The Art Museum of the Americas (and Friends)

Lee este artículo en español

One of the latest organizations to join our great credit union family is the Friends of the Art Museum of the Americas, or FAMA. FAMA is a registered non-profit whose goal is to promote the Museum by fundraising and creating a cultural communication channel between the museum and the community. One of its key jobs is to facilitate contact between emerging and established artists, and the artistic and cultural community. They also organize the much-awaited Art After Dark evening event and members of FAMA are invited to this party.

But we can’t speak of FAMA without speaking of AMA, the amazing museum that gave

Detail of one of the rooms of the Museum.

rise to the NGO, and this is our topic for today. 

If you visit the OAS Building, that elegant structure standing two blocks off the White House and, if you’re lucky, get to peep upstairs at the Hall of the Americas, you’ll see the well-tended OAS Aztec gardens, the fountain, and the amazing statue of Xochipilli that stands watch over it all. At the end of the garden you’ll see, as if tucked away, another beautiful yet smaller house –in the OAS environs this smaller house is known just that way, as the Casita- with its traditional brick gable roof. This building is the home of the Art Museum of the Americas.

The Museum building belongs to the architectural complex known as the Pan American Union, built in 1910 by architects Paul Cret and Albert Kelsey who, very appropriately, designed it as a refined blend of neoclassical, colonial and mudéjar styles, decorated with details that feature indigenous art styles of the Americas. The result of this mix makes the Museum building a luminous, welcoming space with subtle and exquisite detail, a work of art in itself.

The day of our credit union’s annual meeting I had the privilege of being one of a group of people who had a personal tour from the Museum’s own director, Mister Pablo Zuñiga. He told us the story of the museum itself, and much more about the works of art it holds.

The Art Museum of the Americas is the second oldest museum dedicated to Latin American

"Constructive Composition" by Joaquín Torres García.
Art Museum of the Americas. 

and Caribbean art in the United States. It was established at the hands of the Cuban art critic and gallerist Jose Gomez Sicre, who worked for many decades at the OAS. Mr. Gomez Sicre was the founder of the Museum in 1976, and its first director. The first artwork ever received predated the museum’s own establishment by almost three decades, and it’s a painting by the renowned Brazilian artist Candido Portinari, who donated it personally. Since then, with time, donations by philanthropists and artists, as well as timed acquisitions of pieces paid for by a special fund created by the OAS for this purpose, the Museum’s own collection has grown to exceed 250 pieces, many of which can be viewed at the museum, outside in the Aztec garden, and in world-known art galleries around the world (on loan).

Many of the art pieces that the Museum owns, especially those acquired during Gomez Sicre’s tenure reflect the aim of the gallery (as well as of the OAS) of bringing to the forefront pieces that reflected the sociopolitical reality in the different regions of the OAS

member states. At the same time the collection is, without question, a reflection of the mastery of Latin American artists in the 20th century. The coexistence of both characteristics throughout stands as praise of the efforts of Mister Gomez Sicre, the Museum and the OAS to promote Latin art, culture and democracy in the hemisphere.

The Museum’s first floor contains current exhibits by known artists, mixed with those by

"Return from the Fair" by Candido Portinari.
Art museum of the Americas. 

emerging talents. The second floor is host to the permanent collection, where one can admire works by world-known artists such as Candido Portinari, Hector Poleo, Marcelo Brodsky or Claudia Andujar.

The styles you’ll meet are all those known in modern and contemporary art and in a single vast you’ll be able to distinguish abstract art, cubism, surrealism, modern art, in painted form, photography, mixed media and sculpture. I found the permanent exhibit to be displayed with careful simplicity, and containing something to suit everyone’s style.

The Museum opens six days a week and it’s free. The moment you arrive you realize that this place is something special. As someone who has visited museums all over the world, when compared to the museums in DC at the Mall, the first thing that struck me when I

arrived at AMA is that it stands, as a famed poet once wrote, “removed from the world’s bustle”, its entrance adorned with shrubs and at the shade of large trees, welcoming you. If you’ve been to a number of museums, you’ll know that something like this is uncommon, and it’s something I appreciated immediately.

I’d suggest that you contact the museum and ask for a guided tour so that you can soak in all the detail and the history behind each piece, it’s an enriching and very, very interesting experience. Personally, two things stayed with me from our visit:

First is an art piece, a mixed media by the Argentinian artist Marcelo Brodsky, titled Good Memory; it’s an enlarged photo of the artist’s 8th grade class picture, taken in 1967. On it he’s written what happened to each one of his classmates in the wake of the Argentinian

"Good Memory" by Marcelo Brodsky.
Art Museum of the Americas.

revolution. It’s a stark, direct piece, an imposing example of art as socio-historical reflection.

Second is not an artwork but a room, the smallest room of the Museum, which Mister Zuñiga very appropriately dubbed the “chocolate box”. This room is the space where the museum’s curator Adriana Ospina places specific pieces that don’t have a commonality with other pieces, yet that have something that makes them unique, special, and worthy of their own private spot. I’d love to visit the Museum regularly to see, and maybe intuit what makes the works that she picks fitting of this room; I love art, and many times have strived to figure out a curator’s methods when assembling an exhibit.

To leave you with an insight of the Museum and its art, here’s a Google Arts and Culture special virtual exhibit titled José Gómez Sicre’s Eye. It was created by the Museum, commemorating the 100th anniversary of the birth of its founder in 2016.

I want to thank Mr. Pablo Zuñiga for such a wonderful tour of the Museum, and Greg Svitil for providing the images in this article.