Bringing the Border into Latin American Art: A Podcast with Gabriela Rangel

Gabriela Rangel, executive director of Tucson’s Museum of Contemporary Art, was born and raised in Caracas, Venezuela. As a curator focusing on Latin American art, she’s worked at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, the Americas Society in New York City, and the Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires. In the fall of 2025 she became the executive director of Tucson's Museum of Contemporary Art.

In this podcast with Caroline Tracey, The Border Chronicle’s arts & culture editor, Rangel discusses how the concept of "Latin American art" didn’t come from Latin America, the necessity for politics in art, and what it’s like living and working in the Sonoran Desert “This is a borderland city,” Rangel says of Tucson. Of how the border figures into contemporary art, she adds: “Urgent matters in the repertoire of contemporary art are also crucial for the borderlands: water, ecosystems and immigration—these are issues that contemporary art has adopted in their concerns....Contemporary art is about what’s happening in the present.”