The editorial categories are research topics that have guided researchers during the recovery phase and continue to be the impetus behind the Documents Project’s digital archive and the Critical Documents book series. Developed by the project’s Editorial Board, each of the teams analyzed this framework and adapted it to their local contexts in developing their research objectives and work plans during the Recovery Phase. Learn more on the Editorial Framework page.
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Written by art historian Tomás Ybarra-Frausto, this document represents a chronology of important social and cultural developments in Chicano art. Beginning in 1959 with an exhibition organized around the MAPA (Mexican American Political Association) convention, and ending in 1981 with the show, Califas: An Exhibition of Chicano Artists in California, the document lists important people, organizations, and events that have come to define the history of Chicano art, including: El Teatro Campesino from San Juan Bautista, California; the Plan Espíritual de Aztlan written in 1969 in Denver, Colorado; the Galería de la Raza, a seminal institution in San Francisco, California; Chicano Park, an important site of Chicano mobilization in San Diego, California; Con Safos, an artist collective from Los Angeles, California; the group, ASCO, from Los Angeles; the Self Help Graphics workshop also from Los Angeles; Mujeres Muralistas, an all-female group from San Francisco; The Mexican Museum, which opened its doors in 1979 in San Francisco; and The Fifth Sun exhibition held in Berkeley, California, among many others events on this issue.
Tomás Ybarra-Frausto has provided leading scholarship in the area of Chicano art since the 1970s and who has influenced subsequent generations of scholars. This chronology was developed for a catalog that was to accompany the show, Califas: An Exhibition of Chicano Artists in California, organized by artist Eduardo Carrillo, and presented at the Mary Porter Sesnon Gallery of the University of California, Santa Cruz, in 1981. Along with exhibiting the art of ten artists, Carrillo also organized a conference with panels featuring the exhibiting artists, curators, and critics, including Shifra M. Goldman. Though not published, Ybarra-Frausto’s chronology is the first such documentation of the key historical developments in the national Chicano movement and that incorporates Chicano art and art groups within this history.