National Gallery Names Natalia Ángeles Vieyra Inaugural Curator of Latinx Art

The National Gallery of Art (NGA), Washington, DC, has appointed Natalia Ángeles Vieyra its first associate curator of Latinx art. Vieyra, who is currently working as an independent curator, will assume her new role July 1. Working within the museum’s modern and contemporary art department, she will be tasked with researching, expanding, and exhibiting the NGA’s collection of modern and contemporary Latinx art, which includes work by Christina Fernandez, Rupert García, Felix González-Torres, Martine Gutierrez, Carmen Herrera, Daniel Lind-Ramos, Miguel Luciano, Ana Mendieta, and Freddy Rodríguez, among others.

“We are thrilled to welcome Natalia Ángeles Vieyra as our first curator of Latinx art,” said E. Carmen Ramos, the NGA’s chief curatorial and conservation officer. “The span of Natalia’s scholarship and curatorial practice from late-ninteenth- to early-twentieth-century Puerto Rican art to contemporary art, is well suited to the National Gallery’s transhistorical collections. As a scholar of Latinx art myself, I look forward to supporting Natalia as she helps deepen our collections and develops projects that illuminate the important ideas and practices of Latinx artists, highlighting their relevance to our world, past and present.”

Before becoming an independent curator, Vieyra was an associate curator of American art at the Worcester Art Museum, Massachusetts, where she secured loans and shepherded acquisitions of work by Latinx, Latin American, and African American artists. She was earlier Maher Curatorial Fellow of American Art at the Harvard Art Museums, and held curatorial roles at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, and the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam. She holds a Ph.D. in art history from Temple University and a BFA in graphic design from the University of the Arts, Philadelphia.

“I am incredibly honored to join the National Gallery of Art at this pivotal moment in its history,” said Vieyra in statement. “I am excited to connect with and inspire Latinx communities through art, and to champion Latinx artists on the national stage.”

Vieyra’s curatorship is funded by the Getty Foundation. The creation of her role is part of the larger Advancing Latinx Art in Museums initiative launched in February 2023 by the Ford, Getty, Mellon, and Terra foundations. The consortium’s aim is to pool $5 million that will fund the creation of ten Latinx art–focused curatorial positions over a five-year span. The Blanton Museum of Art at the University of Texas at Austin last April created a similar role, funded by the initiative, appointing Claudia Zapata its inaugural associate curator of Latino art.