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How Andrea Alvarez’s Long-Overdue Survey on Contemporary Latinx Art at Buffalo AKG Art Museum Came to Be

Rather than defining a singular Latinx style, "Let Us Gather in a Flourishing Way" adopts diversity as its defining condition, mirroring the vast and varied population it represents.

Latinos are the largest minority group in the U.S., and according to recent data, around 13-14 percent of Americans speak Spanish at home, with 43-44 million native Spanish speakers and roughly 12 million bilingual speakers, many of them second- or third-generation members of the diaspora. At the same time, some of the most compelling artistic voices to have emerged in the United States in recent years are of South or Central American and Caribbean descent. Yet no proper institutional survey at a U.S. museum had attempted to map these developments or acknowledge their role in shaping contemporary art—until “Let Us Gather in a Flourishing Way” opened at the Buffalo AKG Art Museum.

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On view through September 6, the exhibition brings together 58 artists in an intergenerational dialogue to explore contemporary Latinx artists’ innovations and interventions within established traditions of painting, while maintaining and elevating the singularity of each practice. “I think we’ve seen many important exhibitions that are thematic or geographically focused, but we needed a show like this—one that establishes a broader framework,” curator Andrea Alvarez, who conceived the show, told Observer. “I think our museum has played a role in shaping American art history, and I felt this was an opportunity.” Taking advantage of an unusually long research period, Alvarez conducted extensive studio visits across the U.S. and Puerto Rico, building a case for positioning these artists alongside leading contemporary figures.

Notably, all the artists included are living and active today. While some were born in the 1950s, many belong to later generations, reinforcing the exhibition’s focus on contemporary practice and offering a snapshot of what the Latinx community is creating right now. At the same time, Alvarez chose to focus solely on painting—a medium closely tied to the museum’s identity—to establish a clear curatorial lens while maintaining a manageable scope within an otherwise vast field. “Early on, someone asked me whether I was trying to create a show to define a ‘Latinx style,’ but that is not the case,” she says, clarifying how the exhibition proposes diversity itself as the defining condition, reflecting the complexity of the population it represents.

The U.S. Latino population now accounts for nearly one in five Americans and is overwhelmingly bilingual or Spanish-capable. Still, many Latino people no longer speak........

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