First major exhibition of Latinx art comes to Ringling Museum in Sarasota

The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art (The Ringling) presents Nuestro Vaivén (Our Sway), the Museum’s first major exhibition of contemporary Latinx art. This regional survey features 22 artists—representing 11 Latin American nations and 11 Florida counties from Osceola to Sarasota to Miami-Dade. Organized by New York-based independent curator Amy Rosenblum-Martín (Florida resident 1994–2000) with Sarasota-based Community Curator and Ringling Trustee Emeritus Javi Suárez, the exhibition will be on view from October 4, 2025, to March 8, 2026. At its core, Nuestro Vaivén centers dialogue between four Latinx Sarasotan community leaders from various fields and four pairs of exhibiting artists to create installations that celebrate and reflect the wide-ranging ideas and experiences of their local communities. An exhibition-within-the-exhibition will feature the work of 14 additional Latinx artists, showing the broad spectrum of artmaking in Central and South Florida. 

“Nuestro Vaivén presents a major and much anticipated exhibition focused on contemporary Latinx art in Central and South Florida. Led by Amy Rosenblum-Martín’s unparalleled vision, the exhibition proposes a novel mode of extended engagement among the Museum, exhibiting artists, and our local communities,” Steven High, Executive Director of The Ringling. “Her deeply collaborative curatorial process has already resulted in new lines of dialogue and new audiences visiting The Ringling for the first time.”

Since Nuestro Vaivén is rooted in conversations between the four community leaders and the two artists with whom each is paired, this unconventional exhibition-making process began with a convening at The Ringling, where the community leaders shared stories, insights, and reflections that expressed their constituents’ ideas, concerns, joys, challenges, achievements, and dreams. These meaningful talks, in turn, shaped the artists’ production, resulting in four socially engaged installations that reflect and celebrate specific Latinx experiences while expanding the possibilities of what contemporary art can be and do.

As visitors find their way through the exhibition—unfolding across all seven gallery spaces in The Ringling’s Ulla R. and Arthur F. Searing Wing (Searing Wing)—they are drawn deeper into the heart of the project which features a living room-like seating area, with interactive games and a deeply affective video about the surrounding art on a television. Families and friends are encouraged to sit comfortably and play together, contributing to the community feeling that motivates the exhibition. 

The pairings of community leaders and artists in four of the seven gallery spaces are:

• Diana Gonzalez, a Mexican radio personality, who has worked with artists Adrián Gómez and Emily Martinez, the former of whom records Gonzalez’s voice and features it as the audio component of a sculpture; 
• Dr. Manuel Gordillo, a Peruvian doctor, who has donated scrubs from the hospital to be upcycled by artist Manuela Gonzalez into an architecturally inspired, post-minimalist installation about multifaceted healing, created with artist Yanira Collado; 
• Gloria Noemy López Herrera, a Nicaraguan organizer of immigrant entrepreneurs, who has collaborated with artists Francisco Masó and Edison Peñafiel, of whom the former creates workstations for her business community to use, free of charge, within the exhibition during Museum hours—these functioning cubicles are simultaneously abstract artworks; 
• and Ada Toledo, a Dominican salon owner, who is paired with two portrait artists—sculptor Rigoberto Torres and photographer Karen Arango—each of whom honor the stylist and her Latina clientele by rendering their likenesses. Torres is creating a double cast of Toledo at work with a customer in her salon, while Arango is contributing new portraits of the salon’s patrons to couple with photographs she took of the same individuals as children.

A fifth gallery and two glass alcove galleries will feature an exhibition-within-the-exhibition of paintings, sculptures, drawings, photography, and video art by fourteen additional artists: william cordova, Diana Eusebio, Yessica Gispert, Nicario Jimenez, Tatiana Mesa Paján, Carola Miles, Glexis Novoa, Charo Oquet, Edison Peñafiel, Libbi Ponce, Gabriel Ramos, Selina Román, Destyni “desi” Swoope, Marisabela Tellería, and Juana Valdes. Within this cohort, two artists (cordova and Valdes) present work in the glass alcove galleries that look out onto and respond specifically to The Ringling’s Bayfront Gardens and Center for Asian Art, respectively. Together, the group hang, site-responsive works, and dual-artist installations highlight an extensive range of contemporary art from realism to abstraction, minimalism to maximalism, and suggest the manifold voices within the field of Latinx art. 

“Guided by the question ‘Who’s talking to whom?,’ Nuestro Vaivén is shaped by and created primarily for Florida’s distinct Latinx communities,” exhibition curator Amy Rosenblum-Martín said. “Developed during conversations between artists and community leaders, these new, welcoming art experiences aim to elicit deeply reflexive, personal, philosophical, and multimodal viewer participation, observations, and meaning-making. The creativity of the artists, community leaders, and public represents both the individual and collective power of local Latinx communities. We’re very excited to witness how these ideas are realized by The Ringling’s constituents over time and look forward to sharing further updates as this unusual project takes shape.”

One unique aspect of the exhibition is the community celebrations hosted by the four community leaders to complete the artists’ installations. These gatherings—designed by the community leaders for their families, friends, colleagues—serve as participatory art (life honored as art) that deepens personal and communal ties to The Ringling, and museum spaces more broadly, as welcoming, public gathering places for all.

Fostering an inviting, familiar atmosphere that encourages first-time visitors to relax, have fun, and engage comfortably with the works on view, a wide range of public programs will further enliven the exhibition, beginning with Rigoberto Torres, who will create a plaster cast of a Latinx community leader during the opening celebration. Extending the exhibition beyond the gallery walls and the duration of the show, an exhibition catalog documenting the origin and development of the project, and the key partnerships as well as the art that brought it to life, will continue the conversation.

“The exhibition is particularly important to me as it serves as the culmination of longtime efforts on the part of The Ringling Board of Directors and the people of Sarasota to bring someone as talented as Amy Rosenblum-Martín to curate this regional survey of Latin American art,” Ringling Community Curator Javi Suárez said. “As an expansive exhibition with over twenty artists—representing such a wide range of our Latin communities—it truly celebrates our friends, family, and neighbors who make the Sarasota community special and can now see themselves represented within the Museum.” 

ABOUT AMY ROSENBLUM-MARTÍN

Amy Rosenblum-Martín is a New York City-based, independent curator of museum exhibitions and biennials. Former staff curator of Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM) and The Bronx Museum and staff educator at the Guggenheim and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rosenblum-Martín is a Latin Americanist professor at The New School with a master’s in art history from Columbia University. Previously, she worked for the Museum of Modern Art, United States; National Portrait Gallery, United Kingdom; MARCO, Mexico; Reina Sofía and MACBA, Spain; MALBA, Argentina; and Kunsthaus Bregenz, Austria.

Rosenblum-Martín considers Miami one of her hometowns and has worked there repeatedly over the past 30 years. In addition to co-curating Miami’s AIM Biennial for the second time, she is currently curating the Harmonia Rosales: Chronicles of Ori tour, which includes PAMM. As a PAMM staff curator (1995–2000), she organized the Museum’s landmark presentation of Global Conceptualism: Points of Origin, 1950s–1980s, the Queens Museum touring exhibition. She also curated Structure and Stories at David Castillo Gallery in Miami and initiated PAMM’s New Work Miami exhibition series, discussed in the book Miami Contemporary Artists.

ABOUT JAVI SUÁREZ

Javi Suárez is a Sarasota-based architect, artist, and Ringling Board Member Emeritus. Born in Santurce, Puerto Rico, he received his Master of Architecture from UCLA. Suárez is a founding partner of Suárez Architecture, an award-winning architectural firm whose projects include Sabal Palm Plaza, Planned Parenthood of Southwest and Central Florida, and the Panther Ridge Residence.

He has exhibited his paintings at Parsons School of Design, New York; Galería Botello, San Juan; Patricia Correia Gallery, Santa Monica, California; and Ball State University, Muncie, Indiana. He is an RHS Distinguished Alumni Hall of Fame member and a Leadership Florida Class XXVII graduate.

ABOUT THE RINGLING

As the State Art Museum of Florida and part of Florida State University, The Ringling is Florida’s center for the arts, history, and learning. Bringing the past and contemporary culture to life through extraordinary visitor experiences, The Ringling is a place of exploration, discovery, and respite. The Ringling’s campus in Sarasota, Florida—which includes the Museum of Art, the Circus Museum, a historic mansion, an 18th-century theater, Glass Arts Pavilion, and Bayfront Gardens—is listed on the National Registry of Historic Places.