Curator Adriana Ospina explains the process behind putting together the exhibition Cultural Encounters with the aim of explaining how the richness of the multifaceted cultural fabric of Latin America and the Caribbean cannot be fully understood without awareness of the history of Asian migrations to the region, such as that which occurred from Japan, China, India, and Indonesia to host countries such as Argentina, Brazil, Cuba, Guyana, Jamaica, Panama, Peru, Mexico, Trinidad and Tobago, and Suriname.
Adriana Ospina is a Colombian art historian and holds an M.A. in Art History from George Mason University. Over the course of her ten years at the Art Museum of the Americas (AMA), Ms. Ospina, AMA Permanent Collection Curator since early 2014 and Educational Program Manager since 2008, has worked with, and now oversees, the museum’s historic Latin-American Art Archives and permanent collection of art. She has curated exhibitions including Fusion: Tracing Asian Migration to the Americas through AMA’s Collection (2013), currently being expanded as a traveling exhibition, titled Cultural Encounters: Art of Asian Diasporas In Latin America & The Caribbean, 1945-Present, to be launched in May 2020, Femininity Beyond Archetypes: Photography by Natalia Arias (2014), Art of the Americas (2017 and 2018), and A Gaze through the CINTAS Fellowship Program: a Selection of Works from the CINTAS Foundation and The Art Museum of the Americas Collections (2019). Ospina edited the book Art of the Americas: Collection of the Art Museum of the Americas of the Organization of American States (2017). Additionally, she has worked on the Documents of 20th-Century Latin American and Latino Art: A Digital Archive and Publications Project with the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. She has been a presenter at the Latin American Studies Association Conference, at the College Art Association Conference and at the Association of Art Historians Conference. She is also part of the advisory committee for the permanent collection at the Inter-American Development Bank Cultural Center.
