Blanton Museum receives $10 million collection of Latin American art
August 28, 2014 | In the PressFrom Austin 360 (http://www.austin360.com/weblogs/austin-arts-seeing-things/2014/aug/28/blanton-museum-received-10-million-collection-lati/)
The Blanton Museum of Art has received a collection of modern and contemporary Latin American art and endowment contribution valued at $10 million from Houston collectors Judy and Charles Tate, museum officials announced today.
Works by Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, Joaquín Torres-García, Wilfredo Lam and Jesús Rafael Soto are among the 120 paintings, drawings and sculptures donated to the Blanton, already a major repository of postwar Latin American art.
In addition, the Tates have made a major contribution towards the endowment that supports the museum’s Latin American curatorship. Museum officials said details of the endowment gift are still being finalized but are estimated to about 10 percent of the $10 million total donation.
Longtime donors to the Blanton, the Tates have been collecting Latin American art for several decades. Charles Tate received his undergraduate business degree from UT in 1968, a Distinguished Alumnus Award from the Texas Exes in 2007 and he also received a UT Presidential Citation in 2011. Judy Tate graduated from UT's college of education in 1973.
Approximately 70 items from the Tate's collection will go on view Sept. 20 in an exhibition entitled "La línea continua" that will continue to Feb. 15, 2015.
Highlights of the Tate Collection include a 1946 graphite drawing by Kahlo and a cubist period drawing by Rivera; two paintings and an ink drawing by Lam spanning his time in France in the late 1930s to his return to Cuba in the 1940s; and a 1951 surrealist painting by Leonora Carrington.
Among the mid-20th-century artists in the collection are Carlos Cruz-Diez, Lygia Clark, Willys de Castro, Lothar Charoux, Mira Schendel and Hélio Oiticica.
View a slideshow of selections from the Tate's collection here.
