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The University of Essex Collection of Latin American Art - UECLAA
the only public collection in Europe dedicated exclusively to modern and contemporary
Latin American Art .

What is UECLAA?

UECLAA is the University of Essex Collection of Latin American Art, the only public collection in Europe dedicated exclusively to modern and contemporary
Latin American Art. The collection was founded in 1993 when Charles Cosac, a postgraduate student in the Department of Art History and Theory, donated a painting, Memória, by Siron Franco, to the University of Essex. Since then, through the generous support of our many donors, the collection has grown to more than 600 works by some of the best modern and contemporary artists including Carlos Cruz-Diez, Guillermo Kuitca, Roberto Matta, Cildo Meireles, Ana Maria Pacheco, Nadin Ospina, Fernando de Szyszlo, Rufino Tamayo, and Mariana Yampolsky.

Where is UECLAA?

UECLAA is based at the University of Essex, Colchester. The collection is a natural extension of research undertaken in the Department of Art History and Theory by Professors Dawn Ades and Valerie Fraser and a vibrant group of postgraduate students, who regularly curate exhibitions of UECLAA work at the University Gallery and at other venues and who edit ARARA, an online journal of the Art and Architecture of the Americas, founded in 1997.

Selections of work from UECLAA are displayed permanently in the grounds of the university’s Wivenhoe Park and in the Albert Sloman Library, whose Latin American holdings are among the best in Europe and are complemented by UECLAA’s substantial archive of catalogues, artists’ biographies and related printed ephemera.

How is UECLAA developing?

UECLAA continues to grow and in 2002 Professor Fraser received a grant of £300,000 from The Arts and Humanities Research Board (AHRB) to make the whole collection available on the Internet.

In April 2005 the University of Essex Collection of Latin American Art will launch UECLAA Online, a fully searchable catalogue that will be accessible to internet users worldwide. The catalogue will contain images of each artwork, texts on every artist, a glossary of key terms and a concise summary of developments in modern and contemporary art in the Latin American countries represented by the Collection.

The April 2005 conference, Four Lines: Creation, Collection, Education, Exhibition will launch UECLAA Online, and situate this project in relation to aspects of the rapidly expanding field of theory and practice that comes under the rubric Latin American Art.

Recently UECLAA has also entered into a partnership with Firstsite, the leading contemporary visual arts organisation in Essex, which aims to create a permanent space for the collection in an outstanding new visual arts facility in Colchester.