Payment of the Argentine Foreign Debt to Andy Warhol with Corn, The Latin American Gold

Join Americas Society and the Jewish Museum for a special performance with the legendary Argentinian artist Marta Minujín, in conjunction with the exhibition Marta Minujín: Arte! Arte! Arte! at the Jewish Museum. The performance will be followed by a celebratory reception. This event is in person, free and open to the public. 

Join us in person on Tuesday, March 26, 2024 from 6:00 to 8:00 pm ET  
Americas Society 
680 Park Ave 
New York, NY 
Register

Doors open at 6:00 pm. The performance will begin promptly at 6:30 pm. RSVP is REQUIRED. Early arrival is suggested as space is limited, and entry is not guaranteed for late arrivals.

About the Work 

In the original staging, created on a visit by the artist to New York in 1985, Marta Minujin invited her friend Andy Warhol to participate in a photo-performance in which she paid the pop icon, a symbol of American culture, with the Argentine foreign debt represented in gold-sprayed corn, claiming that the region had already covered its debt to the first world with the “invention” of corn, a staple that today feeds millions worldwide. The witty but nonetheless quite serious proposal directly addresses the commercial colonialism that the Global South is subjected to by world powers such as the United States. By pairing herself on an equal footing with Warhol, the most famous artist at the time, Minujín also commented on the unequal trade of cultural capital in the art world. “Corn, the Latin American Gold” should balance these inequalities and put the world’s regions on the same level, she claims. 

Marta Minujín’s Payment of the Argentine Foreign Debt to Andy Warhol with Corn, The Latin American Gold is exhibited in Marta Minujín: Arte! Arte! Arte! at The Jewish Museum and was featured in El Dorado: Myths of Gold Part I at Americas Society.

About the Artist 

Born in 1943 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, to an immigrant family partly descended from Russian Jews, Marta Minujín established an international reputation as a key artistic voice at a young age. By the early 1960s, she had started to experiment with mattresses, creating colorful soft sculptures that would come to define her signature style. Today Minujín is one of Argentina’s most recognized artists and celebrated cultural personalities. She continues to produce multimedia installations, participatory events, paintings, and sculptures, attesting to her unceasing versatility. Well into the twenty-first century, Minujín’s art persists with vital force, critical vision, and clarity of purpose. 

She reconstructed La Menesunda at the Museum of Modern Art in Buenos Aires in 2015, and again at the New Museum in 2019, with plans to do so at the Tate Liverpool. In 2017 she participated in documenta14 (Kassel) with her work The Parthenon of Books, a recreation of the Parthenon made in 1983 in Buenos Aires. Minujín has exhibited individually in the Galería Bianchini, New York (1966); Howard Wise Gallery, New York (1967); Centro de Arte y Comunicación, Buenos Aires (1975); Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Buenos Aires (1999); Americas Society, New York (2010); Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo, Sevilla (2010); And Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires (2011) as well as numerous group exhibitions. 

She has been awarded the Premio Nacional Instituto Torcuato Di Tella (1964), a Guggenheim Foundation scholarship (1966), the Lorenzo el Magnífico Visual Arts Award (2015), the award Velázquez de Artes Plásticas (2016), the Award Excelencia en el Arte at Museo del Barrio (2018), the Americas Society Cultural Achievement Award (2018), Premio a la Trayectoria Artística, Artes Visuales at Fondo Nacional de las Artes (2019), and Premio a la Trayectoria del Salón Nacional, Buenos Aires (2019). Her work is part of private collections and of museums including: MNBA, MALBA, MAMBA, MACBA (Buenos Aires); MoMA, Guggenheim Museum (New York); Art Museum of the Americas (Washington, DC); MOLAA (Los Angeles); Centre Pompidou (Paris); Tate Modern (London); Olympic Park (Seoul), Museu de Arte Contemporanea de la Universidad de San Pablo; Museo Nacional de Arte Reina Sofía (Madrid); Caixa de Barcelona; Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo (Sevilla), Museo La Tertulia (Cali).