James Oles

James Oles is an Assistant Professor of Art at Wellesley College, where he teaches Latin American art, focusing on the history of Mexico from the ancient through modern eras. He also lectures on pre-Columbian art of the Americas, mural painting in Mexico and the United States, and the history of film. In 2002 he was appointed adjunct curator of Latin American art at the Davis Museum and Cultural Center, where he advises on exhibitions and acquisitions of works of ancient and modern Latin American art. Professor Oles teaches at Wellesley in the spring semesters, and resides in Mexico City for the remainder of the year, where he works as an independent curator and art historian.

A part-time member of the Wellesley faculty since 1996, Professor Oles received a B.A. in Latin American Studies from Yale University in 1984 and the Ph.D. degree in History of Art from Yale University in 1995. He was also awarded a J.D. degree from the University of Virginia School of Law in 1988.

Professor Oles’s work includes both academic and museum projects. His research focuses on modern Mexican art, from the 1910 Revolution through the 1960s. Along with faculty awards from Wellesley College, he has been awarded grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities (2003), the Rockefeller Foundation, administered through Curare: Espacio Crítico para las Artes (1996), and from the U.S.-Mexico Fund for Culture (1995, 2001).

He is author and curator of South of the Border: Mexico in the American Imagination, 1914-1947 (Smithsonian Institution Press, 1993); Helen Levitt: Mexico City (W.W. Norton, 1997) and Las hermanas Greenwood en México, (Conaculta, 2000), as well as essays in museum catalogues and journals on José Clemente Orozco, David Alfaro Siqueiros, Frida Kahlo, Isamu Noguchi, Rufino Tamayo, and the Gelman Collection of Mexican Art, among other topics. He has co-curated exhibitions of the work of David Alfaro Siqueiros and Lola Alvarez Bravo, and in 2001–02 he organized Casa Mañana: The Morrow Collection of Mexican Popular Arts for Amherst College's Mead Art Museum. From 1998 to 2006 he wrote a regular column of art criticism in Mexico City.

Recent curatorial projects include reinstallations of the permanent collections of Mexico City's Museo Carrillo Gil (2000) and Museo de Arte Moderno (2007), and exhibitions of the Lance Aaron collection of modern Mexican Art (Museo Nacional de Arte, Mexico City, 2005; Mexic-Arte Museum, Austin, 2007). He was general editor of and lead essayist for Arte Moderno de México: Colección Andrés Blaisten, a major catalogue published by the National Autonomous University of Mexico (2006). He is academic advisor to the Blaisten Collection, and curated the inaugural installation of the same for the new Centro Cultural Universitario Tlatelolco (CCUT) in Mexico City (2007). His most recent curatorial project is Shouts from the Archive: Political Prints from the Taller de Gráfica Popular (CCUT, 2008-09). He edited the exhibit’s bilingual catalogue, which includes texts by Wellesley alumnae Aubre Carreón Aguilar ('08) and Beth Merfish ('05). Ongoing projects include a survey text on Mexican art for the Thames and Hudson “World of Art” series, as well as retrospectives of Mexican artists Agustín Lazo and Pedro Friedeberg.

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Profile last updated: 10/08

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Last Modified: November 10, 2008