"The Disappeared," a North Dakota Museum of Art traveling exhibit on the violence and horrors during past Latin American military dictatorships, has opened at El Museo del Barrio in New York City.
The exhibit is about the tens of thousands who were kidnapped, tortured and killed by the Latin American military dictatorships of the 1970s.
At GF in 2005
The exhibit, named for the word given to those who vanished, opened at NDMOA in 2005 during the UND Writers Conference. Curated by NDMOA director Laurel Reuter, it includes the work of 14 artists from Central America and South America.
More than 600 people came to the opening Feb. 22 in New York City to hear the panel discussion about the exhibit, Reuter said.
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Argentina, Uruguay"The Disappeared" already has been shown in museums in Argentina and Uruguay and has been getting an overwhelmingly good response, she said, from viewers, critics and human rights organizations.
"Most art today comes from the mind," Reuter said. "The exhibition is very good artists making art about something they experienced and care very deeply about, and that's a rare combination."
All of the work in "The Disappeared" is about the horrors and violence stemming from right-wing military dictatorships during the late 1950s to the 1980s, a news release said. Some of the artists worked in the resistance. Some had parents or siblings who disappeared, and others were forced into exile.
The images include drawings, prints photographs, installations and mixed media.
In remembranceRecent history sometimes feels filled with the atrocities of repressive regimes. Exhibits like these are important so that people will remember.
"One of the artists said, 'You make art like this so that the world doesn't repeat the same mistakes,'" Reuter said. "But another artist said, 'No, that's not true. You make the art so people will understand our own times.' Human beings keep making the same mistakes, but we do come to understand our place in history."
Art should have an important place in the civilized discourse in any country, she said. What artists do, whether they are visual artists, musicians or produce another kind of art, is to bring to public attention that which otherwise would be easy to sweep under the rug.
El Museo del Barrio was founded in 1969 by a group of Puerto Rican educators, artists, parents and community activists in East Harlem's Spanish-speaking El Barrio, a news release said, and has become New York's leading Latino cultural institution. Its mission has expanded to represent the art and culture in all of the Caribbean and Latin America.
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Reach Tobin at (701) 780-1134; (800) 477-6572, ext. 134; or ptobin@gfherald.com .
