After only one 12 months as creative director of Argentina’s Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires (Malba), Rodrigo Moura will step down subsequent month. The Brazilian curator served within the function in the course of the museum’s most important institutional enlargement in 20 years.
Moura’s exit comes simply weeks after the museum introduced the acquisition of the Daros Latinamerica Assortment, whose greater than 1,200 works doubled Malba’s holdings. The acquisition marked a turning level within the establishment’s historical past and set in movement an bold operational, architectural and curatorial transformation.
In response to an announcement launched by the museum, the incorporation of the Daros assortment “has led to a considerable change in institutional priorities” and requires “a brand new part geared toward supporting its progress and future prospects”. A central a part of this restructuring is the creation of a brand new place of chief govt, who will likely be answerable for operational administration and strategic planning. The museum didn’t announce a substitute for Moura, and its creative course will likely be reconfigured round an expanded curatorial group.
Whereas some large-scale Latin American museums function with distinct curatorial and govt management, the formal determine of a chief govt stays uncommon within the area. Malba’s determination introduces a extra company governance construction, in keeping with fashions widespread in bigger worldwide establishments.
“Immediately, it seems like being answerable for a special museum,” Moura informed The Artwork Newspaper in December, when the acquisition of the Daros assortment marked one of the vital acquisitions of Latin American artwork in many years. “That is spectacular. It adjustments all the pieces.”
In a current assertion, Moura mentioned it has been “an amazing privilege to work at Malba at this second, as this vital establishment approaches its twenty fifth anniversary”, including that he hoped “to stay related to the museum because it develops its subsequent chapters”.
Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires, Argentina Picture: Javier Agustín Rojas, courtesy Malba
Eduardo F. Costantini, the museum’s founder and president, mentioned in an announcement: “On each a private and institutional stage, we recognise Rodrigo’s plain skilled and private qualities, in addition to his intensive expertise, and we want him the best success sooner or later.”
Costantini additionally outlined the speedy impression of the Daros assortment’s integration, which doubles the museum’s assortment and considerably strengthens its up to date holdings. “This represents a real re-founding of Malba, a stage of progress that requires increasing the chief construction to help this new institutional scale,” he tells The Artwork Newspaper. The creation of a chief govt place, he provides, “is meant to make sure that this institutional progress is aligned with an organisational construction suited to this new part”.
The announcement comes at a time when the establishment prepares to rejoice its twenty fifth anniversary, with plans to broaden the museum to twice its present capability and to construct a brand new collections storage facility. “It represents a completely completely different operational scale for Malba,” Costantini says.
Earlier this month, Malba unveiled its 2026 exhibition programme, that includes Moura as curator or curatorial coordinator for a number of key tasks—together with the brand new presentation of the everlasting assortment scheduled for April—which made his departure all of the extra surprising. (The programme additionally contains short-term exhibitions that includes Olga de Amaral in February, Vivian Suter in July and Frida Kahlo in September.)
Moura beforehand labored because the chief curator at El Museo del Barrio in New York, in addition to a curator on the Museu de Arte de São Paulo (Masp) and on the Inhotim Institute, earlier than his appointment at Malba in November 2024.
Malba, based in 2001, is the area’s main non-public establishment devoted to fashionable and up to date artwork. Its assortment contains among the most dear works within the Latin American artwork market, together with Frida Kahlo’s 1949 Diego y yo (purchased for $34.9m in 2021) and Leonora Carrington’s 1945 Las distracciones de Dagoberto (bought for $28.5m in 2024).
