In the Studio: Marta Minujín

Marta Minujín in conversation with Aimé Iglesias Lukin, director and chief curator of Visual Arts.

Join us live on Instagram from your cell phone, or watch on YouTube after, for a series of remote visits to artists' studios to bring Americas Society's Visual Arts public programs to your home. Every Wednesday this month, contemporary artists will dialogue with our Visual Arts department about their work and practice.

About the artist:

Marta Minujín (b. 1943, Buenos Aires, Argentina) studied plastic arts at the Manuel Belgrano School of Fine Arts (1955-59) and at the Superior School of Fine Arts (1960), both in Buenos Aires. In 1961, she obtained a scholarship granted by the Fondo Nacional de las Artes and went to Paris where she stayed until 1963. Subsequently, she lived between New York, where she presented Minucode (originally commissioned by the Center for Inter-American Relations, now Americas Society, in 1968) and other happenings, and Buenos Aires, where she currently lives. She is a pioneer in happenings, performance art, soft sculpture, and video. Minujín pursues a varied and irreverent practice that demonstrates a deep rejection towards the object of collectible art. She often uses ephemeral materials such as cardboard, fabric, and food, at the same time monumental and fragile.

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).

Visit the Americas Society Visual Arts YouTube Channel for recordings of In the Studio Series and other previous events.

Follow the conversation on Instagram: #IntheStudioAS | @americassociety.visualarts

More digital content from Visual Arts at Americas Society:

• Read the exhibition catalogue for Feliciano Centurión: Abrigo.
• Watch the documentary Feliciano Centurión: Abrazo Íntimo al Natural, directed by Mon Ross (2016).
• Watch videos of recent events:
  • Art at a Distance: Promoting Visual Arts during the Health Crisis
  • Curator's Perspective – Jacopo Crivelli Visconti
  • "I Am Reborn at Every Moment" – Contemporary Reflections on Feliciano Centurión and AIDS
  • Ulises Carrión – Art, Mail, Books, and So…
  • Book Launch: Alejandra Seeber – Picture This Featuring the Artist in Conversation with Guillermo Kuitca

Image caption: Marta Minujín receiving the Cultural Achievement Award at Americas Society, 2018. Photo by Beatriz Meseguer.