CSRC Newsletter - October 2011

I have been seeing artists Patssi Valdez and Gronk quite often in recent weeks—every time I use the ATM at Bank of America. The bank is featuring Harry Gamboa Jr.’s photograph of Patssi and Gronk’s performance in Asco’s Instant Mural (1974) as part of its promotion of the Getty’s citywide initiative, Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A. 1945–1980. At the same time, I have been seeing Oscar Castillo’s iconic ’47 Chevy in Wilmington, California (1972) in publications from around the United States and abroad. Gamboa and Castillo are quite different as photographers—the former producing staged photographs of an emerging Chicano conceptual and performance art scene, the latter drawing from documentary and photojournalist traditions and focusing on the East L.A. community. In the 1970s both artists challenged media stereotypes and, what was worse, the cultural invisibility of the Mexican-descent population in Los Angeles. But rather than promote the idea of an “authentic” counterimage, both placed an emphasis on the artistic experience and its power to change how one perceives the world. Now their images are circulating worldwide.

 

These two photographs are examples of hundreds of artworks by dozens of Chicano artists that are appearing in exhibitions at the Autry National Center, Fowler Museum at UCLA, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Museum of Contemporary Art, Museum of Latin American Art, and other venues. In the process, something even more profound is happening. The images by two Chicano photographers working in divergent styles are representing not just “Chicano art,” but Pacific Standard Time itself. Their work has been selected by diverse publications as representative of an unprecedented arts initiative, involving over sixty institutions, that explores the emergence of the art scene in Los Angeles. I look forward to seeing not only more of Patssi, and Gronk, and Harry, and Oscar in the next few months but also more of all the other Chicano artists taking part in Pacific Standard Time. Their artwork reveals the power of art, and it provides an ideal entry point into understanding a crucial moment in the history of Los Angeles.

 

 

Icons of the Invisible: Oscar Castillo, one of the CSRC’s five L.A. Xicano exhibitions, began September 25 at UCLA’s Fowler Museum with a conversation between photographer Oscar Castillo and artist Harry Gamboa Jr. The event attracted more than eighty guests, including many of Castillo’s Chicano art world contemporaries, who came to hear him discuss his photographs, motivations, and techniques within the context of life in Los Angeles in the 1970s. L.A. Xicano is part of the Getty’s Pacific Standard Time initiative.

 

Mary and Armando Durón have been collecting Chicana and Chicano (Chican@) art by Los Angeles artists for almost thirty years. The Durón Family Collection contains nearly five hundred paintings, drawings, serigraphs, sculptures, and ceramics, plus an extensive library of catalogs and brochures, magazines, videos and DVDs, and artist monographs, as well as related archival materials on individual artists and arts organizations. Chican@s Collect, an exhibition at the CSRC Library curated by Armando Durón, focuses on the Durón library: the Duróns believe that an artwork cannot be fully understand without considering the context in which it was created. In a curatorial twist, the artworks on display were chosen because each piece has a connection to the collection’s library holdings. The Durón Family Collection is one of a number of private collections that were critical in the development of L.A. Xicano. Chican@s Collect, one of the CSRC’s five L.A. Xicano exhibitions, continues through December 9.

 

The best way to stay up-to-date on the L.A. Xicano exhibitions debuting this fall is through their dedicated Facebook page. And if you haven’t done so yet, befriend CSRC, too!

 

Chon A. Noriega, CSRC director, will moderate the closing panel at “Encuentros: Artistic Exchange between the U.S. and Latin America,” October 5–6, 2011, at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C. Presentations will consider how artistic exchange between the U.S. and Latin America (Mexico, Central and South America, and the Caribbean) has created new dialogues and how artists have influenced one another's work. Visit the museum website for more information.

 

Javier Iribarren, CSRC assistant director, co-presented at the Latino Behavioral Health Institute’s seventeenth annual Latino conference, held September 14–16 in Los Angeles. Iribarren participated in a panel titled “Partnering to Reduce Depression in Diabetes and Other Chronic Diseases.” The panel focused on the increased rate of depression among persons with chronic disease and the role of culturally and linguistically appropriate, community-based intervention in chronic disease management, with particular emphasis on how these issues are being addressed within the Latino community.

 

Collaboration Labs: Southern California Artists and the Artist Space Movement is on view at the 18th Street Arts Center in Santa Monica. Los Angeles–based artist Alex Donis curated the show, which is part of the Pacific Standard Time initiative. The CSRC holds a large collection of Donis's works and papers; for more information, please contact Lizette Guerra, CSRC archivist and librarian, at lguerra@chicano.ucla.edu. The exhibition runs through December 16.

 

Carlos Haro, CSRC assistant director emeritus, will represent the CSRC at the upcoming UCLA Day with local government officials on October 13. Haro and other university delegates will meet with Los Angeles county supervisors and Los Angeles city council members. The group’s message to officials will focus on UCLA's relationship to and impact on each local legislative district, as well as on the greater Los Angeles community.

 

Carlos Haro, CSRC assistant director emeritus, presented a talk titled “The Chicano Student Movement at UCLA and the Creation of the Chicano Studies Research Center in 1969” at the Los Angeles City Employees Chicano Association’s (LACECA) fortieth anniversary symposium on September 8. LACECA celebrated its many accomplishments, including its role in supporting affirmative action and the promotion of Latinos in the workplace. Other presenters included Gloria Molina, county supervisor, district 1; José Huizar, council member, district 14; Richard Polanco, former state senator and chairman of the California Latino Caucus Institute; and David Hayes-Bautista, director of the Center for the Study of Latino Health and Culture at UCLA.

 

Maria Elena Ruiz, CSRC associate director, will be honored at a special celebration hosted by the National Association of Hispanic Nurses (NAHN) on October 12 in Washington, D.C. As the 2010 NAHN Nurse of the Year award recipient, Ruiz will meet with congressional leaders at an event that will highlight her years of work as an educator, nurse, researcher, mentor, and advocate for Latinos and for communities struggling with educational and health disparities.

 

Congratulations to César J. Ayala, professor of sociology at UCLA, on his new book, Battleship Vieques: Puerto Rico from World War II to the Korean War (Markus Wiener, 2011). The book, coauthored by José L. Bolívar, was made possible in part by an Institute of American Cultures faculty grant issued through the CSRC.

 

UCLA’s LGBT Campus Resource Center held an open house and resource fair on September 30 in Bruin Plaza. The CSRC supported the event and made available information about its own LGBT initiatives. The open house was designed to increase the center’s visibility and to let students know of the variety of LGBT resources available to them.

 

The CSRC’s Art Along the Hyphen: The Mexican-American Generation is the lead feature in the latest issue of Art Knowledge News, published September 30. The illustrated article describes the exhibition and discusses the life and art of each of the six artists whose works are being shown.

 

An Art Newsletter story about public works in Los Angeles mentions the CSRC’s co-commission of a mural by Willie Herrón III for Pacific Standard Time. The mural will be an homage to Asco’s Walking Mural, a performance piece from 1972. The story appeared on September 30.

 

A September 29 story on the Los Angeles Times Culture Monster blog, “PST, A to Z: 'Icons of the Invisible: Oscar Castillo,' Fowler Museum,” notes that the photographs in the exhibition were drawn from the more than three thousand images in the CSRC’s Oscar Castillo Photograph Collection.

 

Chon A. Noriega, CSRC director, and Colin Gunckel, assistant professor at the University of Michigan and editor of the CSRC’s forthcoming book on Oscar Castillo, were interviewed for a story in UCLA’s Daily Bruin about Icons of the Invisible: Oscar Castillo. Gunckel noted that Castillo’s photography “documents the barrio and spaces overlooked by a great majority of Angelenos: a post-industrial East Los Angeles cut off from the rest of the city and sliced up by highways. This population had limited visibility in the media and was struggling for political visibility.” The story appeared on September 26.

 

A September 25 article in the San Francisco Chronicle titled “Pacific Standard Time Comes Early to Los Angeles” describes the Getty initiative and leads off with one of Oscar Castillo’s photographs, ’47 Chevy in Wilmington, California.

 

“Pacific Standard Time: UCLA Turns Back Clock to Birth of L.A. Art Scene,” an article in the September 20 issue of UCLA Today, features L.A. Xicano and is illustrated with three works from the exhibitions. Among those interviewed is Chon A. Noriega, CSRC director, who observes that ”there have never before been so many concurrent exhibitions featuring or focusing on Chicano art.” The story is also one of three in the “Spotlight” section of UCLA’s home page.

 

Chon A. Noriega, CSRC director, was quoted in a September 19 Los Angeles Times obituary for Shifra Goldman, a UCLA alumna and scholar of Mexican and Chicano art. Noriega said Goldman “was an intellectual pioneer with strong social convictions," and he described her book Arte Chicano (1985), a comprehensive bibliography co-authored by Tomás Ybarra-Frausto, as “the bible for Chicano art history.”

 

An essay titled “The City of Dreams … and Shoes” by Chon A. Noriega, CSRC director, which considers some of the art and artists in the L.A. Xicano exhibitions, was published in the autumn edition of Tate, Etc., the primary publication of London’s Tate museums.

 

A September 17 Los Angeles Times story, “Pacific Standard Time Makes a Bid for L.A. in Art History,” provides an overview of the Pacific Standard Time initiative.

Chon A. Noriega, CSRC director, is quoted at length in a September 18 Los Angeles Times story titled “Lesser-Known Artists Are Poised for a Breakthrough.” The article discusses how the Pacific Standard Time exhibitions will increase the public’s recognition of many area artists, including Chicano artists Oscar Castillo, Dora De Larios, and Roberto Chavez—artists featured in L.A. Xicano exhibitions.

 

Ruben C. Cordova’s Con Safo: The Chicano Art Group and the Politics of South Texas was featured in the San Antonio Current on September 14. Cordova and some of the artists discussed in the book signed copies at a fundraiser for Centro Cultural Aztlán in San Antonio. Con Safo, published by the CSRC Press, is available through the distributor, University of Washington Press.

 

Movie Miento, part of KCET’s SoCal Focus blog, posted a September 7 column titled “1970s L.A. Chicano Conceptual Art Group Gets Its Due” about the Asco exhibition currently on display at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The show is part of the Pacific Standard Time initiative.

 

A September 9 blog post in ARTINFO.com featured a shout-out to Mapping Another L.A.: The Chicano Art Movement, calling the exhibition “spectacularly overdue.”

 

Carlos Haro, CSRC assistant director emeritus, was featured in the September issue of Heartbeat, an employee newsletter of Beverly Hospital, for which Haro is board chairman. Haro and other hospital executives visit patients to check on hospital operations and customer service.

 

ArtForum’s September print edition previews Pacific Standard Time and mentions both of the CSRC’s L.A. Xicano exhibitions at the Fowler Museum: Icons of the Invisible: Oscar Castillo and Mapping Another L.A.: The Chicano Art Movement. The exhibitions are also featured on the websites of Pas un Autre, My Science, and Think Mexican, which quotes Chon A. Noriega, CSRC director: “These two exhibitions give a palpable sense of the expansive cultural presence of the Chicano community that emerged at the end of the 1960s. One is struck by the aesthetic range of the artwork, informed by both a bicultural sensibility and a critical engagement with art history, and unified by the artists’ ongoing commitment to art-based community making.”

 

All of the L.A. Xicano exhibitions are featured on the websites for each exhibiting museum and are listed under the “Exhibitions” tab on the Getty Museum’s main Pacific Standard Time website.

 

 

Under the Bridge, a documentary about Mexican American identity, will be shown on Wednesday, October 5, 3:00 p.m., in the CSRC Library (144 Haines Hall). It tells the story of Chicano Park, which was created in 1970 in the heart of San Diego’s Mexican community. The 2011 film, directed by Mike Todd, reveals a cultural revolution that has refused to go away.

 

A special screening of the award-winning documentary The Longoria Affair (2010) will be held on Tuesday, October 4, 3:00–5:00 p.m., in the CSRC Library (144 Haines Hall). A Q & A with the film’s producer and director, John J. Valadez, will follow. The event is co-sponsored by the UCLA César E. Chávez Department of Chicana/o Studies and the CSRC. For more about the film, visit its website.

 

The CSRC’s remaining L.A. Xicano exhibitions open to the public in October, joining the two that opened in September. Debuting this month are:

 

Join us for a preview and party to celebrate the opening of Mapping Another L.A.: The Chicano Art Movement and Icons of the Invisible: Oscar Castillo on Saturday, October 15, 6:30–8:30 p.m., at the Fowler Museum at UCLA. Music will be by Raul Pacheco and the Immaculate Conception. Members of the honorary committee are Cheech Marin (chair), Lupe Anguiano, Linda Griego, Elyse S. and Stanley J. Grinstein, and David Valdés. Light refreshments will be provided by Beck's and Tequila Corralejo. Other sponsors include The Walt Disney Company, Los Tigres del Norte Fund, and Hotel Angeleno. Please RSVP by October 7 via email to fowlerRSVP@arts.ucla.edu.

 

An opening reception for Chican@s Collect: The Durón Family Collection will be held onTuesday, October 18, 4:00–6:00 p.m., at the CSRC Library (144 Haines Hall). The exhibition draws from the Durón’s extensive art collection and library. Currently on view at the CSRC Library, Chican@s Collect is one of the CSRC’s five L.A. Xicano exhibitions. To RSVP, please send an email to csrcinfo@chicano.ucla.edu.

 

The CSRC Library will participate in the sixth annual Los Angeles Archives Bazaar on Saturday, October 22, 9:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m., at the USC Doheny Memorial Library. This event is presented by L.A. as Subject, an association of research archives, libraries, and historical societies dedicated to preserving the history of Los Angeles as reflected in the archival record. This event will feature educational programs, author book signings, and film screenings on the history of diverse Los Angeles neighborhoods. Admission is free. For more information visit the Archives Bazaar website.

 

Please join the faculty and staff of UCLA’s Chicano Studies Research Center for its annual open house, Monday, October 24, 4:00–6:00, at the Fowler Museum at UCLA, where two exhibitions from the CSRC’s L.A. Xicano project are on display. The open house provides an excellent opportunity to get to know the CSRC and the many resources it provides for researchers and the community at large. This year the open house marks CSRC Director Chon A. Noriega’s tenth year as director, fifteenth year as editor of Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies, twentieth year at UCLA, and fiftieth year on Earth—come help him celebrate!

 

A reception to mark the opening of Mural Remix: Sandra de la Loza will be held on Wednesday, October 26, at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The exhibition opens on Saturday, October 15.

 

The UCLA Latino Alumni Association is celebrating its twentieth annual Fiesta de Inspiración scholarship and alumni awards dinner on Thursday, October 27, at the Millennium Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles. The theme of this year’s event, “Celebrating empowerment through education and justice,” reflects the organization’s goal, which is to provide financial support for Latino students who are pursuing higher education and to raise awareness about the higher education crisis in California.

 

In addition to the exhibition openings, L.A. Xicano also features events at three of the CSRC’s community partners: Autry National Center, Avenue 50 Studio, and Fowler Museum at UCLA.

 

Alchemi-que? Forging Wholeness in Early Chicano Art and Identity, Sunday, October 2, 1:00 p.m., Avenue 50 Studio

A lecture by Marcos Sanchez-Tranquilino will mark the close of Los Vets, an exhibition of work by some of the many Los Angeles artists who had a hand in the formation and affirmation of the Chicano art movement. Sanchez-Tranquilino, the driving force behind the 1990 exhibition Chicano Art: Resistance and Affirmation (CARA), will discuss the community-based urban art practice of the artists participating in the show. They include Judy Baca, David Botello, Barbara Carrasco, Yreina Cervantez, Harry Gamboa Jr., Margaret Garcia, Wayne Healy, Judithe Hernandez, Leo Limón, Gilbert “Magu” Luján, and George Yepes. The event, which is co-sponsored by L.A. Xicano and the CSRC, is free. For more information, visit Avenue 50 Studio’s website.

 

Becoming Mexican American and Beyond, Sunday, October 9, 11:00 a.m.–4:00 p.m., Autry National Center

George Sanchez's 1993 book, Becoming Mexican American: Ethnicity, Culture, and Identity in Chicano Los Angeles, 1900–1945, is considered one of the seminal works on the formation of Latino ethnic identity and culture in pre-World War II Los Angeles. Scholars, educators, and others will join the author in a discussion of Latino ethnic identity in the United States, the impact of Sanchez's book, and current issues surrounding ethnicity and immigration. The one-day conference is free with museum admission. For more information, visit the Autry’s website.

 

Evangeline, the Queen of Make-Believe, Wednesday, October 19, through Friday, October 21, 7:30 p.m., Autry National Center

This in-gallery theater work by About Productions is set in late-1960s East L.A. It presents the story of Evangeline, a devout daughter by day and a Hollywood go-go dancer by night. Music for the production was written by David Hidalgo and Louie Perez of Los Lobos. A gallery tour of Art Along the Hyphen: The Mexican-American Generation will precede each performance, and the Wednesday event will be followed by a dialogue with the work’s creators. For tickets, visit the Autry’s website.

 

Music of a Generation, Sunday, October 23, November 13, and December 11, 2:00 p.m., Autry National Center

This three-part series explores the emerging musical identity of the Los Angeles community from 1945 to 1965, including its strong ties to Mexican American and Chicano culture. Each presentation will feature local musicians and dancers. Free with museum admission. More information is available on the Autry’s website.

 

Art Along the Valley: The Home Savings Bank Art Project, Sunday, October 23, 11:00 a.m., Autry National Center

The murals and mosaics that Millard Sheets created for Home Savings banks in the 1950s through the 1970s present snapshots of California’s multiethnic history. Adam Arenson, assistant professor of history at the University of Texas at El Paso, who has written extensively about Sheets’s work, will lead a bus tour to six locations in the San Fernando Valley with murals that feature portrayals of Mexican Americans. The tour will include a box lunch. For tickets, visit the Autry website. Information about Arenson’s project to preserve Sheets’s work is available on the author’s blog.

 

Performance and Conversation: Diga Me!, Saturday, October 29, 3:00 p.m., Fowler Museum at UCLA

L.A.’s Chicano literary movement is the focus of this event. Authors Ron Arias, Vibiana Aparicio-Chamberlin, and Alejandro Murguía—who participated in the nation’s first Chicano literary festival, Festival de Flor y Canto, in 1973—will read from their short fiction, followed by performances from actors Matt Ferrucci, Marina Gonzalez Palmier, and Holger Moncada. Michael Sedano, co-founder of the literary blog La Bloga, will then lead a conversation with the authors. The event is co-sponsored by the New Short Fiction Series, a member of the Pasadena Arts Council EMERGE fiscal sponsorship program. This event is free and open to the public. For more information, visit the Fowler’s website.

 

The CSRC Library is proud to announce the launch of its new Friends of the Library program. This organization has been established for educational, outreach, and fundraising purposes. Aimed at assisting the library achieve its mission and goals, members will act as liaisons between the library and the community that it serves. Members will enjoy not only unique opportunities for volunteering but also special workshops and other library events. The first will be the opening reception for Chican@s Collect: The Durón Family Collection on October 18, 4:00–6:00 p.m. This on-site exhibition highlights almost thirty years of collecting Chicana and Chicano art. If you would like to learn more about the Friends of the Library or are interested in joining, please contact the CSRC librarian, Lizette Guerra, at lguerra@chicano.ucla.edu.

 

Michael Stone, CSRC archives manager, has organized the lending of nearly one hundred unique items to Pacific Standard Time exhibitions at the Los Angles County Museum of Art, the Museum of Latin American Art, the Autry National Center, and the Fowler Museum at UCLA. As Stone commented, “It was a great pleasure to work with the artists, curators, and principles, all working behind the scenes to make the PST exhibits a great success.”

 

The CSRC Library is happy to have its team of undergraduate work study students on board and is ready to push forward with some exciting projects.

 

Returning staff member Sarai Carillo will be processing the Ricardo Muñoz Papers, which consists of approximately 100 linear feet of photographs, sound recordings, correspondence, and personal papers (including those of his father, mother, and paternal grandfather) that document his family’s history and organizational papers that reflect his juridical work in Los Angeles from 1979 to 2004.

 

Diana Grijalva, also returning, will be working on the Mexican American Bar Association (MABA) Papers, 10 linear feet of organizational materials from the largest Latino bar association in the nation. Established in 1957, MABA is a volunteer organization and community advocacy group committed to the advancement of Latinos and Latinas in the legal profession and the empowerment of the community.

 

Maria Murillo, the third returning staff member, will be working on an ongoing project to properly inventory the CSRC’s newspaper collection, which will allow the library to provide better access and identify titles for future digitization.

 

Two new staff members, Helga Salinas and Prescilla Arellano, will be working on a related project to complete the processing of the La Gente de Aztlán Papers. Although the newspaper has been digitized, they will help upload and attach appropriate metadata to this collection on the UCLA Digital Library.

 

Christopher Velasco, Getty Intern for 2010, has agreed to continue working on the library’s ongoing digital initiatives. Since his internship Chris has helped identify and describe close to 4,500 images in the Yolanda Retter Vargas Collection of Orphan Photographs and the Oscar Castillo Photograph Collection, both of which are available on the UCLA Digital Library. He has also provided research assistance to staff and visiting scholars working with collections such as the Nancy Tovar Murals of East L.A. Collection. This academic year he will work on the Patssi Valdez Digital Image Collection, which will be available on the UCLA Digital Library in December.

 

Lizette Guerra, CSRC archivist and librarian, was named by the executive board of the Librarians Association of the University of California, Los Angeles (LAUC-LA) to its statewide committee on diversity. She will serve on the committee until 2013.

 

Michael Stone, CSRC archives manager, has become a member of the management team of the UCLA Center for the Study of Women’s “Making Invisible Histories Visible: Preserving the Legacy of Lesbian Feminist Activism and Writing in Los Angeles.” Stone has been brought on board to supervise the digitization of analog audio and video sources.

 

The latest of the CSRC’s guides for educators, Teacher’s Guide for María Brito, is now available online. Authors Veronica Alvarez and Theresa Sotto offer three absorbing activities for middle school and high school students that draw on the artist’s life and works. Each activity culminates in a work of art. Students will depict family history in a mock-up of a multimedia installation, learn about the incorporation of personal imagery in self-portraits, and, in an activity that explores how literature, history, and art intertwine, sculpt a dinner party attended by figures from different eras. María Brito, by Juan A. Martínez, is available from the distributor, University of Minnesota Press; the book is volume 4 in the CSRC’s A Ver: Revisioning Art History series. Veronica Alvarez and Theresa Sotto are education specialists at the Getty Museum.

 

The exhibition catalog for L.A. Xicano surveys Chicano art in Los Angeles from its postwar beginnings through the Chicano movement of the 1970s to a contemporary take on Chicano muralism by local artist Sandra de la Loza. Illustrated essays explore the work of the individuals and groups represented in the exhibition. Contributors are Terezita Romo, writing on six Chicano artists who were active after World War II; Karen Mary Davalos, on Goez Art Studios and Gallery; Reina Alejandra Prado Saldivar, on Mechicano Art Center; Sandra de la Loza, on Chicana/o muralism; Harry Gamboa Jr., on the photography of Oscar Castillo; and Chon A. Noriega and Pilar Tompkins Rivas, on Chicano art groups. A plate section showcases art from each of the exhibitions, and a checklist, exhibition history, and bibliography round out the volume. The catalog, published by the CSRC Press, is available from the distributor, University of Washington Press.

 

In The Pocho Research Society Field Guide to L.A.: Monuments and Murals of Erased and Invisible Histories, visual and performance artist Sandra de la Loza presents a wry commentary on the Chicano history of Los Angeles. She documents the exploits of the Pocho Research Society, an organization dedicated to commemorating sites in Los Angeles that are of importance to the Chicano community but that have been erased by urban development or neglect. The Guide, published by the CSRC Press, is available from the distributor, University of Washington Press.

 

Call for articles
Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies is currently considering submissions for 2012. Each issue of Aztlán presents three types of articles: peer-reviewed essays, thematic dossiers, and book reviews. All submissions are considered on a rolling basis and should be sent to our submission inbox at submissions@chicano.ucla.edu. For complete information about Aztlán and the submission guidelines, please visit the CSRC Press website. To ask questions or discuss ideas with the journal’s staff, please contact Assistant Editor David O’Grady at dogrady@chicano.ucla.edu.