Patricia Phelps de Cisneros has served in many roles at the Museum of Modern Art since 1981, including as a Trustee of the Board since 1992, the founder of the Latin American and Caribbean Fund for acquisitions in 2006, and as a member of the Archives, Library, and Research Collections Committee since 2009. In 2010, Mr. and Mrs. Cisneros endowed the Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Bibliographer for Latin America, a permanent position in the Museum’s Library. Thanks to this endowment, the Library maintains a staff member dedicated to cultivating and stewarding the Library’s holdings of Latin American materials.
The Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros has shaped the Latin American curatorial collection at MoMA with an unprecedented donation of over 250 works by Latin American artists. The majority of donated works were given as part of two gifts. The Modern Gift of 102 works was announced in October 2016, and the Contemporary Gift in January of 2018. Highlights of artwork donated by the CPPC, with commentary by MoMA curators, is available here.
Many works from Mrs. Cisneros’ gifts were included in two large exhibitions at MoMA. The first, Sur Moderno: Journeys of Abstraction, curated by Inés Katzenstein and María Amalia García, opened in 2019, and focused on Concrete, Neo-Concrete, and Kinetic movements. The second, Chosen Memories: Contemporary Latin American Art from the Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Gift and Beyond curated by Inés Katzenstein in 2023, traced the shift toward video, performance, photography, and more participatory forms of art in the region. Works originating from the CPPC are also regularly exhibited in the Museum’s galleries, where the Museum’s permanent collection is rotated and exhibited according to themes.
This video describes the CPPC's transformative gift to MoMA and to other art institutions.
In 2016, with funding from the Cisneros Phelps family, the Museum established the Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Research Institute for the Study of Art from Latin America. The Cisneros Institute aspires to become a vital platform for the arts of Latin America by fostering critical thinking across borders. Through its programs and publications, it aims to stimulate, support, and disseminate new research on modern and contemporary art of Latin America and its role as an integral part of global culture. It also seeks to promote the multiple perspectives of artists and scholars from Latin America by engaging in an international dialogue.
As part of The Museum of Modern Art, the Institute is committed to strengthening the Museum’s longstanding commitment with Latin America through rigorous and experimental research into MoMA’s Latin American holdings and meaningful collaborations with artists, art historians, critics, curators, and other cultural institutions.
