Mallet-Cárdenas, Ana Elena

"I am interested in the written word. Writing as a means of communication but also as a space to share and reflect." Ana Elena Mallet Cárdenas shares, learns and discovers things about the past that she can apply to the present. She faces the challenge of being meticulous and understanding that historical research takes a long time, and thus requires her patience. Two of the books she has written are Silla mexicana and La Bauhaus y el México moderno, which display her interest in art history but in its widest spectrum; meaning, integrating design, cinema, architecture and new disciplines. She considers art and design to be two study areas with transformative competences: the first one, of perceptions, the second one, of lives. Mallet Cárdenas is a curator. She believes that museums are places to learn and reflect on different realities, and that is where her interest resides. She has served as consultant, adviser, deputy director and head of preservation in some of the most important cultural spaces in the country: Museo Universitario de Arte Contemporáneo (MUAC), Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporáneo, Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil, Museo Soumaya, Museo Universitario de Ciencias y Artes (MUCA), Casa del Lago, Centro Cultural Universitario de la Universidad de Guadalajara and Museo del Objeto del Objeto (MODO). It was her who ran the first exhibition in Mexico dedicated to contemporary fashion; she was in charge of the creation of MexartDB, a digital memoir of contemporary Mexican art as of 1985, sponsored by the Patronato de Arte Contemporáneo (PAC), From 2009 to 2019 she was director and organizer of Corredor Cultural Roma Condesa. Since April 2021, she is a member of the acquisitions committee of the Department of Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art in New York (MoMA). In February 2020, she curated the exhibition Clara Porset Diseño y pensamiento for the Museo Jumex in Mexico City. She was curatorial advisor for the exhibitions: In a Cloud, In a Wall in a Chair. Six Modernists in Mexico at Midcentury, for the Art Institute of Chicago (2019) and Found in Translation. Design in California and Mexico, 1915-1985, at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) in September 2017. She co-curated with Lowery Sims, US Mexico Border Project. Place, Imagination and Possibility at The Craft and Folk Art Museum (CAFAM) in Los Angeles (2017-2018), an exhibition that subsequently traveled to Lille, France at La Maison de Follie Wazemmes, 2019. She was co-curator of Moderno: Design for Living. Design in Brazil, Mexico and Venezuela, 1945-1970 at Americas Society in New York (February-June 2015). She has curated more than two dozen exhibitions in museums in Mexico, the United States and Europe. In addition to many other consulting positions, she was part of the Advisory Committee for the London Design Biennale in 2016 and 2018. In 2018 she was an advisor to the cultural project of the presidential campaign of La Coalición por México al Frente under Licenciado Raúl Padilla. In 2020 she published the book La Vida en el Arte. Writings by Clara Porset (Editorial Alias) and in 2017 she published the book Silla Mexicana (Arquine / Conaculta); in 2014 she wrote and published La Bauhaus y el México Moderno. El diseño de van Beuren (Arquine / Conaculta). She is currently working on a book about the designer Clara Porset and her collaborations with brands, companies and architects in the 20th century and an exhibition on the history of modern ceramics in Mexico.