Wifredo Lam’s poetic and committed practice changed the course of modern art, leaving a lasting impact that transcends borders, languages, and generations—and that continues to resonate today. In conjunction with the exhibition Wifredo Lam: When I Don’t Sleep, I Dream, join Gerardo Mosquera, John Yau, and Lowery Stokes Sims for a discussion of Lam’s groundbreaking work and enduring legacy.
The conversation will be moderated by Beverly Adams, MoMA’s Estrellita Brodsky Curator of Latin American Art, and will be conducted in English.
Gerardo Mosquera is a freelance curator, critic, art historian, and writer based in Havana and Madrid. He was cofounder of the Havana Biennial (1984–89), an adjunct curator at the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York (1995–2009), and the artistic director of PHotoEspaña in Madrid (2011–13), among other positions. He curated a Wifredo Lam solo exhibition for the XXIII Sâo Paulo Biennial in 1997. He has authored and edited textbooks, including Arte desde América Latina (y otros pulsos globales), Caminar con el diablo, Textos sobre arte, internacionalización y culturas, Over Here. He has lectured on five continents and has organized several international conferences. He received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1990.
Lowery Stokes Sims is an independent curator and art historian who served on the education and curatorial staff of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (1972–99), was executive director and president of the Studio Museum in Harlem (2000–07), and retired as a curator emerita from the Museum of Art and Design (2007–15).
John Yau is a poet, art critic, curator, and publisher who has authored numerous monographs, including Joe Brainard: Art of the Personal (2023), Liu Xiaodong (2021), Thomas Nozkowski (2017), Catherine Murphy (2016), and A Thing Among Things: The Art of Jasper Johns (2008). His essay on The Museum of Modern Art’s misrepresentation of Wifredo Lam in the 1980s is included in his book of essays, Please Wait by the Coatroom: Reconsidering Race and Identity in American Art (2023), which won an American Book Award. He was the recipient of the 2017 Jackson Prize in Poetry and was selected for a 2021 Rabkin Award for excellence in art criticism. His reviews appear regularly in the online magazine Hyperallergic. His most recent book of poetry is Diary of Small Discontents: New & Selected Poems 1974–2024 (2025).
