COURTESY INDEPENDENT CURATORS INTERNATIONAL
El Museo del Barrio, the museum in Upper Manhattan that has recently been embroiled in multiple controversies, has named Rodrigo Moura as its new chief curator.
Moura was most recently associate curator of Brazilian art at the Museu de Arte de São Paulo. While at MASP, he organized solo exhibitions for Melvin Edwards, Miguel Rio Branco, Teresinha Soares, Candido Portinari, and Agostinho Batista de Freitas, as well as the first major recent monographic show about the 18th-century Afro-Brazilian sculptor Antônio Francisco Lisboa, who is also known as Aleijadinho.
Prior to joining MASP, Moura was the artistic director of the Instituto Inhotim, the sprawling outdoor contemporary arts center in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, that was founded by the recently jailed mining magnate and art collector Bernardo Paz. Moura joined Inhotim as a curator in 2004, and had served as deputy director of art and cultural programs before becoming artistic director. He left the institution in 2016. Among the acquisitions and site-specific commissions he organized while at Inhotim are projects with Ernesto Neto, Iran do Espírito Santo, Alexandre da Cunha, Jorge Machhi, and Rivane Neuenschwander.
Moura has also held curatorial posts at the Museu de Arte da Pampulha in Belo Horizonte. While there he curated more than 20 solo exhibitions for artists including Neto, Fernanda Gomes, Damián Ortgeo, Renata Lucas, and others.
He is also a prolific writer whose work has appeared in several Brazilian newspapers, as well as international publications, including Flash Art, ArtNexus, the Exhibitionist, and Metroplis M. He co-edited the book Through: Inhotim in 2009 with MASP artistic director Adriano Pedrosa and has written monographic essays on Neto, Neuenschwander, and Valeska Soares.