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Olga Viso

Olga Viso was the Walker Art Center's executive director from 2008 to 2017. As an art historian and curator of contemporary visual art, she is known for her scholarship in contemporary Latin American art and the work of the performance-based Cuban-American artist Ana Mendieta. RCuratorial projects include a survey of contemporary American sculptor Jim Hodges, which she co-curated with Jeffrey Grove at the Dallas Museum of Art in 2013. Before coming to the Walker in 2008, Viso spent 12 years at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, as a curator of contemporary art and ultimately as director. At the Hirshhorn, she organized or co-organized significant exhibitions of leading artists, including Robert Gober, Guillermo Kuitca, Ana Mendieta and Juan Muñoz. Prior to joining the Hirshhorn, Viso was Curator at the Norton Museum of Art (West Palm Beach, Florida), and held several curatorial and administrative positions at the High Museum of Art (Atlanta, Georgia). She currently is on the board of the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, New York and has been a trustee at the American Association of Museum Directors. In 2013 she was appointed by President Barack Obama to serve on the National Council on the Arts. She received her master’s degree in art history from Emory University (Atlanta, Georgia) in 1992.

The Farewell to Utopia in Revolutionary Cuban Art

The struggle for utopia, a theme often employed to describe contemporary art in Cuba, means many things to Rachel Weiss, author of To and from Utopia (2010). In conversation with Olga Viso, she parses the nuances of the term, explaining that it “has to do with aspiration rather than model—that is, that ‘utopia’ names something that never arrives, and is never meant to arrive, but stands as a horizon.”

Between Utopia and Dystopia, Possibility: Adiós Utopia

One of the 20th century’s most radical social and political experiments, the Cuban Revolution aimed to renovate society to usher in greater social justice, understanding, and prosperity. But, as Olga Viso writes in this personal reflection, this utopian spirit was short-lived, the movement’s progress tempered by factors from autocratic leadership to economic disasters to political isolation.

Cultivating the Garden for Art

New works by Katharina Fritsch, Theaster Gates, Mark Manders, and others. Five additional acres of green space. 300 new trees. Environmental upgrades to make an iconic park more sustainable for decades to come. A look at the curatorial and community-based thinking behind the new Garden.