ANDREW RUSSETH
Mexico City’s Museo Jumex announced today that it has appointed Julieta González to the position of chief curator and interim director.
The appointment happens in the wake of a canceled Hermann Nitsch exhibition and the resignation of then-director Patrick Charpenel.
In a news release, the museum says that Charpenel stepped down to “to rededicate himself to his work as an advisor and curator.” Although his resignation was only just now formally announced, The New York Times reported that he had tendered it in February.
González will assume her official duties in July 2015, and continue in her recently-appointed post as adjunct curator of modern and contemporary art at the Museu de Arte de São Paulo. She spent the past three years as senior curator at the Museo Rufino Tamayo in Mexico City and adjunct curator at the Bronx Museum of the Arts in New York City. Between 2009 and 2012, she served as associate curator of Latin American art at Tate Modern in London.
The Nitsch show in question (which was supposed to open February 27) was canceled after traction was gained by an online petition and anti-Nitsch Twitter campaign waged on the grounds of animal rights. Despite past controversies about his work (the artist has been arrested thrice and was expelled from Italy for disemboweling a sheep mid-performance), it was the first time an institution has ever canceled a Nitsch exhibition.
Museo Jumex was opened in November 2013 by the art collector and Grupo Jumex fruit-juice empire heir Eugenio López Alonso. It is part of the mixed-use development Plaza Carso, which also includes a shopping mall. The institution sits across the street from another museum, Museo Soumaya, opened in 2011 by the Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim Helú to showcase his collection.
“Although Patrick is now moving on, the bonds between him and Museo Jumex are indissoluble,” López said in a statement released to press. “I am certain we will have the opportunity to collaborate with him in the future.”