University of Arizona School of Art Associate Professor Nicole Antebi’s animated essay film, “100 Partially Obscured Views/100 Vistas Parcialmente Oscurecidas” (2023), has been acquired by El Museo del Barrio for the New York museum’s permanent collection.
Funded in part by a Jerome Foundation Film/Video Grant, the film is told through a cascade of vintage postcards of El Paso, Juárez, and part of eastern New Mexico.
“I interrogated colonial treaties, policies, and personal and found history to locate inflection points in the changing border,” Antebi said. “The film ends with my collaborators/friends and I immersing ourselves in the Rio Grande/Río Bravo.”
Associate Professor Nicole Antebi, with her animated essay film, “100 Partially Obscured Views/100 Vistas Parcialmente Oscurecidas (2023),” at the 2023 Arizona Biennial (photo by Julius Schlosburg). Top photo: The film is part of her “Rebel Waters / Aguas Rebeldes” show in Florida.
Antebi is currently showing the film as part of her solo exhibition, “Rebel Waters / Aguas Rebeldes,” at the Crisp Crisp-Ellert Art Museum in St. Augustine, Florida. In 2025, she screened the film at the AT&T Discovery District in Dallas as part of Video Art Night. The film also was selected for the Arizona Biennial in 2023.
“I am deeply honored that this work will be preserved alongside so many seminal works of Latin American and Caribbean art,” Antebi said.
El Museo was founded in 1969 by artist and educator Raphael Montañez Ortiz and a coalition of Puerto Rican parents, educators, artists and activists who noted that mainstream museums largely ignored Latino artists.
Antebi screened her animated essay film at the AT&T Discovery District in Dallas as part of Video Art Night.
Since its inception, El Museo has been committed to celebrating and promoting Latino culture, thus becoming a cornerstone of El Barrio, and a valuable resource for New York City.
El Museo’s varied permanent collection of over 8,500 objects, spans more than 800 years of Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino art, includes Taíno to modern and contemporary drawings, paintings, sculptures and installations, as well as textiles, prints, photography, documentary films, and video.
“We are thrilled to have Nicole’s video in our permanent collection,” said Lee Sessions, permanent collections associate curator for E Museo.
“100 Partially Obscured Views/100 Vistas Parcialmente Oscurecidas (2023)” is part of Antebi’s current exhibition through Nov. 7 at the Crisp-Ellert Museum in St. Augustine, Florida.
