Blanton Museum of Art

Shortly after his appointment as founding director of the University of Texas Art Museum in Austin in 1959, Donald Goodall acquired for the Blanton what was at that time the largest collection of Latin American art in the United States. The Latin American collection expanded significantly in the 1970s and 1980s with gifts from collector Barbara Duncan of 277 works of art, including 58 paintings and 112 drawings. The museum was the first institution in the United States to create a curatorial position for Latin American art in 1988. The founding curator of the department was Mari Carmen Ramírez who acquired one of the signature works in the Latin American collection, Cildo Meireles' Missão/Missões: How to Build Cathedrals (1987). The museum received a notable addition of Latin American modern and midcentury Latin American art from collectors Judy and Charles Tate in 2015. The 114-object collection includes paintings, sculptures, and drawings by Diego Rivera, Tarsila do Amaral, Rufino Tamayo, Joaquín Torres García, Wifredo Lam, Armando Reveron, Jesus Rafael Soto, and Lygia Clark, among others. Collection The Blanton's collection of Latin American art features over 2,100 modern and contemporary paintings, prints drawings, and sculptures, reflecting the enormous diversity of artistic tradition in the region. More than 700 artists from Mexico, South and Central America, and the Caribbean are represented. The Blanton's holdings constitute one of the oldest, largest and most comprehensive collections of Latin American art in the country.