The Whitney Museum of American Art will open “Geography of the Possible: Latin American Art After 1960” on July 18, 2026, the museum announced Wednesday — its first major Latin American survey since the 2014 Carmen Herrera retrospective and the most ambitious such program in the museum’s downtown era.

The show, which runs through January 17, 2027, will occupy the entire fifth and sixth floors of the museum’s Renzo Piano building — approximately 16,500 square feet — and present 140 works by 67 artists drawn from museum and private collections across nine countries.

Co-curators Adrienne Edwards and Eugenia López-Soldevilla, both senior curators at the Whitney, have organized the exhibition around three themes: geometric abstraction, conceptual and post-conceptual practice, and the body and political form. Approximately 40 percent of the works on display will be on view in New York for the first time.

Anchors and discoveries

The show’s anchor works include Lygia Clark’s “Bichos” series (Brazil, 1960–66), three Mira Schendel “Trenzinhos” works (Brazil, 1965), Hélio Oiticica’s “Tropicália” (Brazil, 1967), Cildo Meireles’ “Insertions into Ideological Circuits” (Brazil, 1970), Leon Ferrari’s “La Civilización Occidental y Cristiana” (Argentina, 1965), and Marta Minujín’s “Reading the News” (Argentina, 1965).

A meaningful share of the wall-time is given to artists whose work has not previously appeared at scale in New York. The show includes ten works by Anna Maria Maiolino (Italy/Brazil), six by Rosario Caicedo (Colombia), eight by Beatriz González (Colombia), and a survey of recent acquisitions by Gabriel Sierra (Colombia) and Adriana Lara (Mexico).

“This is a survey that runs from 1960 to roughly 2010, and we wanted half the show to be artists Americans don’t know yet,” Edwards said in a Tuesday phone interview. “If you only know Lygia Clark and Cildo Meireles when you walk in, you should leave knowing twenty more names you want to look up.”

The Carlos Slim partnership

The show is partly underwritten by the Carlos Slim Foundation, which is loaning 28 works from the Museo Soumaya collection in Mexico City. The arrangement represents the largest single private loan in the museum’s history.

The partnership has been in development for eighteen months. Whitney Director Adam Weinberg, who briefly came out of post-retirement consultancy to participate in the announcement, said the Slim arrangement was “evaluated through the museum’s standard due-diligence process.”

What’s around it

The Whitney is timing the show to anchor a broader Latin American art moment in New York. The Americas Society opens “Concretism Reconsidered” on July 30, the Bronx Museum opens its retrospective of Beatriz González on September 12, and El Museo del Barrio’s biennial opens September 19.

Logistics

Tickets go on sale May 6 through the Whitney’s website. Member preview is July 16–17. The exhibition is included in standard admission ($30 adult). A 280-page catalogue, edited by Edwards and López-Soldevilla and published by Yale University Press, ships July 8 ($65).