A U C T I O N LIVE Thursday, May 2nd, 2019 | 7:00 PM Grand Ballroom The Plaza Hotel New York, NY 1230 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK, NY 10029 212.831.7272 El Museo del Barrio is the nation’s premier Latino and Latin American cultural A U C T I O N institution. Our mission is to present and preserve the art and culture of these important and growing communities through our ever-expanding Permanent A U C T I O N Collection, acclaimed exhibitions, innovative programs, and renowned bilingual LIVE education initiatives. Founded 50 years ago by artist and educator Raphael Thursday, May 2nd, 2019 | 7:00 PM Montañez Ortiz and a coalition of Puerto Rican educators, artists, and activists, Grand Ballroom El Museo del Barrio is at the forefront of cultural empowerment for more than 60 LIVE million Latinos. Today, El Museo del Barrio serves more than 100,000 visitors each Thursday,The May Plaza 2nd, Hotel2019 | 8:00 PM New York, NY year, thus becoming a cornerstone of El Barrio and a valuable resource for New York Grand Ballroom City. The Plaza Hotel New York, NY 1230 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK, NY 10029 212.831.7272 El Museo del Barrio’s Gala is celebrating its 26th anniversary. El Museo del Barrio’s Gala is a spectacular event that brings together Latino and non-Latino cultural luminaries and leaders in business, finance, fashion, entertainment, art and philanthropy, to raise crucial funding for the museum. This year, we are delighted to honor three individuals who have distinguished themselves in the fields of design, arts and cultural patronage. These include: artist, one of the founders and the first Director of El Museo del Barrio Raphael Montañez Ortiz for Excellence in the Arts; philanthropist, an entrepreneur, businesswoman, and a collector of contemporary art Ella Fontanals-Cisneros, as an Outstanding Patron of the Arts; and entrepreneur, real estate developer and art collector Craig Robins, as an Outstanding Patron of Art & Design. Introduction | Page 2 El Museo del Barrio presents a Live Auction featuring works of art selected by Patrick Charpenel and Viridiana Mayagoitia. Patrick Charpenel El Museo del Barrio’s Executive Director. Lives and works in New York City. A philosopher by training, Charpenel has worked intensively as a curator and collector, highlighting the paradoxes and ambiguities of the contemporary art world. Prior to his appointment at El Museo del Barrio, Charpenel served as Director of Mexico City’s Museo Jumex. He has presented several exhibitions in various forums within and outside Mexico, including Franz West: Elefante Blanco at the Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporáneo, Mexico City; The retrospective Gabriel Orozco at the Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes, Mexico City; the Art Public section of the 2009 and 2010 editions of Art Basel Miami Beach; 10.2 International Artists-in-Residence 2010 edition at Artpace San Antonio, Texas; and the Botanical Garden art project in Culiacán, Mexico. He has published critical essays in specialized journals, and served as a Council Member for the Centre Pompidou-Latin America, Paris, France in 2010. Introduction | Page 3 L I V E A U C T I O N LIVE Auction & Exhibit Thursday, May 2nd, 2019 7:00 PM The Grand Ballroom The Plaza Hotel New York, NY Should you wish to participate as an absentee bidder, please, contact [email protected] for more information and instructions. LIVE Auction | Page 4 The Auctioneer: Gabriela Palmieri. Gabriela Palmieri is the founder and principal of Palmieri Fine Art, Inc., a bespoke full-service Art firm based in New York City. Prior to establishing PFA, Inc., Ms. Palmieri led a distinguished 17-year career at Sotheby’s, where she rose to Chairman of Contemporary Art, Americas, and was recognized as one of the most respected in the auction industry as a leading specialist in Post-War Art. Ms. Palmieri founded PFA, Inc. to provide her clients with an unbiased, objective and transparent counsel in the increasingly complex and nuanced art market. In her independent role, she is committed to providing impartial advice and counsel for established and new collectors aimed at making informed acquisitions, which requires careful analysis and due diligence. As a seasoned researcher and scholar, Gabriela brings to bear all the relevant factors about the artist, the market trajectory for the artist’s work, the particular work taken in the context of the artist’s career, provenance, condition, literature and comparative uniqueness. In the evolving art market; Ms. Palmieri recognizes that client advocacy was as important as advisory, a role that she spearheaded during her tenure at Sotheby’s where she was the client advocate on every transaction. Prior to joining Sotheby’s, Ms. Palmieri received her Bachelor of Arts degree in Art History cum laude at Boston College in 1997, and she achieved her Master of Arts and advanced to Ph.D., standing at the University of Chicago. Ms. Palmieri has been certified by the Appraisers Association of America since 2013 and adheres to the Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice. She is a sought-after charity auctioneer and is the auctioneer for ICI (Independent Curators International); the Bronx Museum of Art; Maestro Cares among many others. In 2015 she was featured in the publication Nuevo New York alongside Nina Garcia, Carolina Herrera, and Narciso Rodriguez as one of the most influential The Auctioneer | Page 5 ARTWORKS Artists and Artworks | Page 6 Firelei Báez Excursion at Sea, 2019 Acrylic and ink on paper Dimensions: 12 x 12 in 30.5 x 30.5 cm Starting bid: $7,000 Firelei Báez | Page 7 Center for the Contemporary Art, Rotterdam, Netherlands; Mennello Museum of American Art, Orlando, FL; The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; The Studio Firelei Báez Museum, Harlem, NY; Contemporary Arts Center Cincinnati, OH; Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, MO; DePaul Art Museum, Chicago, IL; Taller * Born in 1981, Dominican Republic. Puertorriqueno, Philadelphia, PA; and Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, Salt Lake City, UT. Báez is the recipient of many awards: most recently, the College Rendering her subjects in complex layers of pattern and imagery, New York-based Art Association Artist Award for Distinguished Body of Work (2018), the Future artist Firelei Báez casts cultural and regional histories into an imaginative realm, Generation Art Prize (2017), and the Chiaro Award (2016). Her work belongs to the where visual references drawn from the past are reconfigured to explore new permanent collections of The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY; Kemper Art possibilities for the future. In exuberantly colorful works on paper and canvas, large- Museum, St. Louis, MO; Pérez Art Museum Miami, FL; The Cleveland Clinic Fine Art scale sculptures, and immersive installations, Báez combines representational cues Collection, Cleveland, OH; Phillip and Tracey Riese Foundation, New York, NY; San that span from lavish textiles and wallcoverings with colonial-era floral motifs, to Jose Museum of Art, San Jose, CA; Ruth and Elmer Wellin Museum of Art, Hamilton calligraphic patterns, hair textures, feathered headdresses and beaded jewelry. College, Clinton, NY; Sindika Dokolo Foundation Collection, Luanda, Angola; Spelman Often featuring strong female protagonists, Baez’s portraits incorporate the visual College Museum of Fine Art, Atlanta, GA; The Jean-Marc Salomon Foundation for languages of regionally-specific mythology and ritual alongside those of science Contemporary Art, Annecy, France; BNY Mellon Art Collection, Pittsburgh, PA, and fiction and fantasy, to envision identities as unfixed, and inherited stories as Tiroche DeLeon Collection, Jaffa, Israel. perpetually-evolving. These empowered figures’ eyes most often engage directly with the viewer, asserting individuality and agency within their varied states of flux. ABOUT THE ARTWORK Born in Santiago de los Caballeros to a Dominican mother and a father of Haitian descent, Firelei Báez’s concerns with the politics of place and heritage can be traced back to her own upbringing on the border between Hispaniola’s two neighboring countries, whose longstanding history of tension is predicated in large part by ethnic difference. Báez’s work ties together subject matter mined from a wide breadth of diasporic narratives. In addition to self-portraiture, past series have examined ciguapas, elusive and cunning female creatures from Dominican folklore; tignons, head-coverings women of color were legally required to wear in 18th century New Orleans; and the iconography of the Black Panther Movement. Báez often paints directly onto historical material, such as found maps, manuals, and travelogues, layering figures over them. By rendering spectacular bodies that exist on opposite sides of intersecting boundaries—between human and landscape, for example, or those reinforcing racial and class stratification—Báez carries portraiture into a liminal space, where subjectivity is rooted in cultural and colonial narratives as much as it can likewise become untethered by them. Firelei Báez (b. 1981, Dominican Republic) received an M.F.A. from Hunter College, a B.F.A. from The Cooper Union’s School of Art, and studied at The Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. In 2019 her work will be the subject of solo exhibitions at the Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam, the Netherlands, and the Mennello Museum of Art, Orlando, FL. Other forthcoming projects include the Firelei Báez (b. 1981) Modern Window at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY, as well as a group exhibition at the Museum of the African Diaspora in San Francisco, CA. The artist Excursion at Sea, 2019 recently participated in the 2018 Berlin Biennale, and was also featured in biennials Acrylic and ink on paper Prospect.3: Notes for Now (2014), Bronx Calling: The Second AIM Biennial (2013), and 12 x 12 in El Museo’s Bienal: The (S) Files (2011).