Panel and Last Chance: ‘The Great Swindle’ at OAS

As the exhibition “The Great Swindle: Works by Santiago Montoya” comes to a close at the Art Museum of the Americas at the Organization of American States, a panel discussion, “Santiago Montoya’s Work in the Colombian Context,” will be held this Friday, March 24, at 6 p.m. The exhibition closes March 26. The museum, open Tuesday to Sunday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., is located at 201 18th St. NW.

Along with the artist himself, the March 24 panelists are Doris Sommer, professor of Romance languages and literatures and of African and African American studies at Harvard University; Robin Adèle Greeley, associate professor of modern and contemporary Latin American art history at Columbia University; and exhibition curator José Luis Falconi.

Born in Bogotá in 1974, Montoya, who studied at the Universidad de los Andes, has been creating works in his “Great Swindle” series since 2007. Focusing on “the materiality of paper bills,” his work comprises painting, found objects and video, drawing on such iconography as the model planes and boats of Communist Chinese food coupons and paper-currency portraits of fallen dictators.

The Art Museum of the Americas has acquired Montoya’s “One Man Many People” of 2011, made of paper money on stainless steel, for its permanent collection.