Participant exhibition descriptions
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Caption: Alfredo de Batuc, Día de los Muertos, 1979. Copyright: Self Help Graphics & Art, Alfredo de Batuc. Skirball Cultural Center Another Promised Land: Anita Brenner’s Mexico Another Promised Land: Anita Brenner’s Mexico at the Skirball Cultural Center offers a new perspective on the art and visual culture of Mexico and its relationship to the United States as seen through the life and work of the Mexican-born, Jewish-American writer Anita Brenner (1905–1974). Brenner was an integral part of the circle of Mexican modernists in the 1920s and played an important role in promoting and translating Mexican art, culture, and history for audiences in the U.S. Brenner was close to the leading intellectuals and artists active in Mexico, including José Clemente Orozco, Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, Jean Charlot, and Tina Modotti. An influential and prolific writer on Mexican culture, Brenner is best known for her book Idols Behind Altars: Modern Mexican Art and Its Cultural Roots (1929). The Skirball’s exhibition will provide an immersive experience of historic discovery and underscore Brenner’s importance as a Jewish woman in Mexico who inspired artists and was instrumental in introducing the North American public to Mexican history and culture. 
Exhibition research support: $125,000 (2014); Implementation and publication support: $230,000 (2015) Caption: Tina Modotti, Anita Brenner, 1926. Courtesy of The Wittliff Collections, Texas State University. UCI, University Art Galleries Aztlán to Magulandia: the Journey of Chicano Artist Gilbert 'Magu' Luján UC Irvine’s University Art Galleries (UAG) will present the first survey of one of the most iconic figures of the Chicano Art Movement, Gilbert “Magu” Luján (1940–2011) and an accompanying publication. One of the founding members of the Chicano artists collective Los Four, Luján is known for his colorful and visually complex explorations of Chicano culture and community that drew upon and brought to life various historic and contemporary visual sources with startling results: Pyramid-mounted low riders driven by anthropomorphic dogs traversing a newly defined and mythologized L.A. He was part of a small group of dedicated artists and intellectuals who set about defining a Chicano identity and culture as part of the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. The UAG’s retrospective will focus on creativity and invention in Luján's work in a myriad of sketches and drawings, paintings, and sculptures. Luján combined two world-making concepts, Aztlán, the mythic northern ancestral home of the indigenous Mexican Aztecs that became a charged symbol of Chicano activism; and Magulandia, the term Luján coined for the space in which he lived and produced his work, and for his work as a whole. Together, Aztlán and Magulandia represented both physical spaces and the complex cultural, geographic, and conceptual relationships that exist between Los Angeles and Mexico and served as dual landscapes for Luján’s artistic philosophy and cultural creativity. 
Exhibition research support: $75,000 (2014); Implementation and publication support: $150,000 (2015) Download 1.91 Mb. Share with your friends:
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