Gabriela Rangel appointed as Artistic Director

Malba announces the appointment of Gabriela Rangel (Caracas, 1963) as the museum’s new Artistic Director. A specialist in Latin American Art and an internationally prestigious curator, Rangel will be responsible for expanding the scope and understanding of the Malba Collection, and for the temporary exhibitions program, in dialogue with the museum’s interdisciplinary advisory team.

Rangel will also oversee the Publications, Education and Art and Thought programs, and promote a collaborative approach with the departments of Film and Literature.

For the past fifteen years, Gabriela Rangel has worked as Director of Visual Arts and Curator in Chief of Americas Society (2004-2019), a central institution for Latin American Art in New York and a meeting point for the main players in the regional and international art scenes. She was in charge of over 35 exhibition projects, and edited publications by artists, writers and thinkers such as Jorge Luis Borges, Victoria Cabezas, Lydia Cabrera, Consuelo Castañeda, Carlos Cruz-Diez, Milagros de la Torre, Facundo de Zuviría, Dias & Riedweg, Juan Downey, Gego, Édouard Glissant, Silvia Gruner, Arturo Herrera, Kati Horna, Alexander von Humboldt, Marc Latamie, José Leonilson, Antonio Manuel, Erick Meyenberg, Marta Minujín, Priscilla Monge and Xul Solar, among others.

Eduardo F. Costantini, Founder and President of Malba, says of the appointment: “After an exhaustive search over nearly a year, we have chosen Gabriela Rangel, a professional with a huge capability and institutional experience, with specialization in visual arts, film and literatures, the three pillars of Malba. After 20 years of living in New York, a crucial city for the art scene, Gabriela will also be able to get together a privileged network of institutional and personal relations. On a personal level, her labor at Malba will also be a possibility to generate a new approach to her native Venezuela, due to our common Latin American identity and idiosyncrasy,” he points out.

As part of her role, Rangel will also have the task of developing collaborations with other local and international institutions and of implementing the strategies and tools for strengthening Malba’s profile as a leader in Latin American Art, in close collaboration with the Board of Directors and the Artistic Committee, which currently comprises Gonzalo Aguilar (UBA-Unsam/ Conicet), Andrea Giunta (UBA/ Conicet), Victoria Giraudo (Malba), Julieta González (Jumex, Mexico), Natalia Majluf (Cambridge University, UK), Adriano Pedrosa (MASP, Brazil) and Octavio Zaya (freelance curator).

In Gabriela Rangel’s words: “Malba is a key space for establishing a cosmopolitan South-North dialogue. I am grateful for the opportunity to contribute to the artistic direction of the museum, which is coming of age with very concrete successes and a promising vision toward the future. The intention to articulate a Latin American mission, within the opacity of this historical juncture, demands a multiplicity of gestures, which connect such a mission with fluid ideas on identity, gender, and borders, whether imaginary or real. Latin American art is a broken vessel whose pieces we glue together to give them back its lost shape. Yet the fragments don’t make it less interesting or valuable, just more complex.”

18 years after the founding of Malba, Gabriela Rangel’s entry marks the beginning of a new phase, after the work done by Agustín Arteaga (2001-2002), Marcelo Pacheco (2003-2013), and Agustín Pérez Rubio (2014-2018).

Gabriela Rangel will start working with the Malba team on the museum’s general programming, and from September 1 she will be installed full time in Buenos Aires.