FORO 2025

Giuliana Vidarte (Lima, 1981)

Curator, art historian and teacher. She has developed research and exhibition projects on the relationship between visual arts and literature, the rewriting of history from the recovery of unofficial discourses and the history of the arts and contemporary creation from the Peruvian Amazon. She works as a Professor at the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú and develops projects as an independent curator and researcher. Between 2015 and 2018, she was curator of the research, management and promotion project of Amazonian art Bufeo. Amazonía+Arte. In 2019, she was curatorial assistant of the Peruvian Pavilion at the 58th Venice Biennale. Between 2018 and 2023, she was Head of Curatorial and Collection at the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Lima.

Irene Gelfman

Graduate and teacher of Middle and Higher Education in Arts (FFyL - UBA); she attended the # 11 Artists Program at UTDT (Critic and Curator). She is the winner of the first prize New Curators of the AMALITA Collection and the Argentine Association of Art Critics. She works in curation, management, and art criticism. She is the founder and director of Minerva Universos Visuales, an art studio focused on the dissemination of Art History content for diverse audiences, giving a clinic for artists and consulting for cultural projects. She writes for various media, publications and catalogs (Otra Parte, Colección de Artistas, among others). With more than seven years of experience in different areas of cultural management, both public (national and local) and private (foundations and NGOs), she coordinates and produces content. In addition, she put together the programming in areas such as theater, visuals, and music for different festivals, fairs, and international events in which Argentina was invited as a guest country. She developed and coordinated an aid program to promote Argentine artists abroad (APEX-Ministerio de Cultura Nación) and was a strategic advisor for the Barrios Creativos program.

Pablo León de la Barra was born in Mexico City in 1972 and currently lives in Rio de Janeiro. He has a Ph.D. in Histories and Theories, from the Architectural Association in London. Since 2013, he has been the Curator for Latin America at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, where he has curated exhibitions such as Under the Same Sun: Art from Latin America Today (2014-16), Cecilia Vicuña: Spin Spin Triangulene (2022), and Gego: Measuring Infinity (2023). He is also responsible for acquiring works by Latin American artists for the museum's collection. León de la Barra worked as Chief Curator on the Museum of Contemporary Art in Niterói, Rio de Janeiro (2016-2020), and as Director of Casa França-Brasil in Rio de Janeiro (2015-2016). He is the founder and co-curator of the 1st and 2nd Tropical Biennials in San Juan, Puerto Rico (2011 and 2016). Over the course of his more than two-decade curatorial career, he has curated numerous international exhibitions. He was a co-curator of the Santa Fe Biennial in New Mexico (2017) and the curator of the Mexican Pavilion at the 2017 Venice Biennale, showcasing the work of Carlos Amorales. In 2012, he received the first Travel and Research Grant from Independent Curators International/ Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros for Central America and the Caribbean, in honor of Virginia Pérez-Ratton. He is a member of advisory boards, including the Luis Barragán Foundation in Mexico, the Nasher Sculpture Prize in Dallas, the Caribbean Art Initiative in Basel, and serves as the chair of the jury for the Prince Claus Fund Impact Awards in the Netherlands.

Photos by David Heald, Guggenheim Museum.

Maria Sancho-Arroyo 

María Sancho-Arroyo is a renowned expert in the art market with over 30 years of international experience. She began her career in the restoration laboratory of the Opificio delle Pietre Dure in Florence, later continuing at the National Art Museum of Catalonia (MNAC) in Barcelona and the Louvre in Paris. She then moved to London, where she worked for more than 20 years at Sotheby’s, gaining in-depth knowledge of the many aspects of the art market. Currently, she is an adjunct professor at the Sotheby’s Institute in New York, specializing in international markets and auctions. In addition to teaching, María is dedicated to research, consulting, and participating in international conferences on art market trends.

She is the author of several publications, including her latest work, Investment or Passion? A Guide to Navigating the Art Market, published on October 16 by Deusto (Grupo Planeta). She regularly collaborates with Il Giornale dell'Arte and Artealdia (market section), is a member of The International Art Market Studies, and actively participates in charitable organizations related to art.