Unraveling Latinx Racial Politics: Museums, Intersectionality, and Art in Conversation

This essay provides a case study of the art exhibition Because It’s Time: Unraveling Race and Place in NM at the National Hispanic Cultural Center (NHCC) in 2018 in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in order to review the exhibition’s contribution to racial equity discourse in New Mexico and the broader United States. It examines the role of museums and other public institutions in both shaping and being shaped by national discourse and continues a longstanding call for critical reflection on the work our institutions perform within, alongside, and/or in opposition to systems that uphold a status quo characterized by racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, poverty, and dispossession. This essay offers a critical analysis of museums before moving to a discussion of intersectionality and artworks by Latina/o/x and Indigenous artists, placing their work in conversation with a selection of artworks by artists with other racial, ethnic, and cultural identifications. The goal is to highlight the contributions of these artists to our collective understandings of the complexity of Latinx identity and experience in a world of contested racial politics.