After only one yr 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 throughout the museum’s most important institutional enlargement in twenty 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 formidable operational, architectural and curatorial transformation.
In response to a press release 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 development and future prospects”. A central a part of this restructuring is the creation of a brand new place of chief government, who will likely be liable for operational administration and strategic planning. The museum didn’t announce a substitute for Moura, and its creative path will likely be reconfigured round an expanded curatorial group.
Whereas some large-scale Latin American museums function with distinct curatorial and government management, the formal determine of a chief government stays uncommon within the area. Malba’s choice introduces a extra company governance construction, in keeping with fashions frequent in bigger worldwide establishments.
“All of a sudden, it appears like being in command of a distinct museum,” Moura advised The Artwork Newspaper in December, when the acquisition of the Daros assortment marked one of the important acquisitions of Latin American artwork in many years. “That is spectacular. It adjustments every thing.”
In a current assertion, Moura stated it has been “an amazing privilege to work at Malba at this second, as this essential establishment approaches its twenty fifth anniversary”, including that he hoped “to stay linked to the museum because it develops its subsequent chapters”.
Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires, Argentina Photograph: Javier Agustín Rojas, courtesy Malba
Eduardo F. Costantini, the museum’s founder and president, stated in a press release: “On each a private and institutional stage, we recognise Rodrigo’s plain skilled and private qualities, in addition to his in depth expertise, and we want him the best success sooner or later.”
Costantini additionally outlined the speedy influence of the Daros assortment’s integration, which doubles the museum’s assortment and considerably strengthens its modern holdings. “This represents a real re-founding of Malba, a stage of development that requires increasing the chief construction to help this new institutional scale,” he tells The Artwork Newspaper. The creation of a chief government place, he provides, “is meant to make sure that this institutional development 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 develop the museum to twice its present capability and to construct a brand new collections storage facility. “It represents a wholly 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 sudden. (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 personal establishment devoted to trendy and modern artwork. Its assortment contains among the most useful 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).
