VALIA GARZÓN

Member of the International Society of Appraisers, ISA.

Garzón Díaz obtained a BA in Art History at the University of Havana. She is an Appraiser and Provenance Research based in Washington, DC. From 1992 to 1997, she worked as Specialist of Latin American Visual Arts at Casa de las Américas, where she organized a series of shows that incorporated contemporary Latin American artists and masters. She also collaborated with several publications covering visual arts in Cuba and overseas.

From 1997 to 2003, she served as the curator of the Guatemalan Photograph Archive, at CIRMA (Center for Regional Mesoamerican Research), in the city of Antigua Guatemala. During this period, this photograph collection grew consistently from 15,000 to more than 500,000 pieces, becoming the most important repository of images of the Central American region.

Since 2006, she has provided specialized art services to art collectors from Central and Latin America, being recognized for her valuable contributions to create and establish collections focused on preserving regional heritages and exploring alternative ways of interaction among artists and international trends.

As a professional appraiser specialized in Latin American and international contemporary art, she has performed appraisals for over 100 million dollars for collections in Latin America and the United States. In 2017, with 20 years of experience in the art market, she founded Valia Garzón Art Services, a firm that coordinates the work of different internationally recognized experts in Latin American and Caribbean art with the goal of offering a variety of first-class services to public, private, and corporate collectors.

Her publications include many articles for specialized journals, and the following books:

Memoria. Cuban Art of the 20th Century. Artes Visuales Cubanas del Siglo XX, California International Arts Foundation, Los Angeles, CA, 2001, 580 pp., and a CD. Published in English and Spanish, it includes information about 576 artists and over 100 exhibitions of XX century Cuban art, as well as a comprehensive bibliography.

Las hondas guatemaltecas. The Guatemalan slingshot, Fundación de La Ruta Maya, Ciudad de Guatemala, Guatemala, 2007, 283 pp.

Julio Zadik. Un fotógrafo moderno en Guatemala, Zadik Editores, Ciudad de Guatemala, 2009, 240 pp.

Gretel Acosta

Researcher and writer

Acosta López is a Ph.D. candidate at Tulane University, Louisiana. She holds a B.A. degree in Art History from the University of Havana, Cuba, and a Master of Arts in Language, Literature, and Culture from The University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG) where she received the UNCG Inclusiveness Award. She is a researcher, art critic and curator based in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Right after graduating, in 2015, she worked as editor and writer at Artecubano Ediciones, the only publishing house specialized in art in Cuba.

Acosta López received the Curatorial Grant by Center for Development of Visual Arts for NANO (Conceptual Cuban Art, 1980-2015), a collective art show that she curated during the12 Havana Biennial. This exhibition was the result of her BA Thesis and her continuous research interest in Contemporary and Conceptual Art in Latin American and the Caribbean.

She was the co-curator (with Elvia Rosa Castro) of one of the first exhibitions in the Southeastern region of the USA that examined contemporary Cuban artists, both inside the island and the diaspora: Post Truth, Pleasure and Pain (Works by Cuban artist), at the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art (SECCA), NC. She has also curated several exhibitions of contemporary artists.

In 2017, she was invited as consultant, editor, and co-curator for the seventh edition of Bamequinox, an international event of contemporary art held in Guatemala City. The event focused on the relationships between international art collections and the local assets.

Since 2018 she is part of the Valia Garzon Art Services’ Team, where she focusses on contemporary South and Central American Art. In this company she expands her interest in the impact of social media on the promotion of processes related with the art market, as well as in implementing mechanisms of relation among artists, collectors, and public institutions.

As an art critic, she has collaborated with art specialized magazines such as Revista Artecubano, ArtPulse, Art Crónica, and Sr. Corchea. She contributed a prologue and an interview for the book on contemporary art Los colores del ánimo, by the publishing house Detrás del Muro, in 2016. On the same year, the publishing house Cúpula Ediciones presented her book Cosas de Jóvenes on young Cuban contemporary art. She is featured in the recent two volumes anthology: Lenguaje sucio: Narraciones críticas sobre el arte cubano, published by Hypermedia, in Madrid, 2019.

Irina Leyva-Pérez

Art Critic, and Curator

Irina Leyva-Perez holds a B.A. degree in Art History from the University of Havana, Cuba, and a Master of Arts in Liberal Studies (M.A.L.S.) from Florida International University, in Miami, Florida. She is an art historian, art critic, and curator based in Miami, Florida.

Right after graduating in 1992, she worked as Curator and Researcher of Contemporary Art, at the Research Department, in the National Museum of Fine Arts, Havana, Cuba. There she met many artists who later became the forerunners of contemporary Cuban Art and assisted with exhibitions as well as developing the collection of Cuban Art from the 90s.

In 1994 she moved to Kingston, Jamaica, where she was the Assistant Curator of the National Gallery of Jamaica until 2001. Among the many exhibitions, she curated there were: Representation of Jamaica to the XXIII Biennial of Sao Paulo. Artist: David Boxer. 1996, Sao Paulo, Brazil; Caribbean Invitational II. National Gallery of Jamaica, 1996; Jamaican Art Deco: The Designs of Burnett Webster. National Gallery of Jamaica, 1999. She was also a member of the Jury at the III Biennial of Painting of the Caribbean and Central America at the Museum of Modern Art. Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, in 1996, as well as a Jury Member of the Annual National Exhibition for several years at the National Gallery of Jamaica.

During her tenure at the National Gallery of Jamaica, she was the head of the Education Department, organizing many events such as exhibitions, lectures, special tours, and workshops. She was also the liaison between art collectors and the gallery, establishing a network that assisted in its functioning.

From 2001 to 2003, she lectured at the Edna Manley College for the Visual Arts in Kingston, Jamaica. She taught Art History Survey, Modern Western Art, Pre-Columbian Art, and Latin American Art. Her classes were attended by the school students and others from the West Indies University. Many of today’s artists, curators, and educators were her students in their formative stages. In those years, she was also a consultant at D.C. Tavares and Finson, the leading art auction house in Jamaica. Here she was the connection between collectors and the auction house, advising in selling and buying. She was also a member of the Acquisition and Exhibition Committees of the National Gallery of Jamaica for several years. In 2001 she assisted the Bank of Jamaica in inventorying their art collection of more than 400 pieces in time for their 40th anniversary.

In 2003 she moved to Miami, where she was Assistant to the Registrar at the Miami Art Museum, Miami, Florida (today Pérez Art Museum Miami). While at the museum, she worked with the collection, including new acquisitions, conditions reports, and liaison with collectors who donated pieces for the collection or lent some for special exhibitions.

From 2006 to 2019, she was the Curator of Pan American Art Projects in Miami, Florida. During that time, she curated over 80 exhibitions of Latin American and American artists, including León Ferrari, Oscar Bony, Luis Cruz Azaceta, Manuel Mendive, Gustavo Acosta, Carlos Estevez, Tracey Snelling, and Edouard Duval-Carrié among others. At the gallery, she advised private collectors and introduced many of them to the Caribbean and Latin American Art. She also participated in many public discussions and presentations about contemporary art in the region, creating awareness and interest.

As part of her master’s degree studies, she made a complete inventory of Carlos Estevez’s work, locating many pieces of unknown whereabouts that were in private collections. Part of her graduating thesis about this artist’s work was published as an essay in Art Nexus magazine.

As an art critic, she is a regular contributor to art specialized magazines such as Art Nexus, Art Pulse, and Art on Cuba. Her texts have also been published in monographs, art books, and exhibition catalogues.

In 2019 she began to collaborate with Valia Garzon Art Services, especially in the development of documentation of Caribbean artists. In 2020 she opened Newcastle Art Consultants, a company dedicated to promoting and documenting Caribbean art, and to create a network of artists and art specialists in the area.