis Cuevas and
Joaquín Torres-García. This initial collection of Latin American art was augmented in 1981 through the
Joseph H. Hirshhorn Bequest, which brought works by Antonio Frasconi, Mel Ramos, Emilio Sánchez,
Martha Boto, additional works by Antonio Seguí, Sergio Camargo, Claudio Bravo, Gastón Orellana,
9 Alhborn, 2000.
10 Richard Ahlborn curated what he described as a large platform exhibit “about traditional fraternal groups of lay
brothers who used religious images in their devotions and penance during Holy Week.” Alhborn, 2000: 1.
11 Ahlborn, 2000: 1.
12 Negotiations between the United States Government and the newly appointed Smithsonian Secretary Sidney
Dillon Ripley with Joseph H. Hirshhorn and his representatives began in June 1964. Gene Hirshhorn Le Pere. Little
Man in a Big Hurry: The Life of Joseph H. Hirshhorn, Uranium King and Art Collector. New York: Vantage Press,
2009, p. 198.
13 De Pere, p. 237.
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