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 in the course of the museum’s most vital institutional growth 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 accordance with 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 aimed toward supporting its development and future prospects”. A central a part of this restructuring is the creation of a brand new place of chief govt, who might be answerable for operational administration and strategic planning. The museum didn’t announce a alternative for Moura, and its creative route might 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 step with fashions frequent in bigger worldwide establishments.
“All of the sudden, it looks like being accountable for a unique museum,” Moura informed The Artwork Newspaper in December, when the acquisition of the Daros assortment marked one of the crucial important acquisitions of Latin American artwork in many years. “That is spectacular. It modifications every little thing.”
In a latest assertion, Moura mentioned it has been “a fantastic privilege to work at Malba at this second, as this vital 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, mentioned in a press release: “On each a private and institutional stage, we recognise Rodrigo’s simple 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 rapid affect 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 manager 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 development is aligned with an organisational construction suited to this new part”.
The announcement comes at a time when the establishment prepares to have fun 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 totally 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 modern artwork. Its assortment contains a number of the most precious 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).
