World Art

ISSN: 2150-0894 (Print) 2150-0908 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rwor20

Fuelling museums and art fairs in Peru’s

capital: the work of the market and multi-scale
assemblages

Giuliana Borea

To cite this article: Giuliana Borea (2016): Fuelling museums and art fairs in Peru’s
capital: the work of the market and multi-scale assemblages, World Art, DOI:
10.1080/21500894.2016.1213310

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/21500894.2016.1213310

Published online: 10 Aug 2016.

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World Art, 2016
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/21500894.2016.1213310

Fuelling museums and art fairs in Peru’s capital: the

work of the market and multi-scale assemblages
Giuliana Boreaa,b*
a
Department of Anthropology, New York University; New York, NY, USA;
b
Department of Social Sciences, Pontificia Universidad Catolica
del Perú; Lima, Peru

This article examines the transformation of museums and the rise of art
fairs as arenas for assembling Latin American art and agents at regional
and larger scales, and as channels through which the work of the
market and its templates has spread. It approaches this topic through
the analysis of the Lima art scene and its mechanisms of articulation.
This article connects to studies of the rise of ‘new art worlds’, but not
as celebration of their position on the ‘global art map.’ In contrast,
with a focus on multi-scale assemblages, this work traces actors’ –
particularly art collectors’, curators’ and art fair directors’ –
strategies and articulations to promote Peruvian and Latin American
art. I argue that while current assemblages are strengthening the
region and mobilizing – some – new interpretations, they are also
fuelling market logics and spreading similar values and protocols.
Keywords: Latin American contemporary art; art market; art
collector; museum; new art worlds; assemblage; neoliberalism; Lima

1. At Art Basel Miami in 2013 among the various newspapers handed out, one
heading caught my attention: ‘Why Latin America is hotter than ever. How a
group of curators, collectors and scholars put a continent on the art-world
map’ (Rojas 2013). It highlighted the work of five collectors: Venezuelan-
born New York-based Estrellita Brodsky and Patricia Phelps de Cisneros,
Cuban-born Miami-based Ella Fontanals-Cisneros, Argentinean-born
Buenos Aires-based Mauro Herlitzka, and Peruvian-born Lima-based Juan
Carlos Verme.

2. In my talks with art dealers about their expectations of the two art fairs
launched simultaneously in Lima in 2013, a Brazilian gallery owner told
me, ‘We came to know and to be known, to introduce our artists and to pos-
ition ourselves. Now we look at each other between São Paulo, Buenos Aires,
Bogotá and Lima. Before, we only looked at London and the US. Today, it is
easier to travel. Ten years ago, we didn’t cross the Andes’.

*Email: gborea@pucp.pe
© 2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
2 G. Borea

This article focuses on the interrelationship between the recalibration of

museums and the rise of art fairs as arenas for assembling Latin American
art, as agents within the region and on the Euro-American art circuits, and
as channels through which the work of the market and its templates has
spread. It looks at actors’ – particularly art collectors’ and curators’ –
multi-scale strategies and articulations in promoting Latin American art
and local art scenes, and at the actors themselves as transnational art
agents. It approaches this topic through an analysis of the Lima art
scene and its current mechanism for regional and wider articulations.
This article connects to work on the rise of ‘new art worlds’ (e.g. Belting
et al. 2013; Smith 2011), but not as a celebration of their position in the
‘global art map’ or of a ‘global contemporary art’. Instead, I insist on the
need to problematize ‘the global’ and notions of ‘global art history’,
‘global museums’, ‘the global art market’ and ‘the global art map’ by unveil-
ing the production of power under the conditions and reiterations of glob-
ality. Additionally, rather than ‘new art worlds’, where ‘new’ is defined by
the awareness of the Euro-American art world, I refer to the reconfigura-
tion of art worlds, and focus on multi-scale assemblages.
I draw on vibrant studies of assemblages (e.g. Ong and Collier 2004;
Marcus and Saka 2006) understood as diverse, emergent, shifting and
unstable global articulations.1 Assemblages allow us to underscore ‘the
global’ through specific situated heterogeneous articulations, rather than
as abstract forms and enunciations. Following Anna Tsing (2005: 12), I
add to this analysis a perspective on strategies at different scales. In
showing institutional and individual actors’ multi-level strategies and
articulations, I argue that current assemblages per se do not imply new
art values and protocols. Moreover, and in dialogue with work on neoliber-
alizing processes (Peck et al. 2009, 2010; Harvey 2006) and transnational
global class (Robinson 2008; Ong 1999), I show that the agentive arena of
market logics today is not only in the art market but also in the museum,
through the greater participation of elites who, while enabling larger
articulations through their economic and social power, also facilitate a
greater synchronization of the art worlds.2
I understand neoliberalization not just as an economic doctrine but as a
‘technology of governing’ (Ong 2006) which strengthens institutions that
advance market power and restructures subjectivity, becoming common
sense (Bourdieu 1988, Foucault 2008; Harvey 2006). As many scholars
(e.g. Yúdice 2003 and Dávila 2012) have explained, culture and art have
today an expanded role that is central to neoliberal strategies. They are
managed and measured as contributing to the economy, social inclusion
and urban solutions (e.g. the cultural industries and creative city para-
digms). Yet this social role of culture and art also leads processes of
urban gentrification through spatial renewal (Zukin 1995). By looking at
multi-scale heterogeneous articulations, I also illustrate how agents
 World Art 3

promoting two large projects, the ‘global art world’ and the ‘creative city’,
compete today in the management of the art market in Lima, although
the friction between them (see Tsing 2005: 6) fuels similar protocols and
market logics.
First, I analyse the Museo de Arte de Lima’s new strategies for interna-
tionalization and ways of acting upon the market. Second, I show how
Latin American stakeholders participate in enlarging the collections and
perspectives of major museums and foster art markets in central art
nodes. Third, I turn my attention back to Lima to discuss the launch of
two competing art fairs, held simultaneously, and the frames, values and
bodies they promote.
This paper is based on my multi-sited ethnographic research exploring
the transformation of Lima’s contemporary art scene. I start by emphasizing
that the consolidation of the market is the latest process in the reconfigura-
tion of this art scene into its current form. Particularly, I argue that specific
actors have come into play at three different moments of this reconfigura-
tion.3 The first, from the late 1990s to the mid-2000s, is marked by
artists’ individual and collective inter-media explorations triggered by the
Lima biennial, held from 1997 to 2003, as part of Lima’s urban neoliberal
policy, and artists addressing sociopolitical concerns in the wake of Fuji-
mori’s authoritative regime and the democratic transition. In this efferves-
cent period, new curators and indigenous actors began to expand the
definitions of art by labelling indigenous art ‘contemporary’. A second
period, from 2006, saw a process of institutionalization via museum
reinforcement, and of articulation of transnational regional networks,
while the figure of the art collector was strengthened. The more recent
third period is characterized by the rapid growth of the Peruvian art
market which entwines with the consolidation of Lima as a creative city.
This article specifically traces some processes of the second and third period.
By identifying these periods, my work invites us to see the different
arrangements through which art scenes operate and how art markets –
so visible today – connect and function within larger processes, histories
and mechanisms.4 My argument is not about the previous lack of a
market, but the restructuring of its conditions. Lima had a dynamic art
market in the 1970s and 1990s, but it was more isolated, smaller, and
less involved with the making of the city and its subjectivities. The
average buyer was older: young collectors were not on the scene as they
are today.

Museo de Arte de Lima: promoting transnational collectors,

fuelling the market
The museum has been a crucial actor in the management and definition of
contemporary art in Lima since 2006. Artists’ and curators’ vibrant new
4 G. Borea

explorations were followed by a process of institutionalization, in which

four museum projects with different agendas for contemporary art gradu-
ally took shape.5
The Museo de Arte de Lima, a private museum founded in 1961 with a
focus on Peruvian art throughout history, achieved a leading role through
its new intense focus on contemporary art and through (partially) articu-
lating the ongoing artistic dynamism.6 While some transformations had
been taking place at the museum since the late 1990s (see Bird 2014),
the election of the young businessman and art collector Juan Carlos
Verme as Chairman of the Board, the stronger tactical participation of
the publicist and art collector Armando Andrade, and the leadership of
the museum’s director, the art historian Natalia Majluf, brought new vital-
ity to the Museo de Arte de Lima.
With a clear agenda to reposition the museum locally and internation-
ally, the new board increased the number of young patrons; initiated a
branding campaign that created the museum’s acronym, MALI, which
evokes the word ‘Lima’; refurbished the whole building; enhanced its
internal management, and emphasized the museum’s orientation toward
contemporary art. To achieve the latter, the board launched three pro-
grams: the Contemporary MALI program, the Acquisition Committee of
Contemporary Art, and the summer auction and party.
The Contemporary MALI program is a framework to enhance the
museum’s promotion of Peruvian contemporary art with the aim of enrich-
ing the collection, making Peruvian artists visible, promoting critical debate
and increasing access to art (MALI 2008a: 35). To these ends it created the
position of Curator for Contemporary Art. The call was not limited to Peru-
vian curators, and Tatiana Cuevas, previously curator at Mexico’s Museo
Tamayo, became MALI’s first curator of contemporary art and held this pos-
ition until 2011. In this way, MALI both prevented dispute among Peruvian
curators and materialized its international aspirations.
The Acquisition Committee for Contemporary Art (CAAC), launched in
2007, uses Tate’s system: members make a financial contribution each year
to create a common fund for new purchases. Two external curators and the
museum’s curator recommend a list of works and explain their choices.
Committee members can also present proposals; acquisitions are
decided by voting.
I argue that the CAAC has fostered the development of Peruvian trans-
national collectors. It started as a learning apparatus for both collecting
and acting in the larger art world. Curators provided collectors with the
artistic and contextual knowledge they needed to act as mediators in
forming and promoting the museum’s collection. Acquisition Committee
members participate in various activities to increase their knowledge as
collectors and broaden their experience in the local, regional and main-
stream art scenes. MALI’s 2008 Institutional Report states:
 World Art 5

This year we have undertaken activities that meet an important objective of

the Committee, which is to promote collecting and get more people inter-
ested in contemporary art. Members of our Committee have participated
in various art fairs such as ArteBA, ARCO, Art Basel Miami and Basel,
MACO and Pinta. It has also organized visits to the important collections
of Alfredo Barreda, George Gruenberg and Walter Piazza, whom I especially
thank for opening the doors of their homes to share their experience as col-
lectors with us. (Jorge Basadre, CAAC president; MALI 2008b)

Today many Peruvian collectors feel more confident about what they know
and how to act in the art world, and have started to act independently of
museum channels.
The CAAC is aware of the MALI’s legitimizing role in the creation of Per-
uvian contemporary art historiography and of the power of its decisions –
and omissions – regarding its acquisitions:

It should be noted that several of the artists who have been selected by the
CAAC in these two years have recently joined the collections of major inter-
national museums like the MoMA in New York, the Tate in London, the Los
Angeles County Museum of Art, Museo de Arte Latinoamericano in Buenos
Aires, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León, and of prominent
private collections Daros Latinamerica in Zurich and the Diane and Bruce
Halle Collection in Phoenix. (Jorge Basadre; MALI 2008b)

In 2011 the museum displayed its extended collection of contemporary art

for the first time at the Estação Pinacoteca, opening during the São Paulo
Art Fair, SP-Arte. In São Paulo’s already international art scene MALI
highlighted its collection, the work of its Acquisition Committee and
curators.7
The third strategy was its summer auction and party, held at exclusive
beach clubs south of Lima (Figure 1). Although MALI has held auctions
since 1999, the combination of the summer auction with the new urban
lifestyle of a growing upper- middle class and the increased visibility of
contemporary art in the media has bolstered its exposure.
MALI participates directly in the art market through its auctions. More-
over, it is Lima’s only established art auction. Instead of disputes between
art dealers and auction houses for attracting collectors and establishing
prices (see Velthuis 2007), galleries want their artists’ work at the
museum’s auction, while the museum is the apparatus of articulation for
most of the key Peruvian collectors.8 As the action committee does not
invite all galleries to participate, MALI also shapes hierarchies among
Lima’s art galleries.
In addition to its determined focus on contemporary art and the
market, MALI has been revitalized by refurbishing its infrastructure and
increasing the efficiency of its management in line with international stan-
dards. Reaching these standards has enabled MALI to become a viable
6 G. Borea

Figure 1. Juan Carlos Verme welcoming participants to the VIII MALI Summer
Auction, 2014. Photo: author.

node in the international mobilization of art and a feasible partner in col-

laborative projects. Finally, MALI has embarked on the planning of large
exhibitions that tour the museums of Latin America.9 This agenda has con-
tributed to the articulation of museums and their agents in the region and
to links with top international museums, seeking to connect with insti-
tutions in other parts of the world with the aim of engaging with ‘new’
art worlds.

Rising value: acting at mainstream museums and

participation
As the opening note mentions, Latin American contemporary art attracts
significant international attention today. This is not only due to the hege-
monic art world’s reassessment of its vision of multiple modernities or
‘new’ art worlds, but also to the strategic work of transnational Latin Amer-
ican art agents connected to the simultaneous boosting of several local art
scenes.
The internationalization of art from Latin American countries and the
reinforcing of the region is not a new enterprise, and has seen different
moments and agendas.10 I suggest that we are at a new point at which
the strategy has moved from debates on representation to participation.
 World Art 7

Acting simultaneously on leading Euro-American art platforms and Latin

American art scenes, and networking through the category of ‘Latin
America’, museums, collectors, curators and art dealers have found a
powerful strategy for mobilizing and inserting art practices into larger
scenarios. Having witnessed the construction, circulation and deconstruc-
tion of the category ‘Latin American art’ throughout the twentieth century,
in the twenty-first century we are looking at its agency.
More precisely, this participatory regime has a crucial agentive factor in
museums, through collaborative projects and the strategic participation of
Latin American collectors who, acting as promoters, are increasing their
participation in the acquisition committees of top museums and support-
ing the creation of museum curatorial positions. Both acquisition commit-
tees and curatorial posts facilitate the insertion and increased
representation of Latin American art in mainstream museums’ collections
and the rise of the symbolic and economic value of Latin American art.
They provide new interpretations for the art and increase the number of
Latin American agents acting at central nodes. I will briefly mention
some examples.
In 2006 the Museum of Modern Art, New York (MoMA) established its
Latin American and Caribbean Acquisition Fund, supported by the collec-
tor Patricia Phelps de Cisneros. In the same year, with an endowment from
the collector and art historian Estrellita Brodsky, MoMA created a new
position: the Estrellita Brodsky Curator of Latin American Art. Luis
Pérez-Oramas, who was previously curator of the Cisneros collection,
perhaps the finest collection of Latin American geometric art which has
played a key role in readdressing this genre, holds this position.
When Pérez-Oramas took the post he stated that ‘Geometric abstraction
and Constructivism were minimally considered in the acquisitions and
they must be better represented in the museum today’ (IBLNEWS,
2006). Consequently, the 2008 MoMA exhibition New Perspectives in
Latin American Art included works not only of social realism, magic
realism and fantastical art but also of geometric art, abstraction and con-
ceptualism.11 With this, MoMA displayed a more diverse and complex
history of Latin American art.12
The impact of the rescaling of Latin American geometric and abstract
art in the US and Europe, promoted by Latin American collectors, curators
and scholars linked to the region, influenced Latin American art worlds.
For instance, MALI, aiming to show that Peruvian art is part of this
history, featured the exhibitions Jorge Piqueras: De la Estructura al Estil-
lado (Figure 2), and Szyszlo: Restrospectiva in 2011, among others. It also
auctioned several works by the artist Benjamin Moncloa, one of the most
important geometric abstract artists in Peru.
Tate applied similar dynamics: in 1999 the Tate Americas Foundation
established a permanent office in New York, and in 2003 the Tate Latin
8 G. Borea

Figure 2. Museo de Arte de Lima announcing the exhibitions of Ignacio Merino

and Jorge Piqueras, 2011. Photo: author.

American Acquisition Committee was founded. Since 2006, a year after

assuming his position as chairman of MALI’s board, Juan Carlos Verme
became a member of this Committee and is on the Board of Trustees of
the Tate Americas Foundation.
In 2002, Tate Modern appointed Cuauhtemoc Medina as its first
curator of Latin American Art, followed in 2009–12 by Julieta Gonzales,
who is now on the advisory curatorial team of MALI’s Acquisition Commit-
tee. With an endowment from Estrellita Brodsky in 2012 Tate, like MoMA,
created the Estrellita B. Brodsky Adjunct Curator of Latin American Art
post, to which the Colombian curator Jose Roca was appointed. According
to Tate (2012), the post ‘reflects Tate’s continuing commitment to broad-
ening the geographical scope of the Collection’. With the aim of broadening
the museum’s interpretations, Tate Modern also launched the Space
Initiative Project, which is based on ‘peer-to-peer collaborations with cul-
tural organisations from around the world’ (Tate n.d).
In 2012, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum also amplified its scope
with the launch of its large collaborative project, UBS MAP Global Art
Initiative, and its subsequent focus on South and Southeast Asia, Latin
America, and the Middle East and North Africa. For two years a selected
curator from each of these regions proposed explanations of the arts in
the region and, in conversation with the museum’s curators, suggested
 World Art 9

works to be purchased and educational programs. In 2013 the Mexican

curator Pedro León de la Barra was appointed Curator for Latin America.
In the summer of 2014 two exhibitions on Latin America art opened in
New York: Urbes Mutantes: Latin American Photography 1944–2013 at
the International Center of Photography, and Under the Same Sun: Art
from Latin America Today at the Guggenheim Museum (Figure 3). They
included the work of several Peruvian artists for the first time; previously,
Peruvian artists scarcely participated in the Latin American art category.
As Arlene Dávila (2008: 126) suggests, the differential representation
under the umbrella of Latin American art is related to different state pol-
icies across Latin American countries and to their elites’ international
activities; the growth in Peru’s representation is due to the work of elites.13
León de la Barra organized the Guggenheim exhibition around six
themes: abstraction, conceptualism, modernities, participation/emancipa-
tion, political activism, and the tropical. The once ‘other’ Latin America had
a place in one of the major museums – its aspirations toward globality were
fulfilled and celebrated at the ‘global’ site and at the ‘localities’. At the same
time, something was clear: if the show tackled indigeneity with texts
including the word ‘indigenous’, especially in the section on ‘the tropical’,
this was only through the representation of ‘Western’ Latin American
artists at the exhibition. Local processes expanding the limits of art to
encompass indigenous art were not reflected at the exhibition. Partici-
pation had its limits.

Figure 3. Rafael Ferrer’s “Artforhum,” 1972 at the exhibition Under the Same Sun
at the Guggenheim Museum, 2014. Photo: author.
10 G. Borea

Latin American assemblages with Spain also recovered their dynamism,

receiving significant attention in 2000. In 2011 the focus on Latin America
was brought back to the market sphere when ARCO launched its new
section Solo Projects: Latinoamerica. In 2012, the Museo Nacional
Centro de Arte Reina Sofía reinforced its links with Latin America with
the Fundación Museo Reina Sofía. The Fundación, among other aims, cul-
tivates collaborations with museums in Latin America through the Red de
Museos del Sur program. Among its founders are the chairmen of the
boards of the Museo de Arte de Lima and the Museo de Arte Contempor-
áneo de Lima. In addition, Museo Reina Sofía has provided support to the
Latin American curatorial network Red de Conceptualismos del Sur (RCS),
created in 2007, which sheds light on the arts in the contexts of dictatorial
and violent regimes in Latin America, locating politics at the core of its
enquiries. Peruvian curator Miguel López is the RCS’s co-founder and an
active member.
The direct involvement of collectors and curators in the operation of top
museums reveals the new ways in which the art world acts and creates
symbolic and economic value. Their work has helped to increase the
value of Latin American art, showing its specificities, connections and con-
tributions, for example through the promotion of Latin American abstract
art and conceptualismo. But while previous concerns about the represen-
tation of Latin America are now being tackled with more informed curator-
ial work (Ramírez 1992, 1996), new paradoxes of participation arise: what
are the mechanisms of participation, and ultimately, who defines the fra-
mework? How is participation channelled, and most importantly, what
does participation channel back? Does it allow the different participants
equal mechanisms for repositioning? Who are the actors who participate,
and which epistemologies, beyond interpretations, are mobilized? These
questions require further discussion. My interest here is in pointing out
that they concern not only the practices of top museums but equally
who, in terms of the politics of class and race, the Latin American transna-
tional agents are, and how diverse – and democratic – the channels for par-
ticipation are.
Collectors are acting in and fostering private and public, national and
international museums. This growing participation of elites as art collec-
tors and trustees in transnational conditions, and in interrelation to
some curators, is shaping cultural policies on a larger scale and transform-
ing and overlapping with the conditions of the museum and of the market.

A Latin American art fair at central art nodes: joining agents

in the market
In 2004, two Argentinean entrepreneurs with network perspectives, Ale-
jandro Zaia and Diego Costa Peuser, met in Miami. Two years later they
 World Art 11

decided to create an art fair, to be called Pinta, The Modern & Contempor-
ary Latin American Art Show in New York.
Alejandro Zaia is an Argentinean businessman. In 1997, he founded a
public affairs company in Argentina. In 2001, he left Buenos Aires to live
in Miami. From Miami, he reoriented his firm toward the Latin American
market, opening offices in Buenos Aires, Bogotá, São Paulo, Mexico City
and Santiago de Chile, and co-created another group for the Hispanic
market. Diego Costa Peuser, another Argentinean entrepreneur, co-
founded the art magazine Arte al Día with his father Jorge Augusto Costa
Peuser in 1980. In 1998 the magazine’s executive office moved to Miami,
and years later it opened offices in Mexico City and Caracas. In 2003
Costa Peuser launched Arteamericas, a fair dedicated to Latin American
art, in Miami. He also organized art events in Buenos Aires and Lima.
Zaia and Costa Peuser invited the Argentinean art collector and promo-
ter Mauro Herlitzka to join their project. Herlitzka is the chairman of Fun-
dación Espigas, Vice-President of the Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de
Buenos Aires, a member of Tate Modern’s Latin American Acquisition
Fund, MoMA’s International Council and the Latin American and Carib-
bean Acquisition Fund, and has been the director of the ArteBA art fair.
According to Zaia, one reason for setting Pinta in New York was that
there was an ‘important critical group’ working on Latin American art,

Figure 4. Pinta. Modern & Contemporary Latin American Art Show, New York,
2012. Photo: author.
12 G. Borea

constituting of artists, art dealers, and public and private institutions, but
nothing to bring them together at the market level. Pinta was seen as that
connecting market platform and as a channel for the circulation of Latin
American galleries, their artists and other agents. Zaia found Pinta a chal-
lenging idea: ‘I like it, I feel comfortable with projects that develop brands,
new things, which generate value. Branding and positioning strategies
were applied to an art project’ (interview, March 2011).
Pinta was founded in 2007. Strategically, it took place in November,
days before Sotheby’s and Christie’s auctions of Latin American art. To
participate, galleries must feature works by Latin American artists living
in Latin America or abroad, or present the work of foreign artists who
have had a long working relationship with Latin America. The plan was
for 50% of the galleries to be Latin American, with the others from the
United States and Europe. In 2009 the fair brought 34 galleries together,
invoiced $8 million, and received 7000 visitors at its location at the Metro-
politan Pavilion and the Altman Building. In 2010 Pinta was held at Pier
92, where the Armory Show is held, with 54 galleries and sales over $10
million; it received 12,000 visitors.
Pinta has offered incentives to museums that deal with Latin American
art to increase their collections through its Matching Funds Program.
Museums such as MoMA, the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, El
Museo del Barrio in New York, and MALI have been recipients of this
fund. The condition for this support is that the museum’s director (and
ideally also the board) attends Pinta to make the acquisition. As most
museum boards today consist of active collectors, Zaia told me (interview,
2011) that their attendance generally implies more acquisitions for their
personal collections and their participation increases the fair’s symbolic
value.
However, Pinta has its detractors. Some point out that the reinforce-
ment of a particular niche in the market of ‘Latin American art’ reduces
‘Latin American art’ to something culturally specific rather than part of a
global, universal art. However, for the organizers, who share these univers-
alist assumptions, participating in a Latin American art fair does not
detract from artists’ and galleries’ potential to be ‘global’; rather, it
creates a platform for positioning the trajectories of artists, as they can
move strategically.
Pinta’s promoters decided to increase the scope of the art fair: in 2010,
Pinta London was launched. Here, the conditions were different. While
Pinta’s project in New York was to integrate different agents already oper-
ating there through the market, in London the goal was to excite interest in
Latin American art. The organizers sought support from Tate Modern and
the University of Essex. In London, Pinta’s promoters found no criticism of
the category of ‘Latin America’.
 World Art 13

Peruvian galleries such as Forum, Lucia de la Puente and 80m2 have

often participated at Pinta, and several Peruvian artists have exhibited
their work there. In 2008, the Peruvian artist Fernando Bryce was
Pinta’s guest artist. MALI has repeatedly been part of the matching
funds program. Peruvian collectors always participate, and MALI’s board
members Juan Carlos Verme and Armando Andrade are part of Pinta’s
Host Committee. Most recently, the Peruvian curator Miguel López and
the Venezuelan-born New York-based curator Gabriela Rangel have been
in charge of the Pinta Forum.
In 2012, Diego Costa Peuser and Alejandro Zaia split as partners of
Pinta. Zaia moved to Madrid. They divided the ownership of the art fair:
Costa Peuser retained the management of Pinta in the US, and Zaia in
the UK. Pinta London has undergone different adjustments and has,
most recently, received the support of the Museo Reina Sofía. With
Diego Costa Peuser, Pinta New York also sought renewal through the
inclusion of more curatorial activity in mediating the art fair overall. In
an interview, Costa Peuser told me:

Pinta New York has a new location in SoHo [ … ] It is a fully curated fair. There
are sections, and each has a curator who has a lot of prestige and experience,
and knows what they want to do [ … ] Curators invite the galleries. Curator –
gallery work together. And what is asked of curators is first a selection of gal-
leries, their help with the installation of the show to make it neat, and a lot of
networking. What is really good at Pinta is that it is a fair with a big curatorial
presence and many museum directors. Curators from JP Morgan and the
biggest banks’ collections go. Pinta’s potential is as a platform, and from
there it enables other events. (Interview, August 2013)

In 2014 Pinta moved from New York to the growing art node of Miami. Its
strategy was to operate during the week of the imposing Art Basel Miami
which has been a high-visibility platform for Latin American artists’, gal-
leries’ and collectors’ international participation since opening in 2002.
Nevertheless, there are many Latin American galleries that do not fulfil
Art Basel’s requirements, for which Pinta and other parallel art fairs
provide an opportunity to be at Miami, raising the visibility of the art
and agents from the region.

Back to Lima, the rise of two art fairs: grounding formats/

reinforcing Latin American circuits
At the 2012 Pinta Latin American Art Fair, Peruvian stakeholders asked me
whether I knew about the two Lima art fairs that would open the next year:
PArC and Art Lima. I remember that Art Lima was usually called ‘the other’
by Peruvian art stakeholders. PArC is co-organized by Diego Costa Peuser
and the Argentinean art promoter Gaston Deleau. It takes place at the
14 G. Borea

Museum of Contemporary Art, MAC Lima, which opened in 2013 after a

decade of conflict with the municipality and a group of local residents.
Three months later it was housing PArC in an explicit intersection of the
museum with the market. PArC’s organizers’ credibility was based on
their 10-year experience in Lima with La Semana del Arte event (2001–
12) and the Lima Photo art fair (since 2009), organizing international
art fairs such as Pinta and Buenos Aires Photo, and managing the magazine
Arte al Día. So who were the organizers of Art Lima, who created an art fair
that challenges the established international art promoters who were
already activating art projects in Latin America and the US in conjunction
with local agents?
Before I answer the question, I argue that the organization of these two
art fairs is based – at least in their first three manifestations – in two
market-led projects that overlap and fuel one another, but have their
own logics: the ‘global art world’, described in the two previous sections,
and ‘the creative city’, which I will explain next. Thus, two groups of
agents launched simultaneous art fairs (Figures 5 and 6) claiming the
leading role for managing Lima’s art market at the art fair level, and
unleashing disputes. These disputes have unfolded around issues of
belonging: ‘belonging’ to the art world and ‘belonging’ to Lima.

Figure 5. Art Lima at the Chorillos Military School, 2013. Photo: author.
 World Art 15

By 2001 the growing neoliberal economy intersected with the need,

after 10 years of Fujimori’s regime, for the social and material renewal of
Lima and Peru. Peru’s cultural production began to be managed as cultural
industries and gradually became part of the marketing strategies associ-
ated with notions of ‘Peruvian creativity’. Chefs using native ingredients
and recipes created new combinations and forms of high cuisine, driving
an explosion of restaurants, at first in Lima and then internationally.
Later, fashion designers synthesized Peruvian elements and promoted
native products. Diverse appropriations were mediated by ‘creative’
agents who reshuffled traditions and mobilized a disciplined alterity for
the global market. The conjuncture of economic growth (IMF 2012) and
the reinforcement of ‘Peruvian creativity’ at the market and media level
strengthened Peruvian self-esteem, which reached new heights of govern-
ance from 2010 with the launch of Peru’s new brand and Lima’s urban
policy by the mayor, Susana Villarán, who promoted culture, art and crea-
tivity as Lima’s resources. In addition, I argue that ‘Peruvian creativity’ and
particularly ‘creative Lima’ fit perfectly with the rise of the upper-middle
class, whose new lifestyle is promoted by and fuels the growing number
of sophisticated restaurants, the explosion of new boutique and design
shops, and the acquisition of contemporary art and luxury apartments.
PArC and Art Lima were launched into this celebration of culture and
consumption. The people behind Art Lima are mainly Peruvians

Figure 6. PArC at the Museum of Contemporary Art – Lima, 2013. Photo: author.
16 G. Borea

approaching the arts via their experience in design, the fashion industry
and the arts. Art Lima started as the idea of business manager Rochi del
Castillo, who was born in the Peruvian coastal city of Trujillo, lives in
Lima and owns a large store that includes several design companies. In
her store, created in 2006, she began to work closely with artists who
had found a niche in art and design shops. Del Castillo therefore
approached the arts via interior design and the new urban lifestyle that
economic growth has opened up to a small but growing sector of Lima.
To promote her business and expand its market, she started a fanzine pro-
viding information on high-class lifestyle, and occasionally travelled to art
fairs to get a sense of the art world. According to Del Castillo (interviewed
in August 2014), the Peruvian stakeholders were scarcely connected, the
only art fair (Lima Photo) was promoted by foreign agents, and Peruvian
artists needed a better platform for showing their works.
She convened a group of people to work with her on an art fair project:
the entrepreneur, founder and organizer of Lima’s Fashion Week, Efrain
Salas, with expertise in organizing major events in Lima for a Peruvian
audience; the artist, curator and promoter of Amazonian art Christian
Bendayán, to contribute artistic direction; and the Lima-based Argenti-
nean lawyer Erika Lang to help with legal and customs issues. For two
years prior to the fair, they travelled together to art fairs in Latin
America and to Art Basel Miami to interview the organizers and learn
from their experiences. With no previous experience of how art fairs
work, Art Lima announced itself as an art fair organized by people who
lived in Lima (most of them Peruvian), and based its credibility on their
work as cultural promoters and their individual careers.
Most of the Peruvian gallery owners have preferred to support those
with experience in organizing art fairs and with whom they already had
connections. PArC also counts on the support of most of the people
behind MALI and MAC Lima. Art Lima has had the support of individual
artists, of the Spanish curator Octavio Zaya and of the most widely distrib-
uted newspaper, El Comercio, which created intense publicity about Art
Lima resembling the campaigns about Peruvian creativity.
Despite differences in their publicity strategies, target audiences (Art
Lima’s being broad, and PArC’s selective), forum programmes (the
former more educational), and some differences in their aesthetics, both
PArC and Art Lima continue to announce themselves as showcases for Per-
uvian contemporary art to the world and prioritize strategies for articula-
tion. To this end, both fairs grounded the formats and operational methods
of art fairs, which are mostly the same from fair to fair, in order to partici-
pate in the rules of the transnational game and become nodes of circulation
for transnational art agents.
The date of the two art fairs – the third week of April – was pro-
grammed in relation to a local calendar, and especially to a calendar of
 World Art 17

art fairs in which most of Lima’s and other Latin American galleries partici-
pate, or aspire to participate. In other words, the dates were chosen to fit
the schedule consisting of the main Latin American art fairs: ArteBA
(Buenos Aires), ArtBo (Bogotá), MACO (Mexico City), SP Arte (São
Paulo), Art Rio (Rio de Janeiro), ChACO (Santiago de Chile) and Pinta
(previously in New York), and of the mainstream art fairs: Armory Show
(New York), ARCO (Madrid), London and New York Frieze, Art Basel
and Art Basel Miami, in which art agents yearn to participate.
Chart 1 highlights a regional mainstream art fair schedule, according to
which art agents tend to circulate, in addition to other individual trajec-
tories including biennials. It also shows that the Latin American art
fairs, with the exception of ArteBA, have been created in the last 10
years. This growth of art fairs has enabled the intensification of artists’, gal-
leries’, and art agents’ circulation and reinforced the articulation of the
region, as the second quotation at the beginning of this article addresses.
Due to their aspirations for transnational articulations, both Art Lima
and PArC also work across similar types of art, although PArC is more con-
ceptual. Neither PArC nor Art Lima has fostered an expanded notion of
contemporary art to include indigenous art and diverse art tendencies.
Indigenous artists are not represented in Lima’s galleries or promoted at
art fairs.14 In the same vein, indigenous artists have no place at the
Guggenheim: they seem not to be ‘under the same sun’. The Lima art

Chart 1. Calendar with the key Latin American art fairs (highlighted) and main-
stream fairs that Latin American art agents tend to participate in or visit. Infor-
mation contains city in which art fair takes place and founding year.
Elaboration: author.
18 G. Borea

market is strongly engaged with ‘global museum’ discourses such as those

of Tate Modern, MoMA, the Guggenheim and the Reina Sofía, in which, as
I have shown, Latin American art collectors and curators also participate.
Finally, PArC and Art Lima have succeeded in attracting attention to the
arts in Lima and in the media, but they appeared late in the reconfiguration
of the Lima art scene. The way in which the market announces its work res-
onates strongly and captures the complex historical process. Here is a brief
example from a review entitled ‘10 creative cities to leave the country [the
UK] for’:

Latin America’s best kept secret and unexpected new art world star is Lima.
The city has been drawing visitors to its doorstep with its hot new fairs
ArtLima and PArC. The art scene in the Peruvian capital is split between
manicured Miraflores and bohemian Barranco and in this city gallery open-
ings are cocktail parties not mere beer fuelled nod fests. (Neave 2015)

As geographer Jamie Peck (2013) suggests, the paradigm of the creative

city neatly fits the neoliberal paradigm. The strengthening of urban event-
ism is an effective way of celebrating the market’s success: a celebration of
the market that today structures the city and art stakeholders’ imagination
and work, and envelops the fields of art and the paths through which it
circulates.

Conclusion, or paradoxes
The rise of art fairs in Peru and Latin America and the growth of new forms
of participation in and among museums during the last decade have con-
tributed to the reinforcement of the region. They have also become chan-
nels for the circulation and spread of Western-based art formats and
market logics for the arts. As I have shown in this article, these processes
take place through concrete multi-scale assemblages with the active invol-
vement of Latin American elite groups, in which the market and the
museum itself play crucial roles.
As I have illustrated, there is a growing overlap of the museum and the
market. While art collectors have achieved more power in museums’
decisions and museums foster directly market-oriented arenas such as
auctions and art fairs, there is an enlargement of art fairs through their
different programmes from talks to solo projects, although mediated by
the market, which have turned art fairs into privilege catchment entities
for diverse art agents and cultural debates. Yet they are not so diverse.
Beyond the platforms of visibility that the art fairs claim to be, they have
their specific subjects and values. They promote the iteration of curators,
artists, galleries, art collectors and invited speakers across the region –
while only some participate, others aspire to participate in the Euro-Amer-
ican circuit. In addition, art fairs and the channels for international
 World Art 19

participation make visible, mobile and profitable only the art of those indi-
viduals who are allowed to be ‘contemporary’ for the market and for the
‘global’ museums – more precisely, of agents in decision-making positions
– and obscure the work of others.
I argue that what we are witnessing is less about the global, the West per
se or the region; and more about the expansion and connection of the
power of the upper class (see Harvey 2006) in different parts of the
globe – usually dominant groups linked to Western forms, and who in
Latin America tend to be of European descent – who are playing a
crucial role in the articulation of art worlds and transformation of the
cities through art projects.15 Moreover, we are also witnessing the
overlap, frictions and assemblage of large projects such as the ‘global art
world’ and ‘the creative city’ in the management of art; in which both
fuel market logics and engage with leading standards and values. The
insertion of new work and interpretations can be welcomed, as long as
the parameters for acting, creating value, viewing, and selling become
the same, and spread.
The decentring of the art world is resulting more in an expansion of geo-
graphical paths than in a decentring of art into culturally diverse models
and epistemologies, with repercussions that anchor continuing problems
of the coloniality of power and knowledge (Quijano 2000). Articulations
to ‘the global’ require (‘new’) art worlds to synchronize their ways of oper-
ating, talking about and creating value in art. Assemblages multiply, but
they still are narrow.

Acknowledgements
The fieldwork for this work was supported by a Dissertation Fieldwork Grant from
the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research.

Notes
1. For further discussion on articulations, see James Clifford (2001: 473), who
explains articulations as specific connections between rooted and cosmopoli-
tan practices that imply ‘processes of consensus, exclusion, alliances, and
antagonism’.
2. For a discussion of Latin American elites, see William Robinson (2008), who
proposes that some elite families ‘underwent a qualitative transformation in
the 1980s and 1990s [ … ] propelled by privatizations and other opportunities
opened up by neoliberal globalization’, transforming their investments into
finance, telecommunications, retail and nontraditional exports, which has
led to an immense increase in their wealth. He calls this the rise of a transna-
tional capital class (2008: 171–2).
20 G. Borea

3. I have developed a detailed analysis of these three periods in my doctoral

thesis, Recasting the Contemporary: Processes, Assemblages and Aspira-
tions in the Making of the New Lima Art Scene (2008, New York University).
4. The art market has been the subject of significant research in the last years;
see Olav Velthuis (2007), Sarah Thornton (2008), Don Thompson (2008)
and Noah Horowitz (2011).
5. The museum projects that shaped their competing agendas were the Museo de
Arte de Lima; the Museo de Arte Contemporaneo project; Micromuseo, a
private museological project led by curator Gustavo Buntinx; and the public
university’s Museo de Arte of San Marcos. The first two are private
museums managed by the same elite group, although the people on their
boards from 2006 to 2013 belonged to different generations undertaking
different strategies.
6. The Museo de Arte de Lima’s new focus on the contemporary produced ten-
sions with the private Instituto de Arte Contemporáneo, with its then unfin-
ished Museo de Arte Contemporáneo.
7. Exhibition Arte al Paso: Colección Contemporáneo del Museo de Arte de
Lima (curated by T. Cuevas and R. Quijano).
8. In his study of the New York and Amsterdam art markets, Olav Velthuis
(2007) shows that galleries and auction houses employ differing strategies
for setting prices and creating value. He explains that art dealers, due to
their relationship with the artists, calculate prices with a long-term perspec-
tive on the artists’ careers rather than solely based on market forces, as auc-
tions do. Museums are perceived as outside the market, although their
acquisitions and practices influence it.
9. Such as Gordon Matta Clark, Undoing the Space (G. Rangel and T. Cuevas:
Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes de Chile; Museu de Arte Moderna de São
Paulo; MALI); Fernando Bryce, Dibujando la Historia Moderna (N. Majluf
and T.Cuevas: MALI; MUAC, Mexico DF; MALBA); and the co-organization
of Milagros de la Torre’s simultaneous exhibitions Indicios (MALI) and
Observed (E. Sullivan: Americas Society).
10. There are previous moments, such as MoMa’s early role (Basilio et al. 2004)
and of the Organization of American States, which promoted the idea of ‘Latin
American Art’ through the formation of collections and exhibitions (Fox
2013), mainly during the 1930s to 1960s; and the Latin American project, in
hindsight called the Social Theory of Art, that promoted thinking about art
from the region itself rather than following Euro-American tendencies,
during the 1960s to 1980s. The more recent discussion about Latin American
art gives voice to concerns raised by curators and art historians about museum
representation of Latin American and Latino art, particularly in US museums
in the 1990s, and about the category of ‘Latin American art’ (Ramírez 1992;
Ramírez et al. 2012).
11. Luis Camnitzer examines how conceptualismo differed from conceptual art. It
was not a style but an open interdisciplinary approach in which ‘art, politics,
pedagogy, and poetry overlap’ (2007: 21).
12. Other exhibitions also addressed Latin American abstraction, such as Inverted
Utopias (M.C. Ramírez: Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, 2004); The
 World Art 21

Geometry of Hope (G. Pérez-Barreiro: Blanton Museum of Art, Grey Art

Gallery, 2007); and Constructive Spirit (M.K. O’Hare: Newark Museum,
2010).
13. There is a division of Peru’s management of culture between the elites, who
manage ‘high art’, and the government, which manages the past and ‘tra-
ditional’ legacies (Borea 2006).
14. The only space that featured diverse art traditions was Gustavo Buntinx’s
Micromuseo booth and his exhibition project in Art Lima, and the one-day
installation at this same fair by the Amazonian urban artist Luis Cueva
Manchego.
15. David Harvey (2006) has unveiled how neoliberalism has succeeded not in
economic terms, but in restoring or creating upper-class power.

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