Exhibition Opening Lecture: Diego Rivera's America

In this opening discussion, exhibition guest curator James Oles and Jen Padgett, Acting Windgate Curator of Craft at Crystal Bridges, will delve into the key themes and stories of our new exhibition Diego Rivera’s America.

Highlighting some of the exhibition’s standout artworks, their conversation will provide an inside look at the collaboration behind the exhibition and new discoveries around the legendary artist’s career in Mexico and the US.

Tickets are $15 ($12 for members), reserve your spot online or with Guest Services at (479) 657-2335 today.

Developed by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), Diego Rivera’s America examines a prolific time in the artist’s life through over 170 works, including his drawings, easel paintings, frescoes, and more. Between the early 1920s and the early 1940s, Rivera worked in both Mexico and the United States and found inspiration in the social and cultural life of the two countries. He imagined an America—broadly understood—that shared an Indigenous past and an industrial future, and where cooperation, rather than divisions, were paramount.

James Oles

Dr. James Oles specializes in the history of modern Mexican art, with broad interests ranging from muralism to photography. His books include South of the Border: Mexico in the American Imagination, 1914-1947 (Smithsonian Institution Press, 1993), which accompanied a traveling exhibition of the same name organized at the Yale Art Gallery, and Art and Architecture in Mexico (Thames & Hudson, 2013), the first survey of its kind in some fifty years. His most recent project is Diego Rivera’s America, an in-depth exploration of the artist’s work of the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, which opened at the San Francisco Museum of Art in July 2022, and travels to Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in March 2023. He edited the fully-illustrated scholarly catalogue that accompanies the show.

Oles received his BA (1984) and PhD (1996) from Yale University; he also holds a JD (1988) from the University of Virginia School of Law. He divides his time between the US and Mexico: he teaches in the Art Department at Wellesley College, and in 2002 was appointed adjunct curator of Latin American art at the Davis Museum, where he advises on exhibitions and acquisitions for the permanent collection. In 2019 he curated Art_Latin_America: Against the Survey, featuring 150 works by 100 Latin American and Latinx artists in the Davis Museum collection; he also edited a major scholarly catalogue for the exhibition, with contributions by 40 scholars from across Latin America and the United States. As a guest curator, he has organized numerous other exhibitions in Mexico and the US.

Besides Diego Rivera’s America, his ongoing projects include Mexichrome: Color and Photography in Mexico, the first comprehensive history of color photography in Mexico, scheduled to open at the Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes, Mexico City, in Fall 2023, and Diego Rivera’s Heroes, a series of essays that will explore Rivera’s engagement with a wide variety of artists, including Giotto, Cezanne, Picasso, Kahlo, and Chaplin.

Lectures and Talks sponsored by MailCo USA.