Targeting Chicano

Progressive, The, July, 2002 by Barbara Renaud Gonzalez

"I know they're stinkers. When push came to shove, I felt for the artists who had been working so long in the community. Do I have a million dollars to mount an exhibit?"

--off-the-record anger by a key player in the Chicano museum scene.

The problem is that museums need money. This past January, almost 200 of the nation's most prominent scholars signed a letter addressed to William H. Rehnquist, chancellor of the Smithsonian's Board of Regents, taking issue with the growing commercial influence at the nation's "most important cultural institution.... Members of the public may now legitimately question whether the Smithsonian's exhibits are an even-handed portrayal of American culture or are shaped to fit the imperatives of corporate sponsorship," said the letter-writers.

They challenged several collaborations: the institution's partnership with Fujifilm and the National Zoo, which featured a stuffed panda holding a big Fujifilm sign; a mobile museum called "Wade in the Water: African American Sacred Music," with giant red Kmart signs on each side; the National Museum of History's proposal to General Motors to create a "General Motors Hall of Transportation" in exchange for $10 million; and especially the entrance of McDonald's in the National Air and Space Museum, which "assures the Big Mac a place next to some of our nation's most treasured relics."

The Rebels

"Nobody's going to take it seriously." Ruben Ortiz-Torres, professor of art at U.C.-San Diego, explains why "Chicano Visions!" isn't visionary at all. It's problematic on many levels, he sighs, because the definition of a Chicano School of Art as defined by Cheech Marin "is very simplistic." While he is impressed with many of the artists represented in the painting exhibit, the preponderance of cliches and archetypes are a "narrow cultural expression, art at a moment of the 1980s."

And Chicano art is much more expansive than that. This is not an exhibition of contemporary art, he says, but a frozen moment--a capricho of Cheech Marin. Chicano art, he adds, is good enough to be exhibited in the major museums of New York and California, not because of someone's personal whim.

Why wasn't it called "Cheech Marin's Private Collection?" he asks. The why is left unanswered.

Ortiz-Torres, who has been called "one of the most exciting artists in the Americas" by the Seattle Times, and is a curator in his own right, doesn't believe that the artists' careers will be better served by their inclusion in this show. They don't need it, he says. Unless they want to be on bank checks or corporate promotional posters.

"Who is it aimed for? Are we a cartoon for the gringos to look at?"

--Nino Acuna, University of Texas at San Antonio student, responding to both "Chicano" exhibits.

"Where are [the] dykes and the jotos of the Chicano movement?"

--David Zamora Casas, queer artista and activista from San Antonio.

The Defeat

"I love that Cheech wouldn't waver," says the navaja-tongued Richard Montoya, one of the Culture Clash comics. "In the big picture, I love that the word "Chicano" is out there.... Target and Clear Channel would have loved it if it [was] called Hispanic ... We're being subversive."