The Nelson A. Rockefeller Center for Latin American Art houses the Museum’s collection of approximately 10,000 works of Latin American art. This collection spans almost 4,000 years of history and includes objects from nearly every region of Latin America.
The Museum opened the three-story, 30,000-square-foot Nelson A. Rockefeller Center for Latin American Art in 1998. The center has eight gallery spaces, which include two focus galleries, two atrium spaces, and four main galleries, each dedicated to one of the Museum’s major collecting areas in Latin American art: Art of the Americas pre-1500, colonial Latin American art, modern and contemporary Latin American art, and Latin American popular art.
The art of the Americas pre-1500 gallery includes sections dedicated to the art of the major Mesoamerican societies, Central America, and the Andes. The objects featured in this gallery represent the earliest art of the region known today as Latin America and highlight the complex development and dynamics of the region’s cultures and art.
The colonial Latin American art gallery includes paintings, sculpture, metalwork, furniture, ceramics, and textiles from throughout Latin America, spanning the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries. These works reflect the tremendous changes that occurred in the region’s political, social, and religious frameworks following the Spanish invasion and establishment of the Spanish viceroyalties.
The modern and contemporary Latin American art gallery features artwork made by Latin American and Latinx artists that dates from the early twentieth century to the present. This gallery contains strong representations of Mexican Modernism and Constructivism and features several recent acquisitions of contemporary Latin American art.
The Latin American Popular Art Gallery, formerly known as the Latin American Folk Art Gallery, houses objects that represent the largest sub-genre in the museum collection; SAMA has over 8,000 works of Latin American popular art in its permanent collection. Redesigned in 2020, this gallery features objects that form part of living traditions, works inspired by contemporary socio-political issues faced by the artists as well as objects intended to be appreciated simply for their aesthetic quality.
