Collection Guide
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Table of contents
Language of Material:
English
Contributing Institution:
Chicano Studies Research Center Library
Title: America en la Mira Archive
Creator:
Frente Mexicano de Grupos Trabajadores de la Cultura
1978
Identifier/Call Number: 34
Physical Description:
5 linear feet
Date (inclusive): 1970-1978
Abstract: This collection of original artwork
from the touring show America en la Mira represents about seventy-five percent of the
original works in the show. The UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center came to "own" these
images by default. The show came to UCLA in 1980 and was left here, and we have been the
caretaker since.
Language of Material: Collection materials in English and
Spanish.
Physical Location: COLLECTION STORED OFF-SITE AT SRLF.
Advance notice required for access. Contact the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center Library
and Archive for paging information.
Open for research.
This collection was not donated to the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center. We were merely
its last stop. There is no deed on file. We have processed and preserved the collection as
if we had been given the collection as a donation.
This prefatory essay by Alfonso Espitia Huerta, Director del Museo de Arte Contemporano de
Morelia is illustrative of the show's intentions:
AMERICA EN LA MIRA as a collective expression of the groups that work in support of culture
from the Mexican Front is an incredible synthesis of the libertarian ideals of all epochs of
our continent.
There is a generation torn apart by the aggressions of totalitarians, which for most of the
nations in continental America, lives and endures in a climate of anti-culture, with signs
contrary to Bolivar, Washington, Hidalgo, Morelos, Marti, F.D. Roosevelt, Zapata, Guevara,
Whitman, Neruda, heroes who fought for the freedom of the world, from their impressive
nationalist position. This generation has found as a dignified escape, an aesthetic
expression enriched/informed by historical consciousness.
They are youth that by exercising their universal rights expose their ideas and feelings,
to connect with their people; and addressing critical problems of the community with a
critical/analytical spirit. They demonstrate that the formal attitudes of simple traditional
rhetoric can always be overcome and that if we have a glorious past of struggle, rather than
remembering it with nostalgia, it'd be best to think of solutions that could achieve a real
change of our old and ominous order, so limited by group interests and transnational forces.
And they urge artists to return to the path of intellectual heroism from within the profound
aspects of public art, not to create utopias, but the new world that we all hope for.
Therefore, it turns out to be a great incentive to contemplate the handful of painters who
despise the abstract ambiguity and the bad conscience of old mistakes made during the
revolutionary struggle; they continue struggling to exalt the spirit of the American man.
While it is true that the Mexican plastic has suffered a bourgeois gap, our duty is to put
ourselves at the forefront of humanism, taking up again the inclination for the public art
of Posada, Atl, Orozco, Rivera and Siqueiros. In this way, we will again find the identity
between history, dignity, and art, and not to continue being trapped in the modest, poor,
and inadequate expression of underdevelopment.
You are then welcomed, the gifted men of fine perception, intelligence, will, and fantasy,
who do not conform to the tough requirements of the established power/status quo and who
escape the traditional modes of transmission of knowledge, achieving the expansion of art
through renewed theses of social conscience.
[Identification of item], America en la Mira Archive, 34, Chicano Studies Research Center,
UCLA, University of California, Los Angeles.
Processed by CSRC staff, 2010. Finding aid edited by Doug Johnson, June 2018.
This collection consists of original works of art on their original board stock mounts.
These materials are made available for use in research, teaching, and private study
pursuant to U.S. Copyright Law. The user must assume full responsibility for any use of
materials, including but not limited to infringement of copyright and publication rights of
reproduced materials. Any materials used for academic research or otherwise should be fully
credited with the source. The original authors may retain copyright to the materials.
Subjects and Indexing Terms
America en la Mira
Art, Latin American
Traveling exhibitions
Art--Exhibitions