Curatorial Rediscoveries and the Marketplace
Despite the retrenchment back to old ways of thinking and doing that we are seeing across the societal spectrum right now, the art world continues to be receptive to reexamining the existing canon and welcoming in new artists. A cold-eyed realist would not question why this would happen in the commercial sector, where fresh product is needed to feed the system. I believe, however, that what we have been witnessing in the art world is a desire for a deeper understanding of our culture and history. This reinvigorated pluralism is nowhere more evident than in museums, where new generations of curators are actively reopening the case of 20th century art to see who had been excluded and who should be reconsidered.
At Museum Exchange we get a front row seat to this rewriting of history and are honored to play a role in helping bring some of these overlooked or marginalized artists to the fore. What has been really interesting to see is how museum acquisitions can anticipate or lead the commercial market. Whereas galleries are largely tasked with discovering and fostering new talent, museums are responsible for producing new scholarship, which can lead to a reappraisal of an artist’s contributions. This is especially true in the case of historical artists, who may have been recognized in their day before falling out of favor or who always operated at the periphery. A museum exhibition or major acquisition can reactivate a market for an artist, as we’ve seen countless times over the last decade.
A couple of examples that illustrate this healthy elasticity include the artists Richard Hunt (American, 1935-2023), Marta Minujín (Argentinian, b. 1943) and Feliciano Centurión (Paraguayan, 1962-1996), all of whom we were fortunate to place works by in our first years in business. The newfound attention on Hunt began with a younger cohort of curators in Chicago, starting with Naomi Beckwith and the solo exhibition she mounted at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago in 2014 on the occasion of the artist’s 80th birthday and a concurrent survey at the Chicago Cultural Center. Interest continued to spread—even without a powerful gallery backer—including solo shows at the Studio Museum in Harlem, Georgia Museum of Art, Art Institute of Chicago, and Amon Carter Museum of American Art. When we launched Museum Exchange in February 2021, we featured a number of Hunt’s early sculptures in our inaugural catalogue and were thrilled to make strategic placements to the High Museum, MCA San Diego, and Birmingham Museum of Art. The commercial world followed suit with White Cube gallery announcing representation of the artist in November 2023, just a month before his passing, and then staging a major survey of his sculptures in New York the following year.
Front center: Richard Hunt, Linear Peregrine Forms, 1962. Welded steel, 48 x 48 x 86 in. Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego; Gift of Dorsky Gallery Curatorial Programs, 2021.18. Installation view: “Inaugural Installation,” Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, La Jolla, CA, April 9, 2022 - June 1, 2025. Photo: Pablo Mason.
Minujín has likewise enjoyed a long and varied career, with legendary status in South America and periodic glimpses of her greatness in North American and European arenas. Her monumental inclusion in the 2017 edition of Documenta in Kassel, Germany pushed her back into the international spotlight where she has remained in the consciousness of curators and enjoyed regular exhibitions. For our small part, Museum Exchange placed an edition of her 1985 collaboration with Andy Warhol within the prestigious Latin American collection at The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. The Jewish Museum in New York subsequently mounted a retrospective in 2023 before Minujín too was picked up by a major gallery, joining Kurimanzutto in 2024 where she is poised to garner further attention.
Until recently, Centurión was mostly only known outside of South America by specialist curators. His North American presence has steadily grown with solo presentations at the Americas Society in 2020, Hessel Museum at Bard College in 2021, and at Duke House at the Institute of Fine Art, New York in 2023. We have been so pleased to see curators respond to his works on the Museum Exchange platform, having placed numerous works at museums across the country including the Denver Art Museum, MCA San Diego, and Krannert Art Museum in Champaign, Illinois. Centurión’s ascent culminated this winter with a beautiful solo exhibition staged by Ortuzar gallery in New York, introducing the work to still wider audiences.
These are just three examples of reputational resuscitation where open curatorial minds and institutional support combine to bring deserved attention to artists who had fallen off the collective radar of the art world, followed by further acceleration of career revivals courtesy of enterprising and rigorous commercial galleries. If there is a lesson here, it is to carefully watch the pioneering work of curators as they expand our preconceptions of artistic hierarchies. They are very often a step ahead of the market and should be celebrated for the expertise they bring.
