April 5, 2019–September 15, 2019
Mary & George W. Cheney, Jr. Gallery

This April, the New Britain Museum of American Art presents the work of Pablo Helguera as part of the Museum’s NEW/NOW series featuring contemporary artists. Drawing upon Helguera’s passion for history and literature, this multidisciplinary project, titled “Amazing Stories,” focuses on visual and literary storytelling and will be presented as an art exhibition and a related artist’s book. The title of Helguera’s exhibition is borrowed from a pulp fiction series featured in the NBMAA’s extensive collection of Pulp Art illustration, the largest in the nation. On the occasion of his exhibition, Helguera will create his own illustrated collection of three short stories, involving time and intercultural travel to explore life in and beyond New Britain. Helguera’s stories will take inspiration from the permanent collection of the NBMAA, the social and cultural history of Greater New Britain, as well as the artist’s experience as an immigrant. Intertwining fact and fiction, these narratives will explore cultural difference and life in America today from diverse, surprising, and humorous perspectives. Helguera’s accompanying exhibition will feature the artist’s original illustrations, installed together with objects and artworks that inspired his stories. In the summer of 2019, Helguera will work with Hartford Art School’s Multidisciplinary MFA Program, guiding students to explore the NBMAA’s collection to construct their own visual and literary stories that will then be incorporated in the artist’s installation.

The Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation is pleased to present "The Schoolhouse and the Bus: Mobility, Pedagogy and Engagement," an exhibition pairing, for the first time, work by two leading artists of the social practice movement, Pablo Helguera and Suzanne Lacy. On view at The 8th Floor from February 9 through May 12, 2018, "The Schoolhouse and the Bus" highlights a touchstone work by each of the artists executed in the Americas but never shown in their entirety in the United States - Helguera's "School of Pan-American Unrest" (2006) and Lacy's "Skin of Memory" (1999), a collaboration with Pilar Riaño-Alcalá. Comprised of installation, collage, sculpture, ephemera, photography, video, as well as archival documentation, this exhibition serves to highlight overlapping themes in their works, which include immigration, pedagogy, violence, memory, and community organizing.

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This exhibition pairs, for the first time, work by two of the leading artists of the social practice movement. Suzanne Lacy (BA 1967 Zoological Science), ased in Los Angeles, is among the first generation of artists who began making art founded on public participation with the goal of empowerment or change in a community. Pablo Helguera, a Mexican artist based in New York City, represents the next generation of social practice artists influenced by Lacy’s works, writings and teachings. The Schoolhouse and the Bus  highlights a touchstone work by each of the artists (with anthropologist Pilar Riaño-Alcalá in collaboration with Lacy), executed in the Americas but never shown in their entirety in the US. Comprising installation, collage, sculpture, ephemera, photography, video, as well as archival documentation, this exhibition will serve to highlight overlapping themes in their works which include immigration, pedagogy, race, violence, memory, and social organizing. Following its presentation at the AD&A Museum the exhibition will travel to The 8th Floor, the exhibition space for The Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation in New York City.  

This exhibition has been curated by Elyse A. Gonzales, Assistant Director/Curator of Exhibitions, AD&A Museum and Sara Reisman, Executive and Artistic Director, The Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation.

The Schoolhouse and the Bus/ La Escuela y El Autobús  has been generously funded by Marcia and John Mike Cohen, The Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation, Eva and Yoel Haller, the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center, the Western Humanities Alliance, and the Department of Art. In-kind support has been provided by Neil Sherman, Industrial Metal Supply.

Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA  brings a unique opportunity to Santa Barbara, encouraging cross-cultural dialogue and critical investigation of Latin American art in a local context.  Sacred Art in the Age of Contact andThe Schoolhouse and the Bus are official participants of the Getty initiative.  This initiative is a collaboration of numerous arts institutions in California, and explores the historical relationship between Latin America and the greater Los Angeles area through a series of thematically linked exhibitions.

October 17 – November 12, 2017
Museo Jumex

This work is part of Dramatis Personæ, Pablo Helguera’s exhibition organized by Museo Jumex, which explores the artist’s multidisciplinary approach, through a selection of installations and performance works produced in the last two decades. Dramatis Personæ takes the non-conventional form of a time-based survey of the artist’s work; the exhibition, presented in installments, adjusts to the demands of contemporary time-based media, which have duration as a dimension and unfold to the viewer over time. The first installment, El Instituto de la Telenovela, was presented at Museo Jumex on April 2017. Óptica Bronstein is the second installment, which was presented on 2017 at a parallel exhibition to the Venice Biennial at the V-A-C Foundation, Palazzo delle Zattere.

AD&A Museum

UC Santa Barbara 

Santa Barbara, California

This exhibition pairs, for the first time, work by two of the leading artists of the social practice movement. Suzanne Lacy (BA 1967 Zoological Science), ased in Los Angeles, is among the first generation of artists who began making art founded on public participation with the goal of empowerment or change in a community. Pablo Helguera, a Mexican artist based in New York City, represents the next generation of social practice artists influenced by Lacy’s works, writings and teachings. The Schoolhouse and the Bus  highlights a touchstone work by each of the artists (with anthropologist Pilar Riaño-Alcalá in collaboration with Lacy), executed in the Americas but never shown in their entirety in the US. Comprising installation, collage, sculpture, ephemera, photography, video, as well as archival documentation, this exhibition will serve to highlight overlapping themes in their works which include immigration, pedagogy, race, violence, memory, and social organizing. Following its presentation at the AD&A Museum the exhibition will travel to The 8th Floor, the exhibition space for The Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation in New York City.  

This exhibition has been curated by Elyse A. Gonzales, Assistant Director/Curator of Exhibitions, AD&A Museum and Sara Reisman, Executive and Artistic Director, The Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation.

The Schoolhouse and the Bus/ La Escuela y El Autobús  has been generously funded by Marcia and John Mike Cohen, The Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation, Eva and Yoel Haller, the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center, the Western Humanities Alliance, and the Department of Art. In-kind support has been provided by Neil Sherman, Industrial Metal Supply.

Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA  brings a unique opportunity to Santa Barbara, encouraging cross-cultural dialogue and critical investigation of Latin American art in a local context.  Sacred Art in the Age of Contact andThe Schoolhouse and the Bus are official participants of the Getty initiative.  This initiative is a collaboration of numerous arts institutions in California, and explores the historical relationship between Latin America and the greater Los Angeles area through a series of thematically linked exhibitions.

April 22, 2017 – June 4, 2017
Bernard and Barbara Stern Shapiro Gallery (Gallery 231)

Pablo Helguera cordially invites you to “Club Americano” In this intimate one-room exhibition and shared space, New York–based artist and educator Pablo Helguera (born 1971, Mexico City) explores the historic formation and contemporary denitions of American identity. Here, the term “American” is understood in the Pan-American sense: its Spanish translation, americano, can refer to anyone or anything from North or South America. Helguera takes aesthetic inspiration from 19th-century university clubs and gentlemen’s lounges—exclusive gathering spaces for elite groups of one gender and race—but breaks with tradition by welcoming people of all backgrounds. At the center of the gallery is a 19th-century dining table, surrounded by paintings, photographs, prints, textiles, and decorative arts from the Museum’s world-renowned collection of art from the Americas. Selected by Helguera in collaboration with MFA curators, these artworks serve as the subject of three performances that examine their histories through a present-day lens. We welcome you to gather, lounge, read, experience the performances and participate in additional community-organized events held over the course of this exhibition.

Performance Series

What Is a Club?

Friday, April 21, 6:30 pm

Worldly and Otherworldly Perspectives

Friday, May 19, 6:30 pm

Inventing América

Friday, June 2, 6:30 pm