Art says things that history cannot: Panel discussion with Gabriela Salgado, Maya Jaggi, Lotte Johnson & Daniela Galán

Daniela Galan is the founder of Amalgama Art and Amalgama Academy, an international platform dedicated to the research, exhibition, and championing of Latin American artists. Over the past seven years, Amalgama has reached more than 10,000 participants worldwide through exhibitions, public programmes, and academic initiatives, collaborating with artists such as Cecilia Vicuña, Clemencia Echeverri, Sandra Vásquez de la Horra, Amalia Pica, and María Elvira Escallón, among others. The Academy currently holds a partnership with Universidad de los Andes, strengthening its academic reach in Latin America. Daniela is a registered lecturer with The Arts Society (UK) and has lectured at institutions such as Sotheby’s and Instituto Cervantes. She has over 20 years of research experience in art history and philosophy, with a particular focus on women artists from the region.

Maya Jaggi is an award-winning writer, critic and artistic director in London who has reported on culture from five continents, including Colombia. She is a contributing art critic for Financial Times and a former arts writer and fiction critic for The Guardian, where she profiled figures from Edward Said to Frank Bowling, Paula Rego. She was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2023 for her independent critical writing, which has appeared widely, from The New York Times and The Art Newspaper to Artforum and the New York Review of Books. She holds degrees from Oxford University and LSE, and an honorary doctorate from the Open University.

Gabriela Salgado is an Argentine-born curator based in London and currently Director of The Showroom. With over 15 years of leadership experience in the arts sector, Salgado has developed and delivered complex exhibitions, artists’ commissions, and public programmes at an international level. She holds an MA in Curating Contemporary Art from the Royal College of Art and curated numerous international exhibitions, including the 2nd Biennale of Thessaloniki, Greece (2009), and La Otra Bienal in Bogotá, Colombia (2013). Salgado held positions as curator of the Latin American Art Collection at Essex University, UECLAA (1999-2005), curator of Public Programmes at Tate Modern (2006-2011) and the independent research ‘Transatlantic Connections’, an exchange programme for African and Latin American artists. She was the Artistic Director of Te Tuhi contemporary art gallery in Auckland, Aotearoa, New Zealand (2017-2020).

Lotte Johnson is a curator and art historian based in London. She is Curator at Barbican Art Gallery, London, where her previous curatorial projects and publications include Beatriz González (2026), Unravel: The Power and Politics of Textiles in Art  (2024, co-curated with Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam) and Carolee Schneemann: Body Politics (2022), as well as solo commissions by artists Citra Sasmita (2025), Toyin Ojih Odutola (2020), SERAFINE1369 (2019), Yto Barrada (2018) and Bedwyr Williams (2016). She has contributed to several other Barbican exhibitions and accompanying books including Into the Night: Cabarets and Clubs in Modern Art (2019), Basquiat: Boom for Real (2017) and The World of Charles and Ray Eames (2015). She previously worked at The Museum of Modern Art, New York. A regular contributor to exhibition catalogues and publications, she also lectures and presents on modern and contemporary art.