Our Lady of Controversy: Alma López's “Irreverent Apparition”

2. It’s Not about the Art in the Folk, It’s about the Folks in the Art: A Curator’s Tale

the folk art museum T his chapter is part testimonio and part scholarly research. As such I will start by sharing a few anecdotes about my experience at the University of New Mexico (UNM) and how it led me to where I am today. As a UNM graduate student in the interdisciplinary Latin American Studies Program, I was taught to think critically about Spanish colonial art and history, as well as contemporary Hispanic, Chicano, and Latino art and culture. I reveled in the classes that actually reflected components of me—my interests, my experiences , my culture, and my identity. I remember the first day a Chicano art history course was officially taught at UNM. At the beginning of her lecture on that day, my professor shed tears because of the sheer magnitude of the message being conveyed. In the summer of 1994, I was selected to be one of the first group of fifteen Latina and Latino graduate students to participate in a two-week seminar in Washington, DC, sponsored by the Intra-University Program for Latino Research and the Smithsonian Institution’s Center for Museum Studies. This intensive program was a direct result of a critical study issued about this American cultural institution in our nation’s capital. The report, titled Willful It’s Not about the Art in the Folk, It’s about the Folks in the Art a curator’s tale Tey Marianna Nunn for alma, elena, marion, and teresa 2 T e y M a r i a n n a N u n n 18 Neglect: The Smithsonian and U.S. Latinos (Smithsonian Institution Task Force, 1994), cited an alarming lack of Latino representation among staff who held decision-making positions as well as the lack of Latino representation in Smithsonian exhibitions and programming. My experience at the Smithsonian impacted me greatly and made me realize that I could work in a museum and make a difference. I believed that in doing so, I could find my Nuevomexicana and Latina experience reflected in a museum exhibition and, more important, I could serve as a “gatekeeper” to assist others previously not represented in museums into the templos as well. In my position as curator of contemporary Hispano and Latino collections at the Museum of International Folk Art (MOIFA) in Santa Fe, I confronted aspects of cultural conflict every day. I held this position for more than nine and a half years. For years local Hispano/a and Chicano/a artists (yes, there are Chicanas and Chicanos in New Mexico) have criticized our sister museum, the Museum of Fine Arts in Santa Fe (now named the New Mexico Museum of Art) for its failure to represent local Hispanic artists within their exhibition galleries.1 Similar battles took place in other New Mexican venues, such as the State Fair complex, where, finally, in the early 1990s, a building devoted to showcasing Hispanic art was formally named. While New Mexico’s Department of Cultural Affairs (formerly the Office of Cultural Affairs) has now established the National Hispanic Cultural Center in Albuquerque, Santa Fe’s state-run arts-related institutions continue largely to ignore the incredible talent of Hispana/o, Nuevomexicana/o, Latina/o, and Chicana/o artists who make their home in New Mexico. Furthermore, Santa Fe, Albuquerque, and Las Cruces have only a handful of private art galleries that show Hispanic art—contemporary or traditional. Even fewer galleries are owned by Hispanics. As far as mainstream institutions go, the Museum of International Folk Art is the only Santa Fe state-affiliated institution in which Hispanic and Latin American art is shown on a regular basis. Of course, the fact that a “folk” art museum is one of the few museums that exhibit traditional and contemporary art can be viewed as extremely problematic, since the institution provides the context through which the art is interpreted. Despite such critical observations, MOIFA has been a national leader in representing Hispanic art since the 1950s. Early on, the curator of Spanish colonial collections recognized the value of the traditional art of New Mexico and acquired stellar examples for the permanent collection. In the late 1980s, the museum opened the Hispanic Heritage Wing (HHW) with the first large- 19 I t ’s N o t a b o u t t h e A r t i n t h e F o l k . . . scale permanent exhibition in the country...