Patricia "Patty" Phelps de Cisneros is a Venezuelan-born Dominican arts and education advocate. Since the 1970s Cisneros has led initiatives to expand access to educational and cultural resources, including large scale literacy and teacher training programs across the region. She is also recognized for her work as an art collector, with a particular focus on Latin American modernist and contemporary art from Brazil, Venezuela, and the Río de la Plata region of Argentina and Uruguay. Along with her late husband, Gustavo A. Cisneros, she founded the New York City and Caracas-based Fundación Cisneros, which launched several educational and cultural programs. In the 1990s the Fundación's primary art-related program became the Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros. In 2016, Cisneros donated 102 modern and contemporary artworks from the 1940s to 1990s to the Museum of Modern Art, establishing the Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Research Institute for the Study of Art from Latin America at MoMA.
Contents
Early life and education
Cisneros was born in Venezuela to Miriam Louise Parker and William Walter Phelps, a businessman. Her paternal great-grandfather was a noted businessman and ornithologist, William H. Phelps, Sr. In 1953, William Henry Phelps Sr. started the first radio station in Venezuela, Radio Caracas Televisión Internacional (RCTV Internacional).
Cisneros received a BA in Philosophy from Wheaton College, Massachusetts in 1969, where she studied the educational philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead.
In 2003, Wheaton College awarded her an honorary degree. She was an MA candidate at NYU’s Gallatin School, and was awarded an honorary doctorate from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York in 2015.
Career
In her twenties, Cisneros became the founder and director of the language department of the Simon Bolívar University, Caracas. There, she developed an innovative audio-visual approach to teaching foreign languages. She also worked with Accion International and was a founding contributor of AVEPANE (Asociación Venezolana de Padres y Amigos de Niños Excepcionales).
Through the Fundación Cisneros, Patricia and Gustavo Cisneros launched a number of education initiatives. In 1979, they created the Asociación Cultural para el Desarrollo (ACUDE) in Venezuela, whose literacy program served over 300,000 students across the country. The program utilized a comprehensive multimedia pedagogy called Sono-Estudio Curso to shift the focus of writing and literacy away from traditional educational settings and into contexts that address everyday needs, from social interaction to health, hygiene and job performance. The Fundación Cisneros also created Cl@se, an educational television channel that reached over two million homes from Argentina to Mexico; AME, an international professional development program for teachers conducted through distance-learning; and Piensa en Arte, a methodological model for teaching critical thinking skills.
In 1985, Patricia and Gustavo Cisneros founded Fundación Mozarteum Venezuela, which is dedicated to music education. In addition to organizing mater classes and concerts with world-renowned musicians such as Zubin Mehta, Seiji Ozawa, and Sándor Végh, The Fundación Mozarteum Venezuela has also provided scholarships and facilitated international partnerships to nurture young musical talent. The organization has helped foster cultural appreciation through public concerts and community outreach activities, making classical music accessible to a broad Venezuelan audience.
From 2014 to 2017, the Fundación Cisneros provided professional development in Venezuela and the Dominican Republic with the online platform called Tu Clase, tu país.
Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros
In the 1970s, during her travels across Latin America with her husband, Cisneros spent her time visiting artists in their studios and seeing art in local galleries and museums, and began actively purchasing and collecting artwork. Primarily collecting indigenous work during frequent expeditions through Venezuela, especially around the Orinoco in the Amazon River Basin.
As her collection grew, Cisneros saw that Latin American art was under-represented in the international art community, so the Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros (CPPC) was formed in the 1990s, with a goal of bringing visibility and impact to the way Latin American art history is viewed and appreciated. That effort has included a four-pronged approach: An ambitious approach to lending artworks around the world, working with scholars and academics to learn more about the artists and their works, the creation of a publications program to provide supporting information about the artists and their work, and building an online forum for the artwork.
The CPPC is best known for its collection of Modernist geometric abstraction from Latin America and also comprises holdings of Latin American landscapes by traveler artists to Latin America in the 17th to 19th centuries; furniture and art from Latin America's colonial period; contemporary art from Latin America; and an important group of art and artifacts from indigenous peoples of Venezuela's Amazonas region, the Orinoco Collection. The mission of the Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros is to enhance appreciation of the diversity, sophistication, and range of art from Latin America.
Gradually, Cisneros began acquiring geometric abstract artwork that had been under-appreciated. It gradually grew into a significant holding of 20th century Latin American abstract art. She has appeared on “top collector lists every year since 1998. Cisneros has been lending her collections to international exhibitions and institutions since 1999.
Cisneros credits her understanding of the importance of stewardship as a collector to her great-grandfather, William H Phelps, who meticulously cataloged his ornithological collection. She has said that her aesthetic developed as a result of having grown up in the modernist society of Caracas in the 1950s and 1960s.
Personal life
She married Gustavo Cisneros in 1970 in St Patrick's Cathedral in New York City. They have three children: Guillermo Cisneros, Carolina Cisneros de Rodríguez, and Adriana Cisneros, who is CEO and Vice Chairman of Grupo Cisneros.
Boards and memberships
Current work
1986–present: Americas Society (New York, New York). Cultural Council Committee
1992–present: Museum of Modern Art (New York, New York). Trustee; 2006: Founder and Chair, MoMA's Latin American and Caribbean Fund; Member of other MoMA Committees
2011–present: Museum Berggruen (Berlin, Germany). International Council
2015–present: The Feuerle Collection (Berlin, Germany). Founding member, International Ambassadors
2015–present: Círculo Internacional de la Escuela de Música Reina Sofía, Museo Reina Sofía, (Madrid, Spain). International Patron
2017–present: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (Boston, Massachusetts). Member, Denman Waldo Ross Society at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
2020–present: American Academy of Arts and Sciences (Cambridge, Massachusetts). Member; 2020: Council; 2021
2022–present: : Patronato Fundación Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Barcelona (Barcelona, Spain). Trustee
Past work
1970-1980: Museo de Bellas Artes (Caracas, Venezuela). Board member and member of the Friends of the Museo de Bellas Artes
1980-1983: Just One Break (JOB) (New York, New York). Board Member
1985-1993: New York Botanical Garden (New York, New York). Board member
Honors and awards
1986: Order of Andrés Bello (Caracas, Venezuela) – Granted by Venezuelan government in recognition of contribution to the cultural development of the country (en reconocimiento a su contribución al desarollo cultural de país), Band of Honor, first class
1986: Order of Good Citizen (Caracas, Venezuela) − Granted by City Council of Caracas for community leadership
1991: Order of Francisco de Miranda (Caracas, Venezuela) – Granted by Venezuelan government to citizens who have exemplified outstanding merits (logros excepcionales como ciudadano)
1999: Order of Simón Bolívar, Venezuela
2000: Leone d’Oro di San Marco, awarded to the Colección Orinoco program area of the Fundación Cisneros
2002: Cross of Ordre national de la Légion d'honneur – Granted by Republic of France
2003: Wheaton College (Norton, Massachusetts), Honorary degrees in Fine Arts
2005: Recipient, medals of Honor – Granted by Ministry of Culture, Colombia for work in promoting education and culture in Latin America (2 medals: Senado de la República, Orden del Congreso de Colombia en el grado de Cemendados; and Camara de la Democracia Simón Bolivar en el grado cruz de comendador)
2008: Americas Society (New York, New York), Americas Society's Gold Medal
2008: Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (New York, New York), The Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney Award for Outstanding Patronage of the Arts
2010: Bard Graduate Center: Decorative Arts, Design History, Material Culture (New York, New York), The Iris Foundation Award
Works and publications
Cisneros, Patricia Phelps de (2016). "Reinvention: Collector as Custodian". In Holo, Selma; Alvarez, Mari-Tere (eds.). Remix: Changing Conversations in Museums of the Americas. Oakland, California: University of California Press. pp. 200–203. ISBN 978-0-52-028452-4. OCLC 921821810.