At San Antonio Museum of Art, it’s Latin American “popular” rather than “folk” art

An interview with Lucía Abramovich, SAMA associate curator of Latin American art.

To many in the art world, “folk art” may conjure amateurish, cheaply-made kitsch. The latter, a “conflicted term,” is tough to define, but like “Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s joke about pornography, one knows it when one sees it,” writes Ed Simon in “In Defense of Kitsch,” which explores anti-Catholic aspects of denigrating kitsch.

A San Antonio Museum of Art release caught my eye therefore when it announced the museum would “transition” from the “more traditional ethnographic” notion of “folk art” to the concept of “popular art,” which encompasses “shared human histories and experiences” and is truer to the Spanish phrase arte popular. The new name and concept would come as part of the museum’s first reinstallation—slated to open Sept. 12—of this 8,000-object strong collection in over 20 years.

Guitarra Conchera (12-string conchero guitar). Guanajuato, Mexico (1930s). Painted wood, cloth, wire, armadillo shell, and bone inlay. 36 x 10 x 5.25 inches. Nelson A. Rockefeller Mexican Folk Art Collection/SAMA.

To better understand whether this is inside-baseball or a significant shift, I posed questions to Lucía Abramovich, SAMA associate curator of Latin American art.

San Antonians tend to think of Mexican culture when they hear the term “folk art,” while others may associate it with “historic crafts” or “more ‘rustic’ decorative art, like furniture, paintings by ‘self-taught’ artists, or hand-crafted toys,” she informed.

“The term ‘popular art’ is probably confusing to most people in the United States, because there is currently no context for this term in other areas of art history, and what we consider as ‘popular culture’ in the United States is not directly related to the genre of ‘popular art,’” Abramovich said. “There is the added confusion of the 20th century ‘Pop art’ movement sharing a name.”

So why swap a known, albeit imperfect, term for an admittedly-confusing one?

Crane. Olinalá, Guerrero, Mexico (c. 1930). Nelson A. Rockefeller Mexican Folk Art Collection/SAMA.

To Abramovich, “folk art”—dated to 19th century Europe and an attempt to unify a community or nation—doesn’t apply to Latin America as it does to Europe and the U.S. “The history of the term ‘arte popular’ sheds a bit of light on this,” she said.

Mexican arte popular leaders used the Spanish word “popular” (“of the people”) deliberately to create a sense of Mexican national aesthetic unity. “However, there is a tremendous difference between Mexico and Europe in the cultural makeup of their societies,” Abramovich said. The former includes dozens of indigenous communities, and many enslaved people brought to Mesoamerica from Africa, as well as influxes of people from Asia and parts of Europe.

Given the more-diverse Mexican and Latin American cultural makeup, the notion of a national “traditional” art gets tricky.

“‘Traditional’ arts from Indigenous communities was part of the original development of ‘arte popular’ movement in Mexico, but the scope went far beyond this,” she said. “The term ‘folk’ is too narrow to describe the scope of this collection.” Further, Abramovich said, it’s “harmful and myopic” to use a term here like “folk art,” which suggests craft, less technical skill than “fine art,” and peripheral objects.

Still Life with Parrot (Bodegón con loro), 19th century, Puebla, Mexico. Oil on canvas. Nelson A. Rockefeller Mexican Folk Art Collection/SAMA.

SAMA staff decided to reinterpret the Latin American folk art gallery—as it was then known—after a spring 2017 flood due to a sprinkler valve malfunction. The art was safe thankfully, but the floors required replacement. When Abramovich arrived at the museum in June 2019, she was asked to reinstall the gallery as soon as possible.

Few U.S. museums have Latin American folk art collections, according to Abramovich, who cites International Museum of Art & Science (McAllen, Texas), Mexican Museum (San Francisco), Museum of International Folk Art (Santa Fe), and Tucson Museum of Art as leaders. None has collected here as extensively as SAMA, she said. “Because SAMA’s collection is so extensive, we have examples of popular art from throughout Latin America and the Iberian Peninsula.”

Visitors familiar with SAMA’s old display will find many objects to be repeat performers. “I have brought them back, because they are among the most exciting and unique examples of Latin American popular art in the collection, and our visitors frequently ask about them,” Abramovich said.

But there will be noticeable differences too. The old gallery subdivided into categories: utilitarian, decorative, ceremonial, and recreational objects, while the new one is organized by: histories of collecting; life, death, and faith; evolving traditions; and legacies of artistry.

Jaguar Mask (Mascara de Jaguar). Guerrero, Mexico (late 19th c.). Painted wood, animal teeth, boar bristle, and glass. 13 x 12 x 7.5 inches. Nelson A. Rockefeller Mexican Folk Art Collection/SAMA. Photo: Peggy Tenison.

“The new presentation organizes the objects into sections that ask visitors to reflect on the objects as part of a larger narrative,” she said. “I want visitors to think about how these objects compare to the objects that are significant in their own lives.”

I asked particularly about the objects associated with sacred traditions. Are those handled differently than secular ones?

“I think that sacred and secular objects in museums should be treated in a way that acknowledges and respects their original context,” Abramovich said. Treatment varies based on objects’ context.

In the Latin American “popular art” gallery, this question surfaces with “ex-votos,” or “votive paintings”—small, narrative paintings removed from chapels and churches, where they were offerings to saints.

“The ex-votos on display in the popular art gallery share a wall box, and they also share a chat label that acknowledges the change in the objects’ context as works in a museum,” said Abramovich, who is working on making inscriptions in the ex-votos, which she transcribed, accessible to visitors. (A “chat label” is a text explaining a work or works that goes beyond the basics, which appear in different label, a “tombstone.”)

I asked Abramovich, finally, what she hopes visitors to SAMA and to other displays of Latin American “folk” or “popular” art will take away from them.

She hopes visitors will have “more thoughtful approaches” and “if they find themselves in Latin America or among other Latin American collections of the same kind, they observe objects like these with the same respect and attention that they give to works of ‘fine art.’”

That’s something I’m going to try to take to heart too. When I’ve given these sorts of objects attention in the past, I haven’t had a problem respecting and admiring them. I’ve been drawn in particular to religious folk (or “popular”) objects—including at the National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago (which defines “arte popular” as “folk art”)—and have found stories about their devotional use fascinating. But in giving infrequent attention, there can be a kind of disrespect.

I don’t think I’m about to come around to thinking most or many “folk” or “popular” works are on par with, say, the best of Giotto’s or Rembrandt’s. Once-in-a-century art is just that—extremely rare and transcendent. But it also seems clear that certain apples-to-oranges contrasts can confuse rather than illuminate. How, for example, do you weigh the value of a treasure hanging on an individual’s wall that barely anyone sees with an object made for ritual use that touches the lives of whole communities on a perpetual basis?

I look forward to further mulling this over one of these days if I can make it to San Antonio to see the museum’s collection in person.