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NEWS
April 2025
Sean Nesselrode Moncada participated in the panel Unequal Departures: Oil, Power, and the Social Divisions Behind Venezuela's Migration, presented by the Zolberg Institute on Migration and Mobility at The New School for Social Research and The New School on April 25, 2025. The panel examined how oil, power, and social inequality have shaped migration patterns and continue to influence the Venezuelan diaspora today.
January 2025
Refined Material is reviewed by Agustín Díez Fischer in the 25th issue of Caiana: Revista de Historia del Arte y Cultura Visual del Centro Argentino de Investigadores de Arte.
December 2024
Refined Material receives the 2024 Fernando Coronil Prize from the Venezuelan Studies Section of the Latin American Studies Association.
Sean Nesselrode Moncada receives a 2024 Arts Writers Grant from the Andy Warhol Foundation, to support his ongoing book project Maruja Rolando: On-Site.
June 2024
Refined Material receives the Best Book Award (co-winner) in Visual Culture Studies at the Annual Congress of the Latin American Studies Association.
The paper "El cinetismo petrolífero: Modos de ver en la Venezuela moderna" is presented at the Annual Congress of the Latin American Studies Association, held in Bogotá, Colombia, from June 12–15, 2024. The presentation reevaluates the kinetic work of Jesús Soto through a petrocultural lens, and it is part of the panel New Approaches to Venezuelan Studies I, sponsored by the LASA Venezuelan Studies Section.
May 2024
Sean Nesselrode Moncada gives a Faculty Book Talk at Fleet Library, Rhode Island School of Design, as part of the Events at Fleet series on May 14, 2024.
April 2024
Sean Nesselrode Moncada takes part in the online interdisciplinary conversation series (Re)pensando a Venezuela, presented by Trópico Absoluto in collaboration with the Department of Romance Studies at Cornell. His session, "Mirar el petróleo: Estética y política del refinamiento," was held virtually on April 5, 2024. Recording available here.
February 2024
The text "El Hotel Humboldt: construyendo la vista" is published in the online journal Trópico Absoluto. This translated excerpt from Refined Material: Petroculture and Modernity in Venezuela reads the architectural and political design of the Caracas landmark Hotel Humboldt through the lens of extractivist tourist economies .
Refined Material: Petroculture and Modernity is awarded the 2024 ALAA–Arvey Foundation Book Award by the Association of Latin American Art at the 112th Annual Conference of the College Art Association (CAA).
January 2024
The text "All That Glitters: Rolando Peña Gilds the Barrel" is included in El Dorado: A Reader, a scholarly compendium published in conjunction with the two-part exhibition El Dorado: Myths of Gold held at Americas Society, New York.
December 2023
The paper "La petro-cultura como motor de la modernidad venezolana" is published in the online journal Trópico Absoluto as part of a dossier of selected presentations from the October 2023 seminar Alfredo Boulton y lo moderno en Venezuela.
October 2023
The Institute for the Studies on Latin American Art (ISLAA) hosts a book launch for Refined Material on October 25, 2023 at their New York location. Sean Nesselrode Moncada is in conversation with the conceptual artist Rolando Peña about petroculture, modernism, and Venezuelan exceptionalism. Further information and registration is available here.
Sean Nesselrode Moncada participates in the seminar Alfredo Boulton y lo moderno en Venezuela, presented by La Sala Mendoza and El Archivo in Caracas, Venezuela. His paper, "La petro-cultura como motor de la modernidad venezolana," examines the theoretical and ideological links between oil refinement and the rise of abstract and kinetic art in Venezuela. Further information available at this link.
August 2023
Refined Material: Petroculture and Modernity in Venezuela is published by University of California Press as part of the series Studies on Latin American Art.
May 2023
Henrique Faría Fine Art, New York, holds a public conversation between Álvaro Sotillo, Luis Pérez-Oramas, and Sean Nesselrode Moncada in conjunction with the exhibition Gerd Leufert: Imaginary Spaces, on May 15, 2023.
Sean Nesselrode Moncada presents the paper "Designing Gego," as part of the symposium Gego: Weaving Lines of Thought, which highlights new research on Gego’s intersections with the fields of architecture, design, choreography, education, printmaking, and weaving. The event is held on May 12, 2023 at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, in conjunction with the exhibition Gego: Measuring Infinity.
March 2023
The essay "Gego: Variations on Design" is published in the exhibition catalogue for Gego: Measuring Infinity, a major retrospective of the artist's work presented at the Museo Júmex, Mexico City, and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. The essay examines the artistic and pedagogical importance of design in the oeuvre of Gego (Gertrud Goldschmidt).
February 2023
Sean Nesselrode Moncada delivers remarks at the Distinguished Scholar Session of the 111th Annual Conference of the College Art Association (CAA), which honors the career of Edward J. Sullivan. The event is held in New York on February 16, 2023. A recording of the panel is available here.ā
October 2022
The Nature–Culture–Sustainability Studies Program at RISD hosts the panel discussion "Imagine 2200: Climate Fiction for Future Ancestors," presented by Grist Magazine in collaboration with RISD Liberal Arts. Sean Nesselrode Moncada is quoted in a news article covering the event, which emphasized the importance of hope in envisioning equitable climate futures. A recording of the discussion is available here.
September 2022
Sean Nesselrode Moncada takes part in the online lecture/panel "Ambivalent Relations: Latin American Artists Responding to Marcel Duchamp during the 1960s and 1970s," hosted by the Cisneros Institute at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, on September 14, 2022. He examines Claudio Perna's 1967–68 sculpture Haute Couture and its questioning of the legacy of Dada in Venezuela. More information and recording here.
July 2022
Sean Nesselrode Moncada delivers the keynote address, "All That Glitters: Rolando Peña Gilds the Barrel," for the sixth and final convening of scholars on El Dorado, organized by the Americas Society, New York; Fundación PROA, Buenos Aires; and Museo Amparo, Puebla, on June 10, 2022. His lecture considers the material and alchemical valences of the oil-related installations of Venezuelan conceptual artist Rolando Peña, in conjunction with the panel theme of "Hell."
April 2022
Sean Nesselrode Moncada takes part in the online panel Las Informalistas: Women of Latin American Informalist Abstraction, organized by the Institute for Studies on Latin American Art (ISLAA), on May 3, 2022. His talk, "Maruja Rolando: On-Site" focuses on the intersection between Informalism, archaeology, and materiality in 1960s Venezuela. More information and recording here.
A book review of Contesting Modernity: Informalism in Venezuela, 1955–1975 and El Techo de la Ballena: Retro-Modernity in Venezuela is published in the April 2022 issue of Latin American and Latinx Visual Culture (University of California Press). https://doi.org/10.1525/lavc.2022.4.2.114
July 2021
Sean Nesselrode Moncada is interviewed as part of Episode 1 of The Manual Podcast, published by the Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design. He discusses misconceptions about the land, the color green, and the histories of American settler colonialism. Listen to the episode "Green" here.
April 2021
"Arcadian Dreams" is published in Issue 15 of Manual: A Journal About Art and Its Making, published by the Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design with the theme Green. The essay examines how legacies of settler colonialism, genocide, and the fabrication of the American wilderness are refracted in Enrique Chagoya's lithograph The Pastoral or Arcadian State: Illegal Alien's Guide to Greater America.
November 2020
Sean Nesselrode Moncada is named incoming Graduate Program Director of RISD's Liberal Arts Master's Program in Nature-Culture-Sustainability Studies. He will begin his term in Fall 2021.
May 2020
Issue 2 of Vistas: Critical Approaches to Modern and Contemporary Art, published by the Institute for Studies on Latin American Art (ISLAA), is released in both digital and print versions. Vistas 2 is guest-edited by Sean Nesselrode Moncada and dedicated to The First Annual Symposium of Latin American Art (2016). It features essays by Tie Jojima, Rachel G. Mohl, Michel Otayek, and Gillian Sneed.
March 2020
The essay "Gego: Variações sobre o design" is included as part of the catalogue Gego: A linha emancipada, published by the Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand on the occasion of a full retrospective of the work of Gego (Gertrud Goldschmidt). Translated into Portuguese by Célia Euvaldo, the essay examines the fruitful dialogues between graphic design, artistic exploration, and process in Gego's multidisciplinary work.
February 2020
Sean Nesselrode Moncada is interviewed for RISD News about this year's Wintersession Travel Course to Mexico, which he co-led in January and February. With fifteen students they traveled numerous sites including Teotihuacan, the Antiguo Colegio de San Ildefonso, the Catedral de Puebla, Cholula, Monte Albán, and Chichen Itzá; visited local talavera workshops in Puebla; participated in a mole cooking class; and journeyed to several cenotes in the Yucatán. The article includes photographs from the course as well as pages from student sketchbooks completed on-site.
February 2019
Sean Nesselrode Moncada's doctoral dissertation, "The Harvest of Modernity: Art, Oil, and Industry in the Venezuelan Twentieth Century," receives Honorable Mention for the biennial Dissertation Award issued by the Association for Latin American Art (ALAA) at the 2019 College Art Association (CAA) Annual Conference, held in New York.
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