Cover of the major exhibition that took Mr. Cancel and his research team six years of research to mount at The Bronx Museum. The catalogue is a joint publication with Harry N. Abrams, NY.

Cover of the first major exhibition organized by Mr. Cancel at The Bronx Museum (1979).

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In November of 1975, Mr. Cancel became Director of Caymán Gallery, the first exhibition space in the SoHo art district of Manhattan to feature art by contemporay Latin American artists. Mr. Cancel went on to curate and install eleven exhibitions a year, giving artists like Leonel Gongora (Colombia), Liliana Porter (Argentina), Domingo Garcia (Puerto Rico), and Juan Downey (Chile) their first solo-exhibits in SoHo.

In 1978 Mr. Cancel was appointed Executive Director of The Bronx Museum of the Arts, the first Latino in the USA to lead a county-wide museum.

During his tenure (1978-91) Mr. Cancel built up the museum and vastly increased its exhibition space from an initial 5,000 sq. ft. (464.5 M²) to a fully renovated facility of their own measuring 42,000 sq.ft. (3,901.9 M²).

He also curated several major exhibitions including: the First, Second and Third Emerging Expressions Biennials: The Artists and the Computer; Devastation/Resurrection: The South Bronx; Krishna Reddy, a Retrospective; and the highly acclaimed Latin American Spirit: Art and Artists in the United States, 1920-1970.

The Bronx Museum received extensive national and local media coverage for its exhibitions and public programs. Mr. Cancel has conducted numerous print and broadcast interviews on a wide variety of topics and has been featured as the cover story for the Sunday Arts and Leisure Section of The New York Times (September 25, 1988).

During 1986-88 Mr. Cancel received a Museum Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts to research Latin American art. He traveled extensively throughout Latin America and established important contacts for the Museum with major collectors, galleries and museums.

As a member of the Smithsonian Council (1990-1997), he headed up a review of the Smithsonian Institution's publishing and electronic projects. As a consultant, he conducted a feasibility study for the establishment of a Museum of the Americas for the Inter-American Development Bank in Washington, DC. More recently, he was a consultant to The Rockefeller Foundation, assigned by the Foundation to provide technical assistance to Latin American arts groups.

Mr. Cancel has been a guest lecturer at several prestigious national and international museums and universities including Yale, Harvard, Princeton, and Central University of Caracas, and has served as a consultant to many philanthropic and cultural organizations including the National Endowment for the Arts, The Smithsonian Institution, Fundación Eugenio Mendoza (Caracas), The Rockefeller Foundation, The Quipus Cultural Foundation (La Paz), and The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. He has maintained an active interest in both the arts and sciences and has encouraged cultural institutions to utilize electronic and broadcast media to further their organizational missions. He has been at the forefront of urging cultural organizations to utilize the Internet to reach new audiences.

Mr. Cancel has been an invited Guest Curator for various museums, including The Old State House where he curated the inaugural exhibition Legacy/Legado: A Latino Bicentennial Reflection, mounted on the occassion of the bicentennial re-opening of the historic building and museum in Hartford, Connecticut.

Recent Curatorial Projects:

Title: Dreaming With Open Eyes (Sonhando de Olhos Abertos: Dadá e Surrealismo)
Location: São Paulo Client: Instituto Tomie Ohtake
Dates: 24 September — 28 November 2004
Location: Curitiba Client: Museu Oscar Niemeyer
Dates: 7 July — 29 August 2004

With 234 works by 100 artists, including Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray, and Joan Miró, this exhibition was a major survey of the origins of Dada and Surrealism. The works came from the rich holdings of the Israel Museum (Jerusalem) that houses the Vera and Arturo Schwarz Collection of Dada and Surrealist art. The exhibition consisted of collages, photographs, paintings, drawings, prints and sculptures, all accompanied by original documents, publications, and manifestos that captured the evolution of these two movements that have had such a profound influence on contemporary art.

The exhibition was co-curated with Tamar Manor-Friedman of the Israel Museum and was divided into five themes: Dada; Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray; Mouvement Flou; Precursors; and Surrealism.

The principal names associated with these movements were represented but the exhibition was a milestone in Brazil because it brought together 75 works by Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray, the largest selection in the country's history. Other significant Dada artists included Francis Picabia, Jean Arp and Max Ernst, and among the surrealists were Joan Miró, Joseph Cornell, Meret Oppenheim, Wifredo Lam, Remedios Varo, Yves Tanguy, and the poet and critic André Breton, one of the founders of the movement. (Portuguese).

Location: Rio de Janeiro Client: Espaço Cultural SESC
Title: Palavras+
Dates: 19 August — 14 September 2003

The exhibition Palavaras+ was an effort to survey the various ways that Brazilian visual artists incorporate the written word as the primary source for the creation of a work of art. The ten selected artists, drawn from across Brazil, explore five themes that link the literary and visual worlds: words seen as icons or logos; text serving as the content or subject; serving as the source for a work; text that direct a ritual or action and finally text as visual poetry. Read a review of the exhibition (Portuguese).