Mesa-Bains (Amalia) papers, circa 1955-2019

Printable guide [HTML]
Request items

Summary

Title:
Amalia Mesa-Bains papers
Dates:
circa 1955-2019
Creators:
Mesa-Bains, Amalia.
Abstract:
Amalia Mesa-Bains is a Chicana curator, author, artist, and educator best known for her installation pieces referencing home altars and ofrendas, as well as for her activism in the art world. This collection contains materials relating to over sixty years of Amalia Mesa-Bains's life and work. It contains documentation for her art installations, exhibitions, curatorial activities, and work in public education, along with papers relating to her advisory positions, conference and lecture attendance, and writing commissions.
Extent:
100 Linear Feet (129 manuscript boxes, 2 cartons, 14 flat boxes, 8 map folders) and 7.94 gigabyte(s) 2 3.5" floppies, 6 CDs and DVDs, 1 Zip 100 disk.
Language:
English
Preferred citation:

[identification of item], Amalia Mesa-Bains papers (M2707). Department of Special Collections and University Archives, Stanford Libraries, Stanford, California.

Background

Scope and content:

This collection contains materials relating to over sixty years of Amalia Mesa-Bains's life and work. It contains documentation for her art installations, exhibitions, curatorial activities, and work in public education, along with papers relating to her advisory positions, conference and lecture attendance, and writing commissions. It includes correspondence, notes, transcripts, drafts, articles, essays and publications, photographs, and original art by Mesa-Bains and other Chicano artists. Most of the professional correspondence was handled by Amalia Mesa-Bains's younger sister Judy Mesa, who was her office manager and personal assistant until 1999.

Also present is a group of materials from what Amalia Mesa-Bains calls her "Frida Box," containing a variety of papers and artifacts related to the Mexican painter, Frida Kahlo. In addition to ephemera and lecture notes, this series also includes research and interviews Amalia Mesa-Bains and other Chicanx Bay Area artists conducted in the 1970s and 80s for a never-completed book on the life of the artist.

Biographical / historical:

Amalia Mesa-Bains is a Chicana curator, author, artist, and educator best known for her installation pieces referencing home altars and ofrendas, as well as for her activism in the art world. She was born Maxine Amalia Mesa to Mexican immigrants Lawrence Escobedo Mesa and Marina Gonzales Mesa in Santa Clara, California on July 10, 1943. She received a B.A. in painting from San Jose State University in 1966, an M.A in interdisciplinary education from San Francisco State University in 1971, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the Wright Institute in 1980 and 1983, respectively. Her dissertation was a study about the "Influence of Culture on the Identity of Ten Chicana Artists."

She worked in the San Francisco Unified School District for twenty years, first as a teacher of bilingual, ESL and multicultural education, then as a project manager for the Division for Integration, before becoming a research associate at Far West Laboratory and producing two books on the case-based approach to teaching. She is a former Commissioner of Arts for the City of San Francisco and has served on the Board of Directors and Advisory Boards for such organizations as the Galeria de la Raza, where she also developed the (Re)Generation program, the Mexican Museum, the Yerba Buena Cultural Center, the New Press, and others.

In 1992, Amalia Mesa-Bains was awarded a MacArthur fellowship, the first Chicana artist to be so honored.

She married Richard Bains, then an aspiring rock musician and housing activist with the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE), in 1966. He was the San Francisco Symphony's education director from 1987 to 1995, when Judy Baca brought them on to help develop California State University Monterey Bay, which opened in 1995. Both Amalia and Richard are considered founding faculty for the university, with Richard involved in the Department of Music and Amalia in the Visual and Public Art Department. She chaired it for eight years and is now a Professor Emerita.

Her first exhibit was for the 1967 Phelan Awards at the Legion of Honor in San Francisco. She began creating altar installations in 1975, this first being dedicated to Frida Kahlo. Her first solo exhibition was Grotto of the Virgins in 1987 at the INTAR Latin American Gallery, featuring altars to Dolores del Rio, Frida Kahlo, and Amalia's grandmother. Since then, she has curated and been exhibited at a multitude of venues. Her Ofrenda for Dolores del Rio, first exhibited in 1984 and then revised in 1991, was acquired by the Smithsonian American Art Museum in 1998. She had initially intended for her altars to be purely ephemeral, but began to rethink this approach when she considered the significance of her art and its impact on the community. She wanted her work to become more accessible and visible to more people.

Adapted primarily from Wikipedia; Durón, Maximilíano. "How to Altar the World: Amalia Mesa-Bains's Art Shifts the Way We See Art History." ARTnews, 2018; and CSUMB founding faculty oral history interviews.

Arrangement:

The collection is organized into 18 series as follows:

Series 1. Exhibitions Series 2. Public Service and Advisory Positions Series 3. Caribbean Cultural Center Series 4. Conferences, lectures, symposia Series 5. Education and Schools Series 6. MacArthur Fellowship and MacArturo Series 7. Awards, honors, and grants Series 8. Writing Series 9. Artist Files Series 10. Frida Box Series 11. Correspondence Series 12. Notes, notebooks, planners, journals Series 13. Biographies, personal and financial papers Series 14 Collected printed materials Series 15. Ephemera Series 16. Amalia Mesa-Bains art Series 17. Art by Others Series 18. Deux Femmes and San Francisco Design Network, 1970s-1980s

Rules or conventions:
Describing Archives: A Content Standard

About this collection guide

Collection Guide Author:
Alyssa Tou
Date Encoded:
This finding aid was produced using ArchivesSpace on 2023-07-31 15:31:05 -0700 .

Access and use

Restrictions:

Collection is open for research with the exception of Box 145, which contains personal and financial information. These files are restricted until 2075. Materials must be requested at least 36 hours in advance of intended use. Digital files are closed until processed.

Preferred citation:

[identification of item], Amalia Mesa-Bains papers (M2707). Department of Special Collections and University Archives, Stanford Libraries, Stanford, California.

Location of this collection:
Department of Special Collections, Green Library
557 Escondido Mall
Stanford, CA 94305-6004, US
Contact:
(650) 725-1022
specialcollections@stanford.edu
Website