“Let Us Gather in a Flourishing Way” Curator and Artist Discussion

Join the Des Moines Art Center for an invigorating discussion about the traveling exhibition organized by the Buffalo AKG Art Museum, “Let Us Gather in a Flourishing Way: Contemporary Latinx Painting,” which is on view at the Art Center from October 24, 2026, through January 24, 2027. Inspired by a 2008 poem of the same name by former US Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera, “Let Us Gather in a Flourishing Way” celebrates the vision and creativity of Latinx painters.

It showcases 58 artists who actively enrich the landscape of contemporary painting, introducing new approaches to form, materials, and subject matter. Dr.

Andrea Alvarez, curator of the exhibition, will provide insight into the premise of the show and introduce us to three of the featured artists: Danielle De Jesus, Justin Favela, and Patrick Martinez. REGISTER Danielle De Jesus is a Nuyorican painter and photographer born and raised in Bushwick, Brooklyn, whose woks tell the story of growing up in New York City amid gentrification and displacement.

De Jesus’s background is in photography, and she utilizes her images of people native to Bushwick as a reference to tell the story of the community’s displaced residents. Justin Favela is based in Las Vegas and is known for large-scale installations and sculpture that manifest his interactions with American pop culture and the queer Latinx experience.

Favela explores traditional Mexican and Latin American craft — specifically cartoneria (a traditional Mexican folk art form that involves three-dimensional objects using papier-mâché and cardboard) — and his interest in art history, community, celebration, and home inform a practice intent on dismantling institutional hierarchies. Visitors may remember Favela from his 2021 exhibition at the Art Center, “Central American.” Patrick Martinez maintains a diverse practice that includes mixed-media landscape paintings, neon signs pieces, cake paintings, and his Pee Chee series of appropriative works.

His landscape paintings composed of Los Angeles surfaces — distressed stucco, spray paint, window security bars, vinyl signage, ceramic tile, and neon sign elements — evoke place and socioeconomic positions, unearth sites of personal and cultural loss. He lives and works in Los Angeles.

Free; registration required. REGISTER Image: Top left: Andrea Alvarez, curator of the exhibition.

Artists in the exhibition; top right: Patrick Martinez, bottom left: Justin Favela, and bottom right: Danielle De Jesus.