by Carolyn Hicok

Elizabeth Ferrer recently took time out of one of her busy days in New York to speak with us, and said, "I look forward to coming to Austin and getting to know the visual arts of the community." And we look forward to having her here. She brings with her a lifelong love of the visual arts and her special expertise in Mexican art that was born of a vision of inclusion. Growing up in East Los Angeles in the '60s, Ferrer realized that there was a body of Latin-American art tied to the Civil Rights Movement that was not being documented or recognized. Since then she has built an impressive body of work as a curator and author that reflects that passion and vision she will bring as the new director of the Austin Museum of Art.

Ferrer comes to Austin from the Americas Society in New York, which has a broad interdisciplinary focus on providing a forum for the arts of all cultures of the Western Hemisphere. As the visual arts director and curator of the Art Gallery there, she was responsible for mounting several exhibitions a year, some of which toured nationally and internationally. Holland Cotter of the New York Times News Service said of her exhibit Contemporary Art of the Dominican Republic, "The contemporary work looks far better -- fresher, more original, more inventive than its modernist counterpart [mounted by Edward Sullivan and displayed in the adjoining Spanish Institute section], which bears a heavy debt to European and American models. But how much this impression has to do with the quality of the work itself and how much with the context in which it is seen is one of many questions the show raises."

Others among Ferrer's critics also seem to see this conceptual awareness of art as not only a reflection but also a mirror -- the artistic creation not only as the reflection of the artist and his environment, but the mirror into which the audience looks to see and define itself. Alex Waterhouse-Hayward says of her book A Shadow Born of Earth: New Photography in Mexico, "It is about the blurring of Mexico's border with the United States, the mutual invasion of each country's culture. It is about Coca-Cola in the Zocalo and about a Dia de los Muertos perversely becoming a Mixtec Halloween in Gilroy, California. But it's not all about the future negative effects of free trade. When Cortez conquered Mexico, and churches were built on pyramids with altars from the rubble of the fallen Aztec gods, the gods themselves burrowed into the skin of the conquered while the Spaniards themselves adopted a dark-skinned Virgin of Guadalupe."

Ferrer said she didn't agree with that characterization of the book as a whole: "The majority of the photographers in that book dealt with nontraditional forms of photography. I did that show because I love photography and because I wanted to point out that there was an enormous wealth of nontraditional photography that has occurred in Mexico since the 1920s, and since the 1980s has become an important aspect of photography there. There were a couple of photographers in the show who were very interested in documenting Mexican people and traditions moving North -- what happens when Mexicans live on the border and in the US; how they form their own traditions; and how they integrate popular culture from the US into their own way of thinking."

On mounting the Dominican exhibition, of which Cotter also said "When one moves on to the selection of contemporary work at the Americas Society, organized by Elizabeth Ferrer, the show seems to change worlds. A homogenizing modernism is replaced by eclectic trans-Atlantic vanguard styles and media that have developed since the politically charged '60s. And a more sharpened effort to define 'Dominican-ness' in art comes to the fore," Ferrer describes her creative process: "I'm always driven by the quality of the work. I'm interested in art that makes a statement about something. I'm interested in artists who are in command of their materials. The Dominican show was interesting because that was a specific project -- we were trying to show for the first time Dominican work in the United States. I didn't go to Santa Domingo where most of the artists lived because it wasn't an agenda to do a show about "Dominicanness," but as I began to meet artists, I found that for me at least the art work did deal with that theme. The younger artists were trained by painters working with much more abstract issues, and they turned away from that and turned inside themselves and their own culture."

Her creative portfolio contains several books, including A Shadow Born of Earth: New Photography in Mexico, Latin American Artists of the 20th Century, Exposition Retrospective of Miguel Rios, House of Miracles, and Modern and Contemporary Art of the Dominican Republic. She has written articles for many publications, including ARTnews, Nueva Luz, History of Photography, Review: Latin American Literature and Arts, and Artes de Mexico.

Thomas Padon, director of exhibitions at the American Federation of Arts in New York cites her as one of the authorities on Latin American art. Ferrer explains how she became the It-Girl, "It comes from years and years of looking at art. It becomes a process when I'm looking at a piece of art or an artist's body of art for the first time. I have a bank of information with which I'm able to compare it to a thousand different things, and I immediately know if the work is derivative of another artist or if it's a powerful original statement. It comes from developing one's eye, formally and intellectually, based primarily on looking but also on reading and knowing the history of art and the history of culture. If you have a background in art history and you've looked at art extensively, you're able to contextualize it more, and understand what tradition the work is coming out of and what connection it's making with other artists. That is not to say that there's an absolute standard of quality. I think one of the challenges of being a curator in the visual arts today is that those absolute ideas of quality that might have existed in earlier periods do not exist anymore, and that has a lot to do with the growing diversity in the art field and the fact that artists are working with so many different styles all at once. There's no one artistic style that defines our age. There's always going to be a subjective factor that speaks to me, or that's important to me, but I have to have confidence that it's also art that I want to bring to the public."

How, then, was Austin able to lure away this Clara Bowe from New York where she is receiving so much recognition and acclamation of her work? "[New York] is the cultural center of the country; artists come to New York from all over the world to work, and there's an incredible wealth of museums and galleries. On the other hand, there is a lot of important art being made everywhere in the United States, and I think there needs to be good museums everywhere. I saw in Austin an opportunity to really make a difference both in terms of my own career, because I'll be moving into a museum directorship, and that's been a long-term goal; and secondly because much work needs to be done with the visual arts in Austin. I felt I really fit in with the institution because of its focus on multiculturalism and because of the geographic scope the museum covers, which is the United States, Mexico, and the Caribbean. So I felt I could bring a lot with my expertise to bear on this institution. And finally, I was very excited by the fact that the museum plans to build a much larger permanent institution in downtown Austin, and I'm glad to be part of that process."

Ferrer is excited about the possibilities of being in Texas for her personal career as a cataloger of Mexican art. "I think it's going to be interesting for me because I'm in New York right now, and New York is this incredible mish-mash of every culture imaginable. What I think is different about Texas is its strong Mexican presence, and I think that really palpable mix is in a certain sense very evident there. I do want to pay attention to the fact that we are close to the border of another country, and that there is on the one hand an important Chicano tradition and a Chicano art history that I don't think has been paid enough attention to, and then there is also the proximity of Mexico and Mexican culture. So that will certainly be an aspect of my work, but also I'm interested in showing the diversity of traditions in the United States."

She also expressed a zeal for what becoming the director of the Austin Museum of Arts at this critical point in its development will give her to work with professionally. The museum has recently opened its downtown division at 823 Congress, quadrupling its exhibition space, with plans by 2001 for a permanent site on 3rd Street. "The museum is at a very important time in its history. The museum made the move [downtown] because it wanted very much to have a downtown presence in a location that would be more accessible to Austinites. What we now need to do is to create a significant artistic program that will bring that audience. This space is a very important stepping stone, a proving-ground for the institution, and we have to demonstrate that we have the ability to present programming of the quality that will be needed to sustain this much larger institution in the future. I see the next few years as critical in terms of demonstrating the quality of the museum, in pointing the museum's direction into the next century, and in providing some indication of the important institution the museum will be when in its permanent building."

The museum has been criticized in the past by Latino artists for cultural elitism, and by some, such as the Houston Art Guys, for censorship. Ferrer defends the record of representation of the museum, and illuminates how she will deal with such issues as director. "I didn't see the Art Guys show, but I know a little bit about it, and I think the incident was an unfortunate situation where the museum was caught by surprise. Basically I am going to have to be responsible for every show. For every exhibition that we do, we're going to be well aware of what we're doing and why we're doing it, and then we can stand up for our decisions. We may be criticized for them, but we can't be criticized because we were caught by surprise or because we weren't quite sure of what we were doing. I want to underscore that I do want to show adventurous art and challenging art. I've looked at the history of exhibitions at the institution, and the museum has actually shown quite a diversity of artists. If you look at the museum's history, that bears it out. At the same time, I think a lot more can be done. One of the things I'm interested in doing, for example, is looking more into the history and roots of Chicano art, which I don't think has really been explored. I want the museum to be driven by quality and a desire to exhibit the plurality of styles and the diversity of artistic expression. Not everybody may like every exhibition we do, but over time we will serve the broad audience in Austin. That's my intention."

Ferrer has plans, general and specific, for the direction of the museum, and elevating it to an institution of national and even international prominence. One of her specific plans is for a room dedicated to new projects by artists, such as the "Projects Room" at the Museum of Modern Art, which Ferrer describes as "an ongoing series of exhibitions by younger artists to present new work -- work that might not necessarily be seen at the museum, and it gives the audience access to some very bright new ideas in art in a broad range of expressions. It also gives younger artists a chance to have their work shown in a museum, and that's very valuable for them. I want to show artists from Austin throughout the US. One of the great things about my background with the Americas Society and in New York is that I've come into contact with an incredible number of artists. I want to bring some of that knowledge to Austin, and introduce a lot of new faces to the art scene, and a lot of new work to the museum."

Ferrer also anticipates exhibitions that will be relevant to Austin's high-tech community. "I'm interested in presenting exhibitions that have relevance for Austin. For example, I think it would be interesting to explore the interaction between art and technology, and how contemporary artists are integrating technology into their work. What's interesting to me in doing shows with broad themes is that we can be very comfortably diverse, and I think a show like that becomes more exciting when you show many different points of view. If we do an exhibition about the environment that includes artists from many different backgrounds, it's a much more valuable approach than, for example, doing a Latino show, or an African-American show. I'd rather work with Latino and African-American artists on an ongoing basis on various projects that we're working on, rather than simply doing exhibitions dedicated to the work of a set group. I see the museum functioning on different levels -- on the one hand it's a museum that will be an important institution for Austin, and I want to get to know artists who are working in Austin and in the area, and secondly we're in the capital, so I want to have an identity with the state and do a few shows that relate to artists in the state of Texas. But ultimately I'd like to see our scope be national, and to some extent international. I don't want this museum to have borders. I want to bring the best art to Austin, regardless of where it's from."

If Ferrer's drive and extensive experience are any indication of the good things to come for the Austin visual arts scene, Austinites can look forward to a companion for the prominence of its live music scene. "First what I want to do is review ideas with the staff when I come on-board in July, look at what has been done, and develop some priorities. One thing we need to do is develop more of our own exhibitions. The museum has brought in many exhibitions from other museums in the US, and many of these have been very good. But for the museum to develop its own identity, it needs to be more proactive in terms of curating shows and identifying ideas and individual artists that should be presented in Austin. When you curate your own exhibitions, you have the opportunity to tour them to museums in different parts of the country, and finally by publishing catalogues that can get distributed nationally. I need to underscore that these things take time; none of this happens overnight. You need funding for everything, but I think the differences will become more apparent two or three years down the line."