Q&A with Valéria Piccoli, Mia’s Curator of Latin American Art
By Tim Gihring
August 22, 2025—Valéria Piccoli is Mia’s Ken and Linda Cutler Chair of the Art of the Americas and curator of Latin American art. She was formerly the chief curator of the Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo in Brazil, one of the most esteemed art museums in South America.
At Mia, Piccoli oversees not just a collection of objects but also the museum’s relationship with the many Latino communities in Minnesota. Here, Piccoli talks about her journey to Mia and the road ahead.
How did your interest in art originate?
Growing up in Brazil, I was always interested in art, but it was only when I moved to São Paulo for college that I had the opportunity to visit museums and see works of art. In college, I volunteered as an educator for the São Paulo Biennial, this huge international exhibition that happens every two years. Seeing all those artists—how they thought, how their ideas became forms—I decided that was what I wanted to do: I wanted to work with artists.
You studied architecture as an undergraduate. Has that interest stayed with you as a curator?
Absolutely. The perception of space is very important to my curatorial practice, and how narratives become an experience for the visitor. I think that comes from architecture school, and from having many friends who are architects as well.
Some of your early work focused on European “traveler” artists who came to Latin America in the 16th to 19th centuries. Who were these artists and what were they doing there?
Some were just tourists having exotic experiences abroad, but most were part of scientific or diplomatic expeditions that had to do with colonial enterprises. They were mapping the natural resources of Latin America and the inhabitants—the people and their costumes and all that. It’s very important source material to understand how life in Latin America was seen and described from a certain perspective—and how we in Latin America incorporated some of those ideas in our own identity.
For example, there’s a painting at the Pinacoteca by an artist from Naples, Italy, who came to Brazil in the 1840s. He painted this beautiful view of the bay of Rio de Janeiro. But when you look at it, it’s really the bay of Naples—the light and everything has nothing to do with the tropics. He doesn’t paint what he sees, he paints what’s in his mind. These artists are fascinating because they’re trying to describe something but cannot see what they’re really looking at—they just see through their filters the things they already know.
Those itinerant artists I was interested in traveled across Latin America, and their work gave me the chance to learn about art from different countries in the region. For example, the first time I went to Mexico—driven by my research—I visited the National Museum and was amazed by José María Velasco’s paintings. I found myself thinking, “Why did I never hear about this artist in my art history classes?”
At the Pinacoteca, you led a reorganization of the permanent collection on display. How do you approach that process?
I really understand museum work as a collaboration. It’s never the work of one person. It has to come from all the knowledge that already exists in this place—how can we interweave all these stories and create a big narrative that speaks to the history of the institution, the history of the collection, and also the power of what these artists are saying. It’s super-challenging and something I really love to do.
One of the decisions we made was to dedicate the first gallery in the display of the collection entirely to portraits and self‑portraits of artists—a mosaic of faces. This opening gallery reminded visitors that everything beyond that point was made by real people—by creators. The exhibition aimed to celebrate the human capacity to imagine and create while also highlighting that art is the result of labor—rooted in specific techniques, methods, and skills.
How would you describe Mia’s Latin American art collection?
There’s a beautiful collection of textiles, some ancient American objects, and even some 20th-century pieces. There are also some precious things, like prints by Arthur Luiz Piza. He’s a fantastic Brazilian artist, but no one outside of Brazil really knows about him. Two of the prints were gifted to the museum by local collectors, and another two were acquired through galleries in Paris and New York.
What do you see as the role of museums today, particularly museums like Mia, founded in the social and political context of the 19th century?
I think all museums have roots in imperialism, and many institutions all over the world are making the effort to reshape themselves. What I see as important is how the museum can be a safe space for people to share ideas, to express themselves, to see themselves. How can we be an agent for social change in this way? I think this is what museums need to be at this point.
Artists have this impressive power to propose to us other ways of looking at the world, of being in the world, of experiencing the world. And the museum has to make space for this, to show people they are free to imagine other things.
Meet the other curators in the Department of the Arts of the Americas.
Curated by Valéria
“José María Velasco: A View of Mexico” celebrates one of the greatest 19th-century landscape painters in the Americas. Trained at the prestigious Academia de San Carlos, Mexico’s fine arts academy, Velasco became an influential figure in his home country of Mexico, much like his contemporaries Albert Bierstadt and Frederic Church in the United States. His impressive panoramic views of the Valley of Mexico—home of modern-day Mexico City—are painted with exquisite detail, honoring both the country’s rich historical heritage and the rapid modernization it underwent in the late 1800s.
Organized by the National Gallery, London, and Mia, the exhibition showcases paintings from renowned museums in Mexico and the Czech Republic. It offers an unprecedented opportunity for Mia’s audience to view Velasco’s works, as many have seldom been displayed outside their home countries. The exhibition is on view September 27, 2025, through January 4, 2026, in the Bell Family Decorative Arts Court.