Introducing The CAYC Files

We are excited to announce the launch of the CAYC Files, the first initiative organized as part of a long-term partnership between the International Center for the Arts of the Americas (ICAA) at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and ISLAA.

With the aim of making archival resources open-access to international scholars, this collaboration centers on the digitization and annotation of key documents published by the Buenos Aires–based Centro de Arte y Comunicación (CAYC). The CAYC Files will be made available free of charge through an ISLAA-ICAA microsite on the ICAA’s Documents of Latin American and Latino Art digital platform. The initial launch of nearly 250 digitized files on Thursday, June 15, 2023, will be followed by the release of 350 additional files throughout the fall of 2023. The remaining files will be released alongside corresponding programming through spring 2024.

Since its founding in 2011, ISLAA has assembled primary-source media from an array of CAYC participants, including over 600 “gacetillas” or newsletters. These newsletters, aimed at publicizing CAYC’s activities and initiatives, are the primary focus of the first phase of the CAYC Files collaboration.

For the past two years, a team of CAYC experts in Buenos Aires supported by ISLAA has been researching and annotating each newsletter, and the ICAA is processing these documents for publication on the ISLAA-ICAA microsite. The initial set of files treated by the researchers concentrates on the CAYC’s innovative approach to exhibitions.

Founded by Jorge Glusberg, the CAYC operated as a laboratory for experimental multidisciplinary artistic practices in Argentina and beyond. During its peak years of activity (from 1968 to 1977), the CAYC produced more than 900 one- or two-page “gacetillas” that Glusberg mailed to hundreds of sympathizers and media outlets across the globe. These documents created a network of figures invested in pursuing new forms of artistic communication and exchange across continents. The “gacetillas” represent an invaluable cache of documents critical for studying key movements of the 1960s and 1970s, as well as the discourse around movements including Conceptualism, Systems art, Minimalism, Video art, and New Media.

Despite their significance for the study of contemporary art, the “gacetillas” have, until now, been largely inaccessible and dispersed among many institutions and other repositories, resulting in a partial picture of the CAYC archive. This initiative will create the first centralized digital resource for the comprehensive study of the CAYC and its significance for Latin American art in the 1960s and 1970s.

Explore the CAYC Files

About the Centro de Arte y Comunicación (CAYC)

Established in 1968, the CAYC served to connect artists and theorists from art, architecture, and communications in order to foster theoretical debates on topics related to contemporary art, aesthetics, politics, sociology, urbanism, cybernetics, Systems art, and New Media.

The CAYC organized exhibitions of both affiliated and guest artists from Latin America, the United States, and Europe (as well as Japan), including its first exhibition Arte y cibernética (1969); Hacia un perfil del arte latinoamericano (1972); Arte de Sistemas en Latinoamérica (1974), presented in Antwerp, Brussels, and London; and the installation Signos en ecosistemas artificiales (1977) at the 14th São Paulo Biennial, for which the Grupo CAYC was awarded the Grande Prêmio Itamaraty.

The Center also sponsored courses, concerts, and symposia featuring both Argentine and international speakers and performers and published dozens of volumes on topics related to its artists, exhibitions, and theoretical interests. These included key members of the Argentine avant-garde such as Víctor Grippo, Jacques Bedel, Luis Fernando Benedit, Alfredo Portillos, and Clorindo Testa; and international artists like Sol LeWitt, Joseph Beuys, Lawrence Weiner, and Joseph Kosuth.

About the International Center for the Arts of The Americas (ICAA)

In 2001, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH), established the Latin American Art Department and its research arm, the International Center for the Arts of the Americas (ICAA). Since its founding, the mission of the ICAA has been to collect, exhibit, research, and educate audiences about the diverse artistic production of Latin American and Latinx communities, including artists from Mexico, Central and South America, the Caribbean, and artists of Latin American descent living and working in the United States. By establishing the center, the museum sought to bring about a long-term transformation in the appreciation and understanding of Latin American and Latinx visual arts in the United States and abroad. 

The ICAA organizes research-based exhibitions, maintains a dynamic publications program, and develops educational projects that complement the MFAH’s renowned collection of Latin American and Latino art. The ICAA has organized international conferences and symposia and produced widely acclaimed exhibitions, such as Inverted Utopias: Avant-Garde Art in Latin America (2004), Hélio Oiticica: The Body of Color (2006), Carlos Cruz-Diez: Color in Space and Time (2011), and Contesting Modernity: Informalism in Venezuela, 1955–1975 (2018–19), among others.

About The Documents Project

First launched in 2002, Documents of 20th-Century Latin American and Latino Art: A Digital Archive and Publications Project (now Documents of Latin American and Latino Art) is an ICAA initiative dedicated to the recovery and publication of primary source materials and critical texts related to Latin American and Latinx art. The initiative addresses the endemic lag in access to documentation in the fields by digitizing writings by key artists, leaders of artistic movements, critics, and curators.

The Documents Project was one of the earliest digital humanities initiatives in the fields of Latin American and Latino/Latinx art. Cutting across national and cultural boundaries, the Digital Archive and accompanying publications provide an intellectual foundation for the exhibition, collection, and interpretation of art produced along this cultural axis. This Digital Archive provides global access to archival materials while simultaneously connecting geographically dispersed scholars and other producers of knowledge. The Documents Project purposefully does not collect archives: it is primarily an access project to ensure that physical archives continue to reside in their local communities and home institutions.