From Reading Public Museum
Pictured above: Kukuli Velarde (American, born in Peru 1962), India Patarrajada—She will do all the acrobacies the Master orders, pero no esperes que te quiera mucho…Tlatilco/Olmec, Mexico, 1200-800 BC, c. 2008, white clay, wax, casein paint, and resin, 22 x 15 x 16 inches, Museum Purchase, Purchase Party 2025. © Copyright of the artist, 2008.
The Reading Public Museum is pleased to announce the acquisition of a large ceramic sculpture by contemporary Philadelphia-area artist Kukuli Velarde following the annual Purchase Party event on Thursday, Nov. 13. The purchase makes interesting connections to The Museum’s collection of works of art from the ancient Americas and helps strengthen its holdings of works by Latin American artists, a recent collecting focus.
On Thursday, Nov. 13, over 100 attendees gathered for the 11th annual Purchase Party, voting on the next work to enter the permanent collection. This year’s theme was “Pennsylvania Artists: Collecting the Commonwealth,” which featured five works by artists with connections to Pennsylvania. The five artworks were brought to Reading for consideration, and in the week before the event, the public was given the opportunity to vote online for their favorites. This year’s Community Choice was a landscape, Ramsey Road Farm, 2025, oil on canvas by Peter Sculthorpe (American, b. in Canada, 1948).
At the end of the Purchase Party, the winner with the most votes from those in attendance was Kukuli Velarde (American, born in Peru 1962) India Patarrajada—She will do all the acrobatics the Master orders, pero no esperes que te quiera mucho…Tlatilco/Olmec, Mexico. 1200-800 BC from 2008. The work is white clay, wax, casein paint, and resin, and is part of her Plunder Me, Baby series from the 2000s. In this series, Velarde reinterprets ancient Mesoamerican and South American ceramic forms with humor and biting critique. Drawing on Olmec and other pre-Columbian traditions, she fuses historical aesthetics with contemporary self-portraiture to confront colonialism, cultural appropriation, and the erasure of Indigenous identity. The works reclaim the power and vitality of the ancient Americas while asserting the artist’s own presence within that lineage.
Velarde was born in Peru and lives and works in Philadelphia. She attended Hunter College in New York City, where she earned a BFA in 1992. She was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2015, and her works are included in the permanent collections of the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C., the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia, the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, and the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, Texas.
Curator of Art, Scott Schweigert, remarked: “We are thrilled to add this engaging contemporary work that makes commentary on colonialism and forces us to reconsider the historic record. Her work is a deeply personal reaction to centuries of plunder and the loss of cultural patrimony. This work will join the permanent collection at RPM for the enjoyment and enrichment of the community for decades to come.”
The Reading Public Museum is supported in part by grants from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts and is located at 500 Museum Road, Reading. Admission per day is $14.00 for adults (18-64), $8.00 for children/seniors/college students (w/ID), and free for members and children three years old and under. Currently enrolled Reading School District students and up to five accompanying guests receive free regular Museum admission and free admission to public Neag Planetarium shows with proof of enrollment. The Museum is open daily 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Visit www.readingpublicmuseum.org for more information.
You Might Also Like
Thaddeus Rutkowski (Part 2) | Poets’ Pause
Gone Postal Radio – Episode 29 – February 2023
