Ariel Jiménez is a historian, museographer and curator of modern and contemporary art. He studied History of Art and Archeology at the University of Paris I, Panthéon Sorbonne (DEA 1983). He has curated numerous exhibitions in public and private institutions in Venezuela, Latin America and the United States. He was director of the Department of Education and Audiovisual Media of the Museum of Contemporary Art of Caracas (1984-1986); general director of the Exhibition Hall of the Eugenio Mendoza Foundation in Caracas, where he created a documentation center on contemporary art and organized seminars with guests such as Jean Baudrillard, Jean-François Lyotard, Sophie Calle, Andrés Serrano and Josef Kosut (1989-1997). He worked as Chief Curator for the Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Collection in Caracas (1997-2011), where he directed an exhibition circuit from the Fogg Art Museum of Harvard University to the MALBA in Buenos Aires. He was also general director and curator of the Museum of Modern Art Jesús Soto in Ciudad Bolívar (2004-2006). Currently working as an independent Curator.
He has published, among other titles: The primacy of color (Caracas: Monte Ávila Editores, 1992); I have lived by the eyes. Correspondence Alejandro Otero / Alfredo Boulton 1946-1974 (Caracas: Alberto Vollmer Foundation and Alejandro Otero Museum Foundation, 2001); Conversations with Jesús Soto (Caracas: Fundación Cisneros, 2001); Soto Monographic Essay (Caracas: Jesús Soto Foundation and Banco de Venezuela Foundation, 2007); Alfredo Boulton and his contemporaries. Critical dialogues in Venezuelan art. 1912-1974 (Museum of Modern Art in New York and Fundación Cisneros, 2010) Carlos Cruz-Diez in Conversation with Ariel Jiménez (Caracas: Fundación Cisneros, 2010); Ferreira Gullar in conversation with Ariel Jiménez (Caracas: Fundación Cisneros, 2011); Roberto Obregón in three times (Caracas: C & FE Collection, 2013); A diverse America, the silent language of forms. (Caracas: Ediciones María Gil de Oberto, 2013); Waltercio Caldas in conversation with Ariel Jiménez (Caracas / NY: Fundación Cisneros, 2016); and Cipher Pain, a topological aesthetic or the incomensurabilities, a monographic essay about the artist, currently in the process of editing.
Exhibitions curated at JCMC
Convergencias / Divergencias. Dos estéticas en diálogo
13 de diciembre del 2024 – 8 de marzo del 2025
Secret Affinities / Aesthetics of Two Worlds
November 22nd, 2024 – April 25th, 2025
The Juan Carlos Maldonado Collection in Time The Rigor of Geometric Shapes
December 02nd 2023 – September 21st, 2024
The Ye’kwana Universe/Living in the middle of the jungle
November 30, 2022 – February 26, 2023
Poetics of Exactness
November 30, 2021 – June 22, 2022
Signs, Abstractions and Metaphors: Latin American art at the JCMAC
July 1, 2021 – October 9, 2021
Ernesto Briel: Iridescent Geometries
November 19, 2020 – March 20, 2021
Hybridizations / Contemporary Strategies
December 3, 2019 – April 4, 2020
Convergences / Divergences
November 29, 2018 – October 12, 2019