As part of its ongoing, in-depth study of MoMA’s Latin American art holdings, the Cisneros Institute hosts an annual online seminar series, with each installment offering a unique and focused critical perspective on the collection.
This year’s seminar, Soto: Flickering Modernity, will present new insights into the work of Venezuelan kinetic artist Jesús Rafael Soto, positioning it within contemporary discussions about virtuality. Throughout his career, Soto experimented with optical illusions—ranging from the vibratory effects and movement of color and form in his early multilayered compositions, to the optical mirages and virtual volumes found in his large-scale sculptures. His work reflects the era’s developmentalist optimism and the captivating allure of technological modernity.
The seminar will feature curators Dan Cameron, Paola Santoscoy, and Michelle Kuo, who will examine Soto’s oeuvre and explore the sensory dimensions of his visual experiments. The speakers will discuss Pre-penetrable (1957), and Double Transparency (1956), among other works. Key questions for discussion include: How might Soto’s work be reinterpreted in light of recent developments in virtual reality? What sensory possibilities—and ethical dilemmas—emerge from an art form grounded in illusion?
The session will be moderated by art historian Sean Nesselrode Moncada and conducted in English, with live Spanish interpretation.
Speakers
Dan Cameron has been a pioneer in presenting Latin American art since his historic exhibition Cocido y Crudo at the Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid (1994). Since then, he has organized survey exhibitions of the work of Cildo Meireles, Doris Salcedo, Jose Antonio Hernández-Diez, and Eugenio Dittborn for the New Museum; Luis Criz Azaceta for the CAC New Orleans; and Leandro Erlich for the Pérez Museum in Miami. He also organized Impermanencia, the 2016 Bienal de Cuenca in Ecuador, and Kinesthesia: Latin-American Kinetic Art 1954–1969 for the Palm Springs Art Museum (2017), and he is the founder of Prospect New Orleans, for which he organized the first two editions in 2008 and 2011. Cameron has written numerous museum catalogue texts on artists such as Alexandre Arrechea, Rosângela Rennó, Flavio Cerqueira, Meyer Vaisman, Jorge Tacla, Rigoberto Torres, Arturo Duclos, Pepón Osorio, Vik Muniz, Arturo Vega, Sigredo Chacón, Pedro Reyes, Gianfranco Foschino, Raul Cordero, Luis Frangella, and Dario Escobar. He is currently developing a retrospective of the Mexican artist Paulo Friedeberg, and he is cofounder and serves as executive director of Capilla Azul, an independent exhibition space on the Chilean island of Chiloé.
Paola Santos Coy is a curator and researcher based in Mexico City. From 2013 to 2023 she was director of Museo Experimental El Eco at UNAM, where she developed a curatorial program focused on spatial practices, site-specific commissions, and the intersection of modern legacy and contemporary art. Her prior roles include associate curator at Museo Tamayo and curator at Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil. She holds an MA in visual and critical studies from California College of the Arts and a BA in art history from Universidad Iberoamericana. Her independent curatorial projects include The Nature of Things (Biennial of the Americas, Denver), adjunct curator to José Roca’s artist direction of Ensayos de Geopoética (8th Bienal do Mercosul), Jesús Rafael Soto: The Instability of the Real, together with Tatiana Cuevas (Galería RGR), and estar-los-unos-con-los-otros, which she co-directed with Marcio Harum as part of the SITAC (International Symposium on Contemporary Art Theory) in Mexico City. Her practice often engages with questions of experimentation, architecture, and the social dimension of artistic production.
Michelle Kuo was appointed chief curator at large and publisher at MoMA in 2024. She leads innovative, interdisciplinary work on temporary and collection exhibitions, digital initiatives, research and scholarship, and acquisitions for the Museum’s collection, and she directs MoMA’s ambitious global publications program. Kuo joined MoMA in 2018 as the Marlene Hess Curator of Painting and Sculpture. Her exhibitions and collaborations include Jack Whitten: The Messenger (2025), Otobong Nkanga: Cadence (2024–25), New Order: Art and Technology in the Twenty-First Century (2019), Artist’s Choice: Amy Sillman—The Shape of Shape (2020), Amanda Williams: Embodied Sensations (2021), Refik Anadol: Unsupervised (2022), Signals: How Video Transformed the World (2023), Artist’s Choice: Grace Wales Bonner—Spirit Movers (2024), and Montien Boonma: House of Hope (2024). She has written and lectured widely; her publications include Sensing the Future: Experiments in Art and Technology (2024), More than Real: Art in the Digital Age (2018), and numerous essays and articles on the work of Robert Rauschenberg, Fluxus, Jack Whitten, Anicka Yi, and others. Kuo has taught at Harvard and Yale universities and serves on the advisory board of the Museum Brandhorst, Munich, and the journal October. From 2010 to 2017, she was editor-in-chief of Artforum International. Kuo earned her PhD in the history of art and architecture from Harvard University and her BA from Stanford University. From 2005 to 2007 she was the Wyeth Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts at the National Gallery of Art.
Moderator
Sean Nesselrode Moncada is an associate professor of theory and history of art and design at the Rhode Island School of Design. He is the author of Refined Material: Petroculture and Modernity in Venezuela (2023), which received the ALAA–Arvey Foundation Book Award; the Fernando Coronil Prize for Best Book on Venezuela; and the Visual Culture Studies Book Award, Latin American Studies Association. His writings and reviews have appeared in journals including Architectural Theory Review, Latin American and Latinx Visual Culture, and Caiana, and in the exhibition catalogues El Dorado: A Reader (2024) and Gego: Measuring Infinity (2023). His current book project is titled Maruja Rolando: On-Site and is supported by an Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant.