THE MASTER BUILDER

For the collector and philanthropist Amalia Amoedo, living with art and supporting the people who make it isn't just a choice it's a tradition. Is it any wonder she's known as Latin America's Peggy Guggenheim?

- LAURA VAN STRAATEN

There are no air kisses for Amalia Amoedo, though she may look the type—blonde, beautiful, and dressed nearly completely in leopard print, down to the tips of her French manicure. When I meet her for a drink last spring in Venice, she rises for a full-on hug and a kiss on the cheek, though I have met the Buenos Aires-based art collector and philanthropist only briefly before.

Amoedo—Ama to her friends—knows Venice well, she tells me as she lights another of her tiny, thin cigarettes and looks out over the Grand Canal from the outside bar at the Londra Palace, where she is staying. Amoedo, 48, came here regularly with her late grandmother, the businesswoman (she ran Argentina’s largest supplier of cement and concrete) and art lover Amalia “Amalita” Lacroze de Fortabat, who was so well known in Venice, Amoedo recalls, that “the band at Caffè Florian would play an Argentine tango when Amalita came in.” We’re both in Venice for the opening festivities of the Biennale. She has done this before, but 2024 is special. Adriano Pedrosa, from Brazil, is the first Latin American to organize the most prestigious art event on the planet. About one third of the 331 artists selected for the Biennale were born in Latin America—nearly triple the representation in each of the last two iterations, with special attention paid to historical artists who never got their due. Pedrosa’s chosen theme, “Foreigners Everywhere,” picks up ideas of immigration, outsiderness, and historicity that have long been preoccupations of the Latin American artists that Amoedo has spent decades championing.

While his Biennale was still in the planning stages, Pedrosa visited Buenos Aires to peruse Amoedo’s personal collection of more than 650 artworks, ultimately choosing to borrow