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Art in Latin American Today : Venezuela
1961This text was written for the series Art of Latin America Today: Venezuela by the critic and art historian Clara Diament Sujo. The text historically summarized the development of contemporary art in Venezuela from the Pre-Columbian, colonial, and [...]ICAA Record ID: 1214123 -
Fabulous party at lace
1978This is a flyer invitation to a “Fabulous Halloween Party at LACE” at the Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE) Gallery at 240 S. Broadway Street organized by artists Gronk and Patssi Valdez of the Asco Collective on October 31, 1978. The [...]ICAA Record ID: 1123169 -
Pistol Whippersnapper
1977This document is an example of a Xerox mail art by Harry Gamboa, Jr. and Patssi Valdez of the East Los Angeles-based Asco Collective. Titled Pistol Whippersnapper, the piece stems from a Chicano Cinema No Movie created by Gamboa in 1976 as part of [...]ICAA Record ID: 1123133 -
Francisco Toledo : A Retrospective of his Graphic Works
1988In this text, Teresa del Conde argues that the vast majority of what has been written about Francisco Toledo “ . . . highlights his magical qualities above the structural, compositional and iconographical aspects of his work.” Chronicling and [...]ICAA Record ID: 1075729 -
Alliance for Cultural Equity Press Statement
1990In this unpublished protest statement, the Alliance for Cultural Equity (ACE) demands the cancellation of The Chicago Show, unless its organizers establish a dialogue to achieve the exhibition’s stated goal of showcasing the talent and cultural [...]ICAA Record ID: 1075710 -
Alto a la Demolición de Nuestra Comunidad
1978This document is an announcement issued by the Comité Provisional del Mejoramiento de Nuestra Comunidad [Temporary Committee for the Betterment of Our Community] for a public meeting on March 28, 1978, at the Rockwell Baptist Church in West Town, a [...]ICAA Record ID: 1075601 -
Marcos Raya: The Anguish of Being
2005In this interview, Marcos Raya expresses his belief that young artists must “get out of their mental and real ghetto, the Mexican ghetto,” in order to advance in their art. They must, he says, “be part of the whole city of Chicago and still be [...]ICAA Record ID: 1075560 -
The Chicago Show : news, views, commentary
This press packet is a collection of twenty-nine articles from local and national publications and press releases from Chicago artists’ organizations that convey the controversy surrounding The Chicago Show. Meant as a blind-juried art exhibition, [...]ICAA Record ID: 1075517 -
Last will & testament of Carlos Cortéz
1992This document is the Last Will and Testament of Carlos Cortez Koyokuikatl, written on August 25, 1992, and signed and witnessed on August 1, 1994. He leaves whatever money remains to his wife/companion, Marianna Drogitis Cortez. Any personal effects [...]ICAA Record ID: 1075480 -
East Humboldt Park Community Unites to Save Building and Mural from City's Wrecking Crews
1978This press release, issued by the Provisional Committee to Better our Community, announces a press conference on March 31, 1978, at which the East Humboldt Park Community would call for the city of Chicago to halt its plans to demolish a residential [...]ICAA Record ID: 1074915 -
Silk-Screen Posters by the Royal Chicano Air Force [RCAF]
1982In this article, Carlos Cortéz Koyokuikatl announces an exhibition of Movimiento Artístico Chicano’s (MARCH) collection of silkscreen posters by the Royal Chicano Air Force (RCAF) at the MO MING Dance and Arts Center Galleries in Chicago. He [...]ICAA Record ID: 1074810 -
MARCH : Movimiento Artístico Chicano
1976This document is a 1977 calendar produced by the Movimiento Artístico Chicano (MARCH), which includes biographies and reproductions of works by twelve Chicago-area Chicano artists, one for each month. Significant dates in Chicano history are also [...]ICAA Record ID: 1065497 -
Myths = Mitos
1991This document includes two articles from the catalog for the exhibition Myths: Recent Paintings by Alejandro Romero held at the Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum in Chicago from April 19–July 7, 1991. The first article considers Romero’s use of [...]ICAA Record ID: 1064590 -
A personal response : to some of the twelve points posited with respect to chicano nationalism
In this text, art historian and activist Victor Alejandro Sorell ponders on arguments for designating Chicano people a nation: the history of the twelfth-century Aztec homeland Aztlán, —located in the U.S. Southwest,— included; the seizure of [...]ICAA Record ID: 1064542 -
Impressions of the Program
1979This text recounts an exhibition that Movimiento Artístico Chicano (MARCH) which was organized around Agustín V. Casasola’s memorable photographs of the 1910 Mexican Revolution. In this article, Mary Kay Vaughan recounts the films, lectures, and [...]ICAA Record ID: 1064526 -
Casa Aztlán: Focus of Cultural Expression in the Midwest
1982This article introduces readers to Casa Aztlán, a Latino social services center and cultural organization founded in Chicago in 1970, and widely known in the Midwest for its cultural programs. It describes Casa Aztlán’s location in Chicago’s [...]ICAA Record ID: 1064510 -
Multiculturalism and its conundrums : public art and its multicultural community : the art collection at Chicago's new central library
1992In this article, Alice Piron considers the public art collection at the Chicago Harold Washington Library Center, notable for having the largest “Percent for Art Program” budget—at the time in excess of $1 million—and for having specific [...]ICAA Record ID: 1064494 -
Alejandro Romero
1991Author Dorothy Chaplik provides an overview of the life and art of Alejandro Romero, a recognized Chicago-based Mexican painter and muralist. She traces his artistic career from his childhood in Tabasco and youth and Mexico City, when he first [...]ICAA Record ID: 1064478 -
[Artist's Statement by Bibiana Suárez re: Identity and Exile]
1991In this artist statement, Bibiana Suarez discusses how her work reflects her search for self-identification and the problems of living between two cultures—that of Puerto Rico and the United States—as a self-imposed exile. Suarez also describes [...]ICAA Record ID: 1064462 -
[Artist's Statement for Proposed Exhibition, 'In Search of an Island', April 1991]
1991In this artist statement for the exhibition In Search of an Island (1991), Bibiana Suarez discusses how her work reflects her search for self-identification and the problems of living between two cultures—that of Puerto Rico and the United States [...]ICAA Record ID: 1064446 -
Visitando a Alejandro Romero
1983In this brief consideration of Alejandro Romero’s œuvre, author Victor A. Sorell discusses the impact of Chicago, Romero’s adopted home, on his works. Romero invokes the industrial ambience and architectural totems of this city in his pieces, [...]ICAA Record ID: 1064386 -
Latino art or latinos' art
1989In this 1989 article published in the magazine/journal Newcity, art journalist and freelance writer, Jeff Huebner, explores the misconceptions of defining contemporary Latino art within the framework of an American art market. In his interviews of [...]ICAA Record ID: 1064298 -
Entrevista con David Torrez
1976In this interview David Torrez discusses his devotion to the arts of his Mexican-American heritage, his involvement in founding organizations such as the Mexican Historical Society of Saginaw, Michigan, and his many artistic projects. Among these [...]ICAA Record ID: 1064250 -
Reading the "writing" on the walls: three Chicago muralists in profile
1983In this text, Victor A. Sorell considers the works of the three Chicago-based, Mexican muralists Aurelio Díaz Alfaro, Marcos Raya, and Vicente Mendoza through the prism of what he characterizes as three language types—“private,” “public,” [...]ICAA Record ID: 1064149 -
A Wall Mural Belongs to Everybody
1972In this article, John Weber considers pioneering Chicano artist Ray Patlán’s work with teenagers creating a mural in a Latino neighborhood of Chicago during the summer of 1971. The youths were part of the Community Mural Project that, beginning in [...]ICAA Record ID: 1064105 -
[Speech given at the Terra Museum of Art, Chicago]
The Cuban-American artist Paul Sierra begins this lecture, delivered at the Terra Museum of Art in Chicago, by declaring that even though he has been asked to speak about the “sources of Hispanic Art,” he has decided to speak instead about [...]ICAA Record ID: 1064040 -
Latin American visions and revisions
1994Art historian Shifra M. Goldman writes with great acuity and depth about the traveling exhibition, Art of the Fantastic: Latin America, 1920–1987, which opened at the Indianapolis Museum of Art in 1987, and subsequently went to the Queens [...]ICAA Record ID: 1063953 -
Visitando con María Enriquez de Allen
1982Written by Harold Allen, Chicago-based photographer and husband of Mexican folk artist María Enríquez de Allen, this biographical sketch covers the life of Enríquez de Allen from her childhood in Allende, Cohauila to her years in Chicago, where [...]ICAA Record ID: 1063662 -
Artist's Statement : Recognizing the Mexican Influence
1982Mario Castillo, the distinguished Chicano/Mexican multimedia creator, writes in this artist statement that his work has always dealt with birth, life, death, and the afterlife, and that he has always tried to relate it to his Mexican heritage. He [...]ICAA Record ID: 1063621 -
Artist's Statement: Art Liberation Movement, Castillo's Manifesto, Chicago, IL, July 4, 2001
2001"Art Liberation Movement" is Mario Castillo’s personal manifesto, which appears on the artist’s website. The Chicano/Mexican artist who works from Chicago expresses in this statement his desire to liberate himself from "the aesthetic constraints [...]ICAA Record ID: 1063585 -
Carlos Cortez
1998Written by well-known muralist John Pitman Weber, this essay provides biographical information on Carlos Cortez, a Milwaukee-born and Chicago-based artist and poet of Mexican-Indian and German ancestry. Weber talks about the places and people Cortez [...]ICAA Record ID: 1061374 -
A Muralist Answers: "Chicago Murals, are they our best public art?"
In this text, John Weber, a distinguished muralist and co-founder of the Chicago Mural Group, responds to a recent article about murals in Chicago and denies that Chicago’s mural scene is unique. He fears that such a term implies that the scene is [...]ICAA Record ID: 1061333 -
[Chicago Latino]
1992This exhibition catalog, Chicago Latino, was part of an intercultural dialogue initiated by two “socially-minded arts groups,” the 369 Gallery of Edinburgh, Scotland, and the Near Northwest Arts Council of Chicago, Illinois. The exhibition [...]ICAA Record ID: 1056360 -
Museums, racism, the inclusiveness chasm
2000Carlos Tortolero wrote this text in response to an article by Lonnie Bunch, “Museums, Diversity, and the Will to Change” (which appeared in the July/August 2000 issue of Museum News), noting that, while Bunch’s article was well written and [...]ICAA Record ID: 1056107 -
Forging a mexican national identity in Chicago : mexican migrants and hull house
2004In this essay from 2004, historian Rick A. López argues that the Hull-House in Chicago played an important role in promoting a Mexican nationalist aesthetics among the Mexican migrant community that settled in the city in the 1920s. Behind the [...]ICAA Record ID: 1052494 -
[Martina Lopez]
1999In this text, Gary Hesse considers the direction Martina Lopez’s work took after she was introduced in 1986 to computer imaging that became the main means with which she created her photographs. With this new tool, Hesse explains, Lopez has [...]ICAA Record ID: 1050793 -
Do the right thing : Mainstream Museums and Galleries need to end their racist and elitist practices and become genuinely inclusive institutions, argues Carlos Tortolero
2003Carlos Tortolero, founding father and director of the Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum (now the National Museum of Mexican Art), writes that mainstream museums are elitist and discriminatory institutions that either claim they have already diversified [...]ICAA Record ID: 867636 -
Interview with Carlos Córtez
In this interview, Carlos Cortez talks about his artistic influences, including the Mexican muralists, Käthe Kollwitz, and Rembrandt, among others. He considers the social, political, and economic motivations that underpin his art. He also describes [...]ICAA Record ID: 867615 -
The Puerto Rican equation
1998This document is a proposal for The Puerto Rican Equation, an exhibition to commemorate the 1898 invasion of Puerto Rico by the United States, and which would feature Puerto Rican artists who were born and lived in either Puerto Rico or the United [...]ICAA Record ID: 867574 -
HOT! An Exhibition Created by Seven Latino Artist
1996In this essay for an exhibition of seven contemporary Latino artists entitled HOT!, Grant Samuelsen considers the term "magical realism" and its inadequacy as a label applied to contemporary Latino art. Samuelsen states that such labeling robs these [...]ICAA Record ID: 867555 -
[Artist Bibiana Suaréz's written statements for show "The Puerto Rican Equation" 1997]
1997This document contains Bibiana Suaréz's responses to four of the eighteen questions posed to artists by the organizers of The Puerto Rican Equation, an exhibition marking the occasion of the 1898 invasion of Puerto Rico by the United States. Suarez [...]ICAA Record ID: 867536 -
[Lecture, School of the Art Institute of Chicago]
1989In this lecture given in April 1989 at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago-based, Puerto Rican artist Bibiana Suarez states that the value of art is dependent on its power to reveal the artist’s innermost world, and to preserve that [...]ICAA Record ID: 867517 -
Image and Play as a Strategy for Latina o Agency
2006In this lecture at the Maryland Institute College of Art, Puerto Rican-born artist Bibiana Suarez presents an overview of her work and considers the role of race and ethnicity in her art. She begins the lecture by explaining her ethnic background and [...]ICAA Record ID: 867498 -
[Talk given by Bibiana Suaréz for panel, "Object, Image and Illusion" at the Women's Caucus for Arts 1992 Conference]
1992In this panel presentation at the 1992 Women's Caucus for Arts, artist Bibiana Suarez spoke about how her images reflect her reality as a Puerto Rican living in the United States who feels caught between two cultures and who insistently searches for [...]ICAA Record ID: 867477 -
[Lecture, DePaul University, Chicago ]
1999In this lecture, the artist Bibiana Suarez recounts how a student's question prompted her to consider her own reasons for producing art; including the motivation of greed, which, although ostensibly negative, she considers as a motivator. Suarez [...]ICAA Record ID: 867458 -
Chicago Show Jury Process Compromised
In this statement, the Chicago Artists' Coalition (CAC) voices its objection to the mid-competition change of rules and procedures for selecting artists for The Chicago Show. It calls the organizers’ decision to add an invitational component to [...]ICAA Record ID: 867431 -
Cowardice and Politics Ruin "The Chicago Show"
1990In this text, James Yood offers a scathing critique of The Chicago Show, an exhibition mounted at the Chicago Cultural Center in 1990. He describes the process by means of which this exhibition—conceived of as a juried exhibition to showcase the [...]ICAA Record ID: 867390 -
María Enríquez de Allen Florista, Santera, Artesana
1994Shifra M. Goldman wrote this text about María Enríquez de Allen to honor her for her contribution to art in the areas of flower making, Santos carving, and crafts. She especially praises Enríquez de Allen for enriching the visual vocabulary of [...]ICAA Record ID: 867369 -
Series [March 10-17, 1944] of letters [from] Chauncy Mccormick [to] Embassador of Mexico
1944In this series of three letters (housed in the archives of the Art Institute of Chicago), museum officials correspond with representatives of the Mexican Ambassador to the United States and the U.S. Department of State regarding the exhibition Posada [...]ICAA Record ID: 862776 -
Citizens keep round-the-clock vigil on threatened mural site
1978This newspaper article describes how residents of Chicago’s Humboldt Park community kept a 24-hour watch over the building that housed the mural Breaking the Chains (1971 by John Weber and collaborators) in order to prevent it from being razed by [...]ICAA Record ID: 857153