6 to 8 pm ET

Cisco Webex
Online

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Installation of Joaquín Orellana: The Spine of Music at Americas Society. (Image: Alexander Perrelli)

Virtual Opening of Joaquín Orellana: The Spine of Music

Americas Society will present the first U.S. exhibition of the Guatemalan composer’s útiles sonoros (sound tools) alongside the work of contemporary artists.

6 to 8 pm ET

Cisco Webex
Online

Share

Overview

Join us for a virtual opening panel with the artist, the exhibition’s co-curators Diana Flatto and Sebastián Zubieta, and Gabriela Rangel. Read more about the exhibition and learn more about our pocketbook.

Opening remarks:

  • Susan Segal, President and CEO, AS/COA
  • Cristhian Calderón Santizo, Vice Minister of Culture of Guatemala

Speakers:

  • Joaquín Orellana, Composer and Artist
  • Diana Flatto, Former Assistant Curator, Americas Society and PhD Student, Department of History of Art & Architecture, University of Pittsburgh
  • Gabriela Rangel, Artistic Director, Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires (MALBA)
  • Sebastián Zubieta, Music Director, Americas Society
  • Moderated by Aimé Iglesias Lukin, Director and Chief Curator of Visual Arts, Americas Society

Note: This event will be in Spanish. 

About the speakers:

Joaquín Orellana studied violin and composition at the National Conservatory of Music in Guatemala and was a fellow at the Centro Latinoamericano de Estudios Musicales at the Instituto Torcuato Di Tella in Buenos Aires. In 1968 he returned to Guatemala to work on a series of instruments that were to provide an analog means of achieving electronic musical sound, a sound that established a cultural identity for Guatemala.

Diana Flatto is a PhD student in the Department of History of Art & Architecture at the University of Pittsburgh and the former Assistant Curator of Visual Arts at Americas Society. She holds an MA in art history with an advanced certificate in curatorial studies from Hunter College. She has co-curated and assisted on several exhibitions, including Alice Miceli: Projeto Chernobyl at Americas Society (2019) and Framing Community: Magnum Photos 1947–Present at Hunter College Art Galleries (2017).

Gabriela Rangel is the artistic director of the Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires (MALBA) and former visual arts director and chief curator at Americas Society. She holds an MA in curatorial studies from the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, an MA in media and communications studies from the Universidad Católica Andrés Bello, Caracas, and a BA in film studies from the International Film School at San Antonio de los Baños, Cuba. She has curated and co-curated numerous exhibitions on modern and contemporary art, edited numerous books, and contributed texts to such publications as Lydia Cabrera: Between the Sum and the Parts (Americas Society/Koenig Books, London, 2019); Contesting Modernity: Informalism in Venezuela 1955–1975 (Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 2018); and Marta Minujín (Ciudad de Buenos Aires, 2015).

Sebastián Zubieta has been Music Director at Americas Society since 2005. He has taught music history, and composition, and is also a composer and the conductor of the vocal ensemble Meridionalis, with which he has performed contemporary and early music in the United States and Latin America. He holds a doctorate in composition from Yale and a licentiate in musicology from Universidad Católica Argentina in Buenos Aires. 

Funders

The presentation of Joaquín Orellana: The Spine of Music is supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts and by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council. It is also made possible, in part, by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.

Americas Society thanks the Ministry of Culture and Sports of Guatemala for its support on this project.

Additional support is provided by MetLife Foundation, Presenting Sponsor of the MetLife Foundation Music of the Americas Concert Series; the Smart Family Foundation of New York; Mex-Am Cultural Foundation; and the Japan Foundation, New York. In-kind support is provided by Kurimanzutto Gallery Mexico City and New York. The publication of the pocketbook is made possible, in part, by a grant from Furthermore: a program of the J.M. Kaplan Fund.

Americas Society acknowledges the generous support from the Arts of the Americas Circle members: Estrellita B. Brodsky; Virginia Cowles Schroth; Diana Fane; Galería Almeida e Dale; Isabella Hutchinson; Carolina Jannicelli; Vivian Pfeiffer and Jeanette van Campenhout, Phillips; Gabriela Pérez Rocchietti; Erica Roberts; Sharon Schultz; Diana López and Herman Sifontes; and Edward J. Sullivan.