Patricia Phelps de Cisneros

Early life

Cisneros was born in Venezuela to mother, Miriam Louise Parker, and father, William Walther Phelps, a businessman. Her paternal great-grandfather was a noted businessman and ornithologist, William H. Phelps, Sr.. In 1953, William Henry Phelps and his son William H. Phelps Jr. started the first radio station in Venezuela, Radio Caracas Televisión Internacional (RCTV Internacional).

Cisneros received a BA in Philosophy from Wheaton College, Massachusetts, where she studied the educational philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead.

In 2003, Cisneros was awarded an honorary degree, an Honoris Causa degree in Fine Arts, from Wheaton College.

She was an MA candidate at NYU’s Gallatin School, and was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters 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 Venezuela, a literacy program called ACUDE benefited over 300,000 citizens, and the Centro Mozarteum provided scholarships to young people to study classical music. 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.

Currently, the Fundación Cisneros provides 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.

Cisneros has had a long-term relationship with the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The 2016 donation of 102 modern and contemporary Latin American artworks from the 1940s to 1990s to the Museum of Modern Art, which establishes the Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Research Institute for the Study of Art from Latin America at MoMA, join the previous donation by Colección Cisneros of over 40 other previously donated works. The gift is meant to be transformative and impactful on how Latin American art is valued and recognized globally. The gift includes works by Lygia Clark, Lygia Pape, Jesús Rafael Soto, Alejandro Otero, and Tomás Maldonado. Additional highlights are works by Willys de Castro, Hélio Oiticica, Juan Mele, Mira Schendel, and Gego.

Personal life

Cisneros has been married to Gustavo Cisneros since 1970. 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

Honors and awards

Works and publications