The Paradoxes of Internationalism (As Narrated by the Museo Tamayo Collection) traces the evolution of internationalism's demands, intrigues, and betrayals through the overlapping and incomplete histories of Mexico's first international art museum.
Drawing on the Museo Tamayo's collection and exhibition history—as well as Rufino Tamayo’s career as an artist—the exhibition takes the seismic global shifts of the 1990s as a historical axis from which to look backward and forward in time at artists' perspectives on the social, cultural, and political movements that have changed our understanding of the world. Using the collection as a tool to narrate the paradoxes of internationalism, the exhibition will be presented in two parts, with the first open from May 27 to July 15, and the second from August 5 to October 1, 2023.
The last years of Rufino Tamayo's life serve as a prologue to the show. This is when he had a major retrospective that toured to Berlin, Oslo, Madrid, Moscow, and Saint Petersburg, right before his death in 1991. Coinciding with the Soviet Union falling, the Internet going public, and the political wranglings of a new world order in the making, suddenly the universal beliefs of post-war internationalism that shaped not only Tamayo’s career, but the collection he built for the Museo Tamayo, and his vision for the institution itself, was history. The era of global internationalism had begun, heralding in a younger generation of artists and their world views.
The Paradoxes of Internationalism. Part I, brings together more than 60 artists, including Francis Alÿs, Salvatore Arancio, Francis Bacon, Yto Barrada, Louise Bourgeois, Abraham Cruzvillegas, Dexter Dalwood, Mariana Castillo Deball, Johan Grimonprez, Pierre Huyghe, Maria Izquierdo, Wifredo Lam, René Magritte, Teresa Margolles, Sherin Neshat, Louise Nevelson, Gabriel Orozco, Damián Ortega, Larry Rivers, Armando Morales Sequeira, Simon Starling, Saul Steinberg, Rufino Tamayo, Antoni Tapies, Francisco Toledo, and Bruno Serralongue, among many others.
Curated by Kate Fowle.