The Balboa Art Conservation Center in partnership with the Centro Cultural de la Raza presents Preserving Chicana/o/x Art: Conversations on Conservation. Through a series of informal dialogues with artists, community organizers, theorists, conservators, curators and administrators, the conversations explored issues of representation, culturally responsive approaches to conservation, rasquachismo, and community led standards for the care and preservation of Chicana/o/x cultural collections inside and outside of institutions, all in an effort to answer the question: What does Cultural Preservation look like for the Chicana/o/x community?
The conversations took place via zoom and are now accessible to the public. Recordings, sessions descriptions, participant bios, and additional information can be found below.
Preserving Chicana/o/x Art: Conversations on Conservation was partially funded by California Humanities and the City of San Diego Commission for Arts and Culture.
The conversations took place via zoom and are now accessible to the public. Recordings, sessions descriptions, participant bios, and additional information can be found below.
Preserving Chicana/o/x Art: Conversations on Conservation was partially funded by California Humanities and the City of San Diego Commission for Arts and Culture.
Session Descriptions & Recordings:
Session 1: April 7, 2022
Con Safos as self-preservation- What does Art Conservation and Cultural Preservation look like for the Chicana/o/x Community?
This session opens our series with a summoning of Con Safos, a “barrio copyright” or sign-off used by Chicana/o/x since the 60’s to protect cultural production. 55 years after the founding of the Chicano Movement, we consider how notions of protection and safety manifest into approaches to cultural preservation and the conservation of cultural material. In this session, Chicana scholar Maria Figueroa and Chicano artist Victor Ochoa join BACC’s Bianca Garcia, to explore the spiritual connection between Con Safos, Chicano/a/x Culture and art conservation, conservation and preservation as ceremony/healing and revitalization as resistance. (See Participant Bios Below)
Session 1: April 7, 2022
Con Safos as self-preservation- What does Art Conservation and Cultural Preservation look like for the Chicana/o/x Community?
This session opens our series with a summoning of Con Safos, a “barrio copyright” or sign-off used by Chicana/o/x since the 60’s to protect cultural production. 55 years after the founding of the Chicano Movement, we consider how notions of protection and safety manifest into approaches to cultural preservation and the conservation of cultural material. In this session, Chicana scholar Maria Figueroa and Chicano artist Victor Ochoa join BACC’s Bianca Garcia, to explore the spiritual connection between Con Safos, Chicano/a/x Culture and art conservation, conservation and preservation as ceremony/healing and revitalization as resistance. (See Participant Bios Below)
Session 2: April 14, 2022
Rasquachismo Beyond Aesthetics: The Sensibilities of Documentation in Chicana/o/x Art
Rasquachismo, a term coined by beloved Chicano scholar, Tomas Ybarra-Frausto, and defined as a Chicano aesthetic, speaks to a culturally specific visual narrative as well as a mode of production. In its simplest terms, it means to make due with one what has. In all its complexity, it validates and holds space for cultural and knowledge production as a site of resistance. For Chicano art and artists this can mean an additive approach to a limitless vision in a world where scarcity and overconsumption are everyday experiences of living on occupied land. For conservators, finding ways to preserve cultural materials born of this aesthetic, rasquachismo can present complex challenges. In this session, Chicana artist and founding member of women's border arts collaborative XoQUE, Berenice Badillo joins Felicia Montes, Xicana Indigenous artist, activist, and founding director of Mujeres de Maiz and Morgan Wylder, Associate Conservator at BACC to explore how rasquachismo is one of many styles employed by Chicana/o/x artists, how the use of materials and process can be part of the artists creative intention, and how documentation at the time of production can help create guidelines for the care and conservation of these pieces in the future. (See Participant Bios Below)
Session 3: April 21, 2022
Inside/Outside: Preservation of Chicana/o/x Culture within/out Institutions
In this session, we explore what the role of institutions is in conserving and preserving Chicana/o/x art, how institutions go about acquiring ad/or exhibiting works by Chicana/o/x artists and how this affects their preservation, and what kind of resources institutions need and have access to, to help them achieve their collection and preservation goals. We have the honor of bringing to the table, Jill Dawsey, Senior Curator and curator of Yolanda Lopez, Portrait of the Artist, at MCASD, Maria Esther Fernandez, Artistic Director of The Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art and Culture, and Roberto D. Hernandez, Board President of the Centro Cultural de la Raza to learn from their experiences in their respective institutions. (See Participant Bios Below)
Inside/Outside: Preservation of Chicana/o/x Culture within/out Institutions
In this session, we explore what the role of institutions is in conserving and preserving Chicana/o/x art, how institutions go about acquiring ad/or exhibiting works by Chicana/o/x artists and how this affects their preservation, and what kind of resources institutions need and have access to, to help them achieve their collection and preservation goals. We have the honor of bringing to the table, Jill Dawsey, Senior Curator and curator of Yolanda Lopez, Portrait of the Artist, at MCASD, Maria Esther Fernandez, Artistic Director of The Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art and Culture, and Roberto D. Hernandez, Board President of the Centro Cultural de la Raza to learn from their experiences in their respective institutions. (See Participant Bios Below)
(See Participant Bios Below)(See Participant Bios Below)
Session 4: April 28, 2022
¿A Donde Vamos Chicana/o/x? Setting Intentions for Cultural Preservation
The final session of Preserving Chicana/o/x Art: Conversations on Conservation will reflect on concepts and talking points from the previous sessions, while also providing a moment to consider what the future looks like and actionable next steps for the setting of guidelines for Chicana/o/x art conservation. We are led in this conversation by a group of visionary leaders long committed to realizing this important work, including Celia Herrera Rodriguez, artist, co-founder and co-director of Las Maestras Center for Xicana[x] Indigenous Thought, Art and Social Practice at UC Santa Barbara. We’ll get to hear about existing models for tribal communities from Brandie Macdonald, Senior Director of Decolonizing Initiatives at the Museum of Us; efforts to make the field of museum and conservation more inclusive and representative of BIPOC communities from Alessandra Moctezuma, Director of San Diego Mesa College Museum Studies Program and Bianca Garcia, Program Manager for the Andrew W. Mellon Opportunity for Diversity in Conservation, an initiative of the UCLA/Getty Program in the Conservation of Cultural Heritage. Bianca Garcia and Leticia Gomez Franco from BACC, Magdalena Solano, Graduate Fellow at the Winterthur/ University of Delaware Program in Art Conservation and Josephine Talamantez, activist, historian, and Founder of the Chicano Park Museum will be joining live from the Latinos in Heritage Conservation Conference in Denver, CO to highlight long standing, ongoing, and impactful efforts to preserve Chicano/a/x culture in the San Diego region and beyond. (See Participant Bios Below)
Participant Bios
Alessandra Moctezuma, M.F.A.,
Professor, Fine Art, Museum Studies and Gallery Director, San Diego Mesa College
She/Her/Hers
Alessandra Moctezuma is Gallery Director and Professor of Fine Art at San Diego Mesa College, where she leads the Museum Studies program and teaches courses on Chicano Art. She earned Bachelor of Art and Master of Fine Arts (Painting/Printmaking) degrees from UCLA. She is also ABD for a Ph.D. in Hispanic Languages and Literature at the State University in New York, Stony Brook.
Ms. Moctezuma has extensive experience as a curator, instructor, as an artist and as public art administrator. Besides working as gallery director at San Diego Mesa College, Ms. Moctezuma has curated exhibitions for other art spaces including the Oceanside Museum of Art (Twenty Women: NOW, 2021, Borderless Dreams, 2005 and Through a Lens Sharply, 2006) and unDocumenta (2017) as part of the Getty’s initiative Pacific Standard Time LA/LA and more recently she co-curated a retrospective of Chicana artist Judith F. Baca, Memorias de Nuestra Tierra, for the Museum of Latin American Art, Long Beach (July 2021 – March 2022).
Besides teaching and curating, Ms. Moctezuma is actively involved in the San Diego arts community. She serves on the board of the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, the Women’s Museum of California, Medium Photography and Friends of the Villa Montezuma, a historical house museum. She is on the advisory committees for the Institute of Contemporary Art San Diego, the Latin American Arts Council (SDMA), the Oceanside Museum of Art and the Centro Cultural de la Raza. In past years she has served in the San Diego Foundation Creative Catalyst committee and the City of San Diego Public Arts Committee.
Bianca Garcia
Associate Conservator of Paintings, Balboa Art Conservation Center
she/her/hers
Bianca is an Associate Conservator of Paintings at BACC. She earned her Master of Science in Art Conservation from the Winterthur/University of Delaware Program in Art Conservation in 2016 with a concentration in Paintings Conservation, and she received her B.A. in Art Conservation with a minor in Art History from the University of Delaware in 2007. Bianca came to San Diego and BACC in 2016 as a Mellon fellow in paintings conservation, and was permanently hired as Assistant Conservator of Paintings the following year. Prior to her time at BACC, Bianca completed internships at the Cleveland Museum of Art in Cleveland, OH; the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid, Spain; Western Center for the Conservation of Fine Arts in Denver, CO; the Museum of Art of Puerto Rico in San Juan, PR; the New Orleans Conservation Guild in New Orleans, LA; and the National Center for Preservation Technology and Training in Natchitoches, LA.
She loves working in the dynamic environment that BACC provides, from treatment to collections care to program development. Most of her every day work entails the examination, condition assessment, and treatment of paintings and painted objects, such as polychromed sculptures. She also carries out technical examinations of artworks including examining paintings with infrared reflectography, X-radiography, and X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy; and also assists in the teaching of workshops and lecture presentations to support collections care at other institutions. While Bianca considers herself a generalist and enjoys treating the wide range of paintings that come into BACC every day, she is particularly interested in pre-20th century paintings, Viceregal and Latin American art, and polychrome sculptures.
Outside of paintings conservation, Bianca is interested in increasing access to preservation services, education, and knowledge, and mentoring students and emerging conservation professionals. As a Latina born and raised in Puerto Rico, she is also invested in diversifying and increasing equity and representation in the field of art conservation and the communities we serve, and exploring culturally inclusive preservation practices. In addition to her work as a paintings conservator at BACC, she also serves as the Program Manager for the Andrew W. Mellon Opportunity for Diversity in Conservation, an initiative of the UCLA/Getty Program in the Conservation of Cultural Heritage that supports funded opportunities for students interested in conservation who are from backgrounds that are historically underrepresented in this field. Bianca is also a founding member of Materia: Journal of Technical History, a open-access peer-reviewed digital journal specializing in the material study of cultural heritage.
Berenice Badillo, PhD LMFT ATR-BC
she/ella
Berenice is a Spanish speaking Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, Board Certified Art Therapist, illustrator, public speaker, community muralist, and multimedia artist. She is an immigrant from La Piedad, Michoacán, Mexico and has found herself straddling intertwined cultural and subcultural identities her entire life. Berenice has worked in communities of socioeconomic need and strives to document and encourage the creation of communal cultural wealth through murals, sculpture, pop up art galleries and in the co-creation of counter stories. Badillo started her career as a community muralist mentoring homeless youth. She co-created a monthly hip hop event called ELEMENTAL that showcased the art of local youth and developed after school programming that was recognized by the city of San Diego and the state of California. She was a MANA Honoree (Mexican-American Women's National Association) in recognition for “Outstanding Work and Dedication to the Community through Arts and Culture” and became a Community Fellow through The California Wellness Foundation Violence Prevention Initiative. Berenice has extensive experience working with people on issues of drug and alcohol use and severe mental health issues. Berenice identifies as a Chicana and utilizes art therapy and community art to co-create collective platforms where inequalities can be identified and explored resulting in the validation of other cultural perspectives not belonging to the dominant society. Berenice believes that there is an importance in representation and hopes that the illustrations of "Am I Blue or Am I Green?"; her first children's book will serve to both amplify the voices of BIPOC and disseminate the stories and struggles of their community where it can be witnessed on a grand scale. In utilizing art as a form of deep psychological healing, art becomes a vehicle of change that can be a powerful tool to not only heal oneself but also a catalyst to heal a community one at a time. Berenice is a Chicano Park muralist, has a doctorate in Art Therapy and her work has appeared in many galleries and group shows including the Havana Biennale, Insite 97 and the Tamaro Contemporary Art Exhibit in Tokyo, Japan. Berenice is also a founding member of a women's border arts collaborative XoQUE "art in motion" that is determined to evoke change on how the U.S./Mexico border is portrayed and represented in the cultural imaginations. XoQUE commits to innovation and experimentation that is participatory based as each artist and the community comes together as a puzzle that utilizes each unique strength to create hope in the future.
Brandie Macdonald
Senior Director of Decolonizing Initiatives, Museum of Us
Brandie Macdonald is an Indigenous citizen of the Chickasaw Nation with Choctaw Nation and Scottish ancestry. Brandie’s work focuses on systemic change in museums through the implementation of anti-colonial and decolonial theory-in-practice, which centers truth-telling, accountability, and actionable change to redress colonial harm. Currently, she is the Senior Director of Decolonizing Initiatives at the Museum of Us, located on Kumeyaay Nation territory, USA. Besides her work at the Museum, she is also an active freelance consultant working alongside non-profits, museums, and Indigenous communities internationally. Brandie is enrolled in a Ph.D. program in Education Studies at University of California, San Diego. Her research, which aligns with her work as a practitioner, focuses on the sustainable application of decolonizing praxis in museums that enables transformative change and cross-cultural decolonial movement building. She’s a Salzburg Global Seminar Fellow, an American Alliance of Museums’ Nancy Hanks Award for Professional Excellent recipient, a Smithsonian Affiliate Fellow at the National Museum of the American Indian, and sits on the Western Museums Association board.
Celia Herrera Rodríguez (Xicana/O’dami, born in Sacramento CA)
is a visual artist and educator whose practice reflects a multi-generational dialogue and engagement with Xicana/o, Indigenous Mexican and North American art, thought, spirituality, culture, and politics. She is co-founder and co-director of Las Maestras Center for Xicana Indigenous Thought and Art and Social Practice. She is a Teaching Professsor of Xicana Art Praxis in the Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies at the University of California at Santa Barbara since 2017. Current project is “Teo(tl)ria Xicana,” an interdisciplinary multigenerational collaboration with 5 Xicana/Indigenous/Latina artist/educators and cultural activists.
Felicia ‘Fe’ Montes
Director, Mujeres de Maiz & College Lecturer
she/her/ella
Felicia Montes is a Xicana Indigenous artist, activist, community & event organizer, educator, FEmcee, designer, poet, performer, professor and practitioner of the healing arts living and working in the Los Angeles area. Known throughout the southwest as an established Xicana cultural worker of a new generation, she creates with In Lak Ech, El MERCADO y Mas, and La Botanica del Barrio and is the founding director of Mujeres de Maiz. She has worked on various transnational art and organizing efforts including work with the Zapatistas, Peace & Dignity Journeys and La Red Xicana Indigena. Felicia graduated with a B.A from UCLA in World Arts & Cultures with a minor in Chicanx Studies, a M.A in Chicanx Studies from Cal State Northridge, and a M.F.A from Otis College of Art & Design in Public Practice Art. In addition, she is an apprentice of Western Herbalism and Mexican Traditional Medicine. Check her out at FeliciaMontes.com
Jill Dawsey
Senior Curator, Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego
she/her
Jill Dawsey, PhD, is Senior Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego (MCASD). Previously, she held curatorial posts at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Utah Museum of Fine Arts at the University of Utah. Dawsey is the cocurator of Niki de Saint Phalle in the 1960s, co-organized with Michelle White of the Menil Collection, Houston (2022), and curator of Yolanda López: Portrait of the Artist, the first solo museum presentation of the work of the late artist and activist Yolanda López (1942-2021). Her past exhibitions include Being Here with You/ Estando aquí contigo: 42 Artists from San Diego and Tijuana, co-organized with MCASD Associate Curator Anthony Graham (2018); The Uses of Photography: Art, Politics, and the Reinvention of a Medium (catalogue University of California Press, 2016); Laugh-in: Art, Comedy, Performance (2015), and Approximately Infinite Universe (2013). In addition, she has organized solo exhibitions with artists including Scoli Acosta, Edgar Arceneaux, Andrea Chung, Yve Laris Cohen, Colter Jacobsen, Adriana Lara, and Xaviera Simmons, among others. Born and raised in San Diego, Dawsey holds a B.A. from Bryn Mawr College, a Ph.D. in Art History from Stanford University, and was a Helena Rubenstein Fellow in Critical Studies at the Whitney Independent Study Program. She has taught curatorial practice at the California College of the Arts and art history at the San Francisco Art Institute, UC Irvine, and the University of Utah.
Josephine S. Talamantez
Founder and Board Chair, Chicano Park Museum and Cultural Center
Josephine S. Talamantez (Chicana/Yaqui) is an Organizational Management, Public Policy and Governmental Relations consultant with a specialization in Arts, History and Cultural Public Programming, Historic Preservation, Cultural Resource
Management and Public History. Founder and Board Chair—Chicano Park Museum and Cultural Center (CPMCC www.chicanoparkmuseum.com) San Diego, CA; Former Chief of Programs/ Legislative Liaison, California Arts Council, a State agency; Executive Director, La Raza/Galeria Posada-Sac, CA and Centro Cultural de la Raza- San Diego— nonprofit arts organizations, CA; Past executive board member, National Association of Latino Arts and Culture (NALAC); and Co-founder of Latinos in Heritage Conservation (LHC) a national organization. She has served as an Advisor to the California Office of Historic Preservation for the development of the Ca. Latino American Theme Study and Multiple Property Registration Form (MPRF.) Co-founder—Chicano Park & Chicano Park Steering Committee (CPSC), and member of the Royal Chicano Air force (RCAF). She authored Chicano Park and the Chicano Park Monumental Mural’s successful National Register nomination and co-authored its National Landmark nomination. In addition, she serves on Barrio Logan Planning Group; Barrio Logan Association/Maintenance Assessment District; Air Pollution Control District Portside Communities Steering Committee; Latinx Advisory Committee for San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria and was inducted to the California Women’s Museum, San Diego’s Women’s Hall of Fame. She has a Master degree in History focusing the Chicano civil rights era and on public history programming.
Leticia Gomez Franco
Executive Director, Balboa Art Conservation Center
she/her/ella
Leticia Gomez Franco is an arts administrator, advocate and cultural producer. Her work is rooted in the intersection of culture, representation and social justice, all values that play a role in her position as Executive Director of the Balboa Art Conservation Center. She previously served as Senior Arts and Culture Funding Manager for the City of San Diego where she led the City’s arts and culture funding program, oversaw the development and implementation of professional development, technical assistance and capacity building to incubate and build capacity of artists and arts and culture organizations and supported the departments diversity, equity and inclusion work. Before that, Gomez Franco served as Director of Programs for the New Americans Museum where she supported the grand reopening of the immigrant narratives based institution and led curatorial efforts. Her career in the arts began as Exhibitions Director for Casa Familiar’s The Front: A Collaborative of Arts, Culture, Design & Urbanism, where she oversaw development and program management for multiple art spaces as well as headed a rigorous and culturally conscious exhibition calendar with a commitment to local arts, diversity and community empowerment. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of California, Berkeley in English and Chicana/o Studies and a Master of Arts in Curatorial Theory from San Diego State University's Liberal Arts & Sciences Program. She is also a two-time fellow of the National Association of Latino Arts & Culture Leadership Institute (NALAC). Leticia remains steadfast in her commitment to use her experience in arts administration, development, and curating to increase access to the arts for all communities.
Magdalena Solano
Graduate Fellow at the Winterthur/ University of Delaware Program in Art Conservation
she/her
Bio:
Magdalena is a Graduate Fellow at the Winterthur/University of Delaware Program in Art Conservation with a focus in Paintings Conservation. In the summer of 2021, she was the Graduate Paintings Conservation Intern at the Balboa Art Conservation Center where part of her internship focused on BACC’s Preserving Community Art Program, Preserving Chicana/o/x Art. Magdalena is now currently completing her graduate training at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Her professional interests include the research of paints and materials used by modern and contemporary artists, particularly from Latin America in the late 20th-century and advocating for diversity, equity, accessibility and inclusion in the field of cultural heritage stewardship. She holds a Bachelor of Arts Degree from the University of California, Los Angeles in Art History where she devoted her undergraduate research to the study of art from Latin America, both pre-colonial and modern. She has completed conservation internships at private practices in Southern California, the J. Paul Getty Museum, The Dallas Museum of Art, LA County Museum of Art, and the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures. Prior to conservation, she worked for museums and galleries in Los Angeles conducting curatorial research and museum education.
Maria Figueroa
Professor of English, Literature and Humanities at MiraCosta College
she, her, ella
María Figueroa is a maestra, mamá, teatrista, poeta, hija, hermana and traditional Aztec dancer. Originally from Santa Ana, California where her roots run three generations deep, Maria attended UC San Diego where she received her BA in Theatre with minors in Ethnic Studies and Spanish Literature, and went on to complete her MA in Comparative Lit from Dartmouth College in New Hampshire. Maria’s work has been published in various anthologies including Velvet Barrios: Popular Culture & Chicana/o Sexualities, edited by Alicia Gaspar de Alba, Fleshing The Spirit: Spirituality and Activism in Chicana, Latina, and Indigenous Women’s Lives, edited by Elisia Facio and Irene Lara, Voices from the Ancestors: Xicanx and Latinx Spiritual Expressions and Healing Practices and most recently in In Search of Our Brown Selves, a transdisciplinary reader designed with Chicano/a/x students in mind.
She makes her professional home as a professor of English Composition, Literature, and Humanities at MiraCosta College in Oceanside California, where she has also served as an English Professor for the Puente program, a program to which she has dedicated 16 years of her professional career. In 2018 Maria was recognized by the Latino Book & Family Festival with their “Excelencia del Maestro” award and recognized as Woman of the Year Award by Assembly Woman Tasha Boerner-Horvarth, in the same year.
Her community work spans over 25 years predominantly in the area of cultural preservation and traditional arts. She is co-lead of Danza Coatlicue a traditional Aztec Dance group committed to preserving the dance and spiritual traditions of the Mexican Indigenous diaspora. In her role as Community Advisory Chair and board member of the Centro Cultural de la Raza, she ensures the voice and perspective of the local community is represented. Maria recently chaired the Centro Cultural de la Raza’s 50 th Virtual Gala Kickoff honoring the 50 th anniversary of the founding of the historical Centro Cultural de la Raza, in Balboa Park.
Along with her precious masterpieces, Cuauhtemoc and Esperanza Tonantzin, and her loving partner, she makes her home in the Kumeyaay coastal lands of north county of San Diego, where she also enjoys long spiritual runs.
María Esther Fernández
Artistic Director, The Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture of the Riverside Art Museum
she/her/hers
María Esther Fernández is the Inaugural Artistic Director of The Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture of the Riverside Art Museum. Formerly the Chief Curator and Deputy Director of the Triton Museum of Art in Santa Clara, CA, Fernández has curated numerous group and solo exhibitions, including Xicana: Spiritual Reflections/Reflexiónes Espirituales and Consuelo Jimenez Underwood: Welcome to Flower-Landia. In 2019, she co-curated Xicanx Futurity with Carlos Jackson and Dr. Susy Zepeda at the Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art at UC Davis. Fernández is currently working on a major retrospective, Archeology of Memory: Amalia Mesa-Bains with Dr. Laura E. Pérez set to open at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive in 2023. She was the recipient of the Standing Committee on Education American Association of Museum’s Multicultural Fellowship, the Smithsonian Latino Museum Studies Program Fellowship, and a member of Silicon Valley’s Multicultural Arts Leadership Initiative. In 2018, Fernández received a California Arts Council grant to advance her research on curatorial practices and their impact on representation and access for the Chicanx community in the contemporary art museum. She received her BA in Chicana/o and Ethnic Studies from U. C. Berkeley and her M.A. in Visual and Critical Studies from California College of the Arts in San Francisco.
Morgan Wylder
Associate Conservator of Paintings, Balboa Art Conservation Center
she/her/hers
Morgan is an Associate Conservator of Paintings at BACC, formerly an Assistant Conservator of Paintings and a Mellon Fellow in Paintings Conservation. Morgan earned a dual undergraduate degree in Fine Art and Art History at Cornell University. After university, she interned with different conservators specializing in paper, paintings, and historic interiors in New York City and Washington, D.C. She later received her graduate degree in Conservation of Easel Paintings from the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London. During graduate school, Morgan interned in the paintings conservation department at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Before her Andrew Mellon Fellowship at BACC, Morgan worked as the NEH Fellow in Paintings Conservation at the Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, VA. Morgan is a Professional Associate with the American Institution for Conservation.
At BACC, Morgan examines and treats a broad range of paintings from historic to contemporary and also carries out technical analysis of cultural heritage objects. Her areas of interest include the conservation and technical study of 20th century painters, open-access digital publication in the conservation and technical art history fields, and helping artists to better understand materials to support their artistic practice. Morgan is a co-founder and co-editor of Materia: Journal of Technical Art History, an international, open-access, peer-reviewed journal for technical art history.
Roberto D. Hernández (yehuatl, yehuantin)
Board President, Centro Cultural de la Raza
Dr. Roberto D. Hernández (Xicano) is an associate professor of Chicana and Chicano Studies at San Diego State University and current Chair of the National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies (NACCS). His research, publications, and teaching focus on the intersections of colonial and border violence, the geopolitics of knowledge and cultural production, decolonial political theory, social movements, Xicano indigeneity, and comparative border studies. He co-edited the anthology Decolonizing the Westernized University: Interventions in Philosophy of Education from Within and Without (Lexington, 2016) and is the author of Coloniality of the U-S///Mexico Border: Power, Violence, and the Decolonial Imperative (Univ. of AZ Press, 2018). Dr. Hernández also coordinates several advanced international research institutes for junior scholars: Decolonizing Knowledge and Power (in Barcelona), Critical Muslim Studies (Granada), and Latin American Decolonial and Feminist Thought (Mexico City). Lastly, he is a volunteer handyman/janitor/curator/gardener and President of the Board of Trustees for the historic Centro Cultural de la Raza in unceded and occupied Kumeyaay territory (aka, San Diego, California).
Victor Ochoa
Artist and Activist
he/him/his
Victor Ochoa is a artist and activist that has worked with in many communities throughout the world, based in the border zone of Tijuana and San Diego, his work stems from the human rights issues of the 60’s that still remain his topics. His process has developed from that community democratic dynamics that he learned from countless community based murals . he is the a cofounder of the Centro Cultural de a Raza serving in the organization as Director, Artists in resident and binational liaison between San Diego and border cultural organizations, from all states along the border, in both countries. Member of the, Border arts workshop/taller de arte fronterizo as well as the Chicano Park Steering Committee since 1970. He has been responsible for coordinating murals at Chicano Park in restorations as well as new, currently working on the Anastasio Hernandez Rojas mural, about immigration and the current situation at the border. Has been working with the archives of UCSB for over 30 years, contributing his documentation, slides and video, leading up to currently in a advisory capacity with the CHICANO PARK museum and cultural center. His work includes art exhibitions,
museum displays and art installations, currently has one at the San Diego History Center in Balboa Park, with a 39 ft long x 9 ft high wall installation of large scale photo montage. Throughout his experience as a muralist he has worked in the development of El Taller de Grafica workshop that has involved him in various levels of education including elementary,
high school to university classroom instructor. Victor has been involved in Chicano murals and graphics as well as various types of Public art and sculpture, including graffiti since 1983 developing the first permission walls projects WRITERZBLOK AND BATTLEGROUNDZ to public art collaborations including the creation of the NEW URBAN PUBLIC ART a mixture of many styles of muralism including the new graffiti. Victor Ochoa wrote the CHICANO PARK RESTORATION MANUAL to be used to restore the park and guide future artists about maintenance and restoration.
c/s
Questions? Email Project Coordinator, Bianca Garcia at [email protected]
Banner Image Credit: Dualidad, Collective Mural. Guillermo Aranda, Lead Artist
Professor, Fine Art, Museum Studies and Gallery Director, San Diego Mesa College
She/Her/Hers
Alessandra Moctezuma is Gallery Director and Professor of Fine Art at San Diego Mesa College, where she leads the Museum Studies program and teaches courses on Chicano Art. She earned Bachelor of Art and Master of Fine Arts (Painting/Printmaking) degrees from UCLA. She is also ABD for a Ph.D. in Hispanic Languages and Literature at the State University in New York, Stony Brook.
Ms. Moctezuma has extensive experience as a curator, instructor, as an artist and as public art administrator. Besides working as gallery director at San Diego Mesa College, Ms. Moctezuma has curated exhibitions for other art spaces including the Oceanside Museum of Art (Twenty Women: NOW, 2021, Borderless Dreams, 2005 and Through a Lens Sharply, 2006) and unDocumenta (2017) as part of the Getty’s initiative Pacific Standard Time LA/LA and more recently she co-curated a retrospective of Chicana artist Judith F. Baca, Memorias de Nuestra Tierra, for the Museum of Latin American Art, Long Beach (July 2021 – March 2022).
Besides teaching and curating, Ms. Moctezuma is actively involved in the San Diego arts community. She serves on the board of the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, the Women’s Museum of California, Medium Photography and Friends of the Villa Montezuma, a historical house museum. She is on the advisory committees for the Institute of Contemporary Art San Diego, the Latin American Arts Council (SDMA), the Oceanside Museum of Art and the Centro Cultural de la Raza. In past years she has served in the San Diego Foundation Creative Catalyst committee and the City of San Diego Public Arts Committee.
Bianca Garcia
Associate Conservator of Paintings, Balboa Art Conservation Center
she/her/hers
Bianca is an Associate Conservator of Paintings at BACC. She earned her Master of Science in Art Conservation from the Winterthur/University of Delaware Program in Art Conservation in 2016 with a concentration in Paintings Conservation, and she received her B.A. in Art Conservation with a minor in Art History from the University of Delaware in 2007. Bianca came to San Diego and BACC in 2016 as a Mellon fellow in paintings conservation, and was permanently hired as Assistant Conservator of Paintings the following year. Prior to her time at BACC, Bianca completed internships at the Cleveland Museum of Art in Cleveland, OH; the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid, Spain; Western Center for the Conservation of Fine Arts in Denver, CO; the Museum of Art of Puerto Rico in San Juan, PR; the New Orleans Conservation Guild in New Orleans, LA; and the National Center for Preservation Technology and Training in Natchitoches, LA.
She loves working in the dynamic environment that BACC provides, from treatment to collections care to program development. Most of her every day work entails the examination, condition assessment, and treatment of paintings and painted objects, such as polychromed sculptures. She also carries out technical examinations of artworks including examining paintings with infrared reflectography, X-radiography, and X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy; and also assists in the teaching of workshops and lecture presentations to support collections care at other institutions. While Bianca considers herself a generalist and enjoys treating the wide range of paintings that come into BACC every day, she is particularly interested in pre-20th century paintings, Viceregal and Latin American art, and polychrome sculptures.
Outside of paintings conservation, Bianca is interested in increasing access to preservation services, education, and knowledge, and mentoring students and emerging conservation professionals. As a Latina born and raised in Puerto Rico, she is also invested in diversifying and increasing equity and representation in the field of art conservation and the communities we serve, and exploring culturally inclusive preservation practices. In addition to her work as a paintings conservator at BACC, she also serves as the Program Manager for the Andrew W. Mellon Opportunity for Diversity in Conservation, an initiative of the UCLA/Getty Program in the Conservation of Cultural Heritage that supports funded opportunities for students interested in conservation who are from backgrounds that are historically underrepresented in this field. Bianca is also a founding member of Materia: Journal of Technical History, a open-access peer-reviewed digital journal specializing in the material study of cultural heritage.
Berenice Badillo, PhD LMFT ATR-BC
she/ella
Berenice is a Spanish speaking Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, Board Certified Art Therapist, illustrator, public speaker, community muralist, and multimedia artist. She is an immigrant from La Piedad, Michoacán, Mexico and has found herself straddling intertwined cultural and subcultural identities her entire life. Berenice has worked in communities of socioeconomic need and strives to document and encourage the creation of communal cultural wealth through murals, sculpture, pop up art galleries and in the co-creation of counter stories. Badillo started her career as a community muralist mentoring homeless youth. She co-created a monthly hip hop event called ELEMENTAL that showcased the art of local youth and developed after school programming that was recognized by the city of San Diego and the state of California. She was a MANA Honoree (Mexican-American Women's National Association) in recognition for “Outstanding Work and Dedication to the Community through Arts and Culture” and became a Community Fellow through The California Wellness Foundation Violence Prevention Initiative. Berenice has extensive experience working with people on issues of drug and alcohol use and severe mental health issues. Berenice identifies as a Chicana and utilizes art therapy and community art to co-create collective platforms where inequalities can be identified and explored resulting in the validation of other cultural perspectives not belonging to the dominant society. Berenice believes that there is an importance in representation and hopes that the illustrations of "Am I Blue or Am I Green?"; her first children's book will serve to both amplify the voices of BIPOC and disseminate the stories and struggles of their community where it can be witnessed on a grand scale. In utilizing art as a form of deep psychological healing, art becomes a vehicle of change that can be a powerful tool to not only heal oneself but also a catalyst to heal a community one at a time. Berenice is a Chicano Park muralist, has a doctorate in Art Therapy and her work has appeared in many galleries and group shows including the Havana Biennale, Insite 97 and the Tamaro Contemporary Art Exhibit in Tokyo, Japan. Berenice is also a founding member of a women's border arts collaborative XoQUE "art in motion" that is determined to evoke change on how the U.S./Mexico border is portrayed and represented in the cultural imaginations. XoQUE commits to innovation and experimentation that is participatory based as each artist and the community comes together as a puzzle that utilizes each unique strength to create hope in the future.
Brandie Macdonald
Senior Director of Decolonizing Initiatives, Museum of Us
Brandie Macdonald is an Indigenous citizen of the Chickasaw Nation with Choctaw Nation and Scottish ancestry. Brandie’s work focuses on systemic change in museums through the implementation of anti-colonial and decolonial theory-in-practice, which centers truth-telling, accountability, and actionable change to redress colonial harm. Currently, she is the Senior Director of Decolonizing Initiatives at the Museum of Us, located on Kumeyaay Nation territory, USA. Besides her work at the Museum, she is also an active freelance consultant working alongside non-profits, museums, and Indigenous communities internationally. Brandie is enrolled in a Ph.D. program in Education Studies at University of California, San Diego. Her research, which aligns with her work as a practitioner, focuses on the sustainable application of decolonizing praxis in museums that enables transformative change and cross-cultural decolonial movement building. She’s a Salzburg Global Seminar Fellow, an American Alliance of Museums’ Nancy Hanks Award for Professional Excellent recipient, a Smithsonian Affiliate Fellow at the National Museum of the American Indian, and sits on the Western Museums Association board.
Celia Herrera Rodríguez (Xicana/O’dami, born in Sacramento CA)
is a visual artist and educator whose practice reflects a multi-generational dialogue and engagement with Xicana/o, Indigenous Mexican and North American art, thought, spirituality, culture, and politics. She is co-founder and co-director of Las Maestras Center for Xicana Indigenous Thought and Art and Social Practice. She is a Teaching Professsor of Xicana Art Praxis in the Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies at the University of California at Santa Barbara since 2017. Current project is “Teo(tl)ria Xicana,” an interdisciplinary multigenerational collaboration with 5 Xicana/Indigenous/Latina artist/educators and cultural activists.
Felicia ‘Fe’ Montes
Director, Mujeres de Maiz & College Lecturer
she/her/ella
Felicia Montes is a Xicana Indigenous artist, activist, community & event organizer, educator, FEmcee, designer, poet, performer, professor and practitioner of the healing arts living and working in the Los Angeles area. Known throughout the southwest as an established Xicana cultural worker of a new generation, she creates with In Lak Ech, El MERCADO y Mas, and La Botanica del Barrio and is the founding director of Mujeres de Maiz. She has worked on various transnational art and organizing efforts including work with the Zapatistas, Peace & Dignity Journeys and La Red Xicana Indigena. Felicia graduated with a B.A from UCLA in World Arts & Cultures with a minor in Chicanx Studies, a M.A in Chicanx Studies from Cal State Northridge, and a M.F.A from Otis College of Art & Design in Public Practice Art. In addition, she is an apprentice of Western Herbalism and Mexican Traditional Medicine. Check her out at FeliciaMontes.com
Jill Dawsey
Senior Curator, Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego
she/her
Jill Dawsey, PhD, is Senior Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego (MCASD). Previously, she held curatorial posts at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Utah Museum of Fine Arts at the University of Utah. Dawsey is the cocurator of Niki de Saint Phalle in the 1960s, co-organized with Michelle White of the Menil Collection, Houston (2022), and curator of Yolanda López: Portrait of the Artist, the first solo museum presentation of the work of the late artist and activist Yolanda López (1942-2021). Her past exhibitions include Being Here with You/ Estando aquí contigo: 42 Artists from San Diego and Tijuana, co-organized with MCASD Associate Curator Anthony Graham (2018); The Uses of Photography: Art, Politics, and the Reinvention of a Medium (catalogue University of California Press, 2016); Laugh-in: Art, Comedy, Performance (2015), and Approximately Infinite Universe (2013). In addition, she has organized solo exhibitions with artists including Scoli Acosta, Edgar Arceneaux, Andrea Chung, Yve Laris Cohen, Colter Jacobsen, Adriana Lara, and Xaviera Simmons, among others. Born and raised in San Diego, Dawsey holds a B.A. from Bryn Mawr College, a Ph.D. in Art History from Stanford University, and was a Helena Rubenstein Fellow in Critical Studies at the Whitney Independent Study Program. She has taught curatorial practice at the California College of the Arts and art history at the San Francisco Art Institute, UC Irvine, and the University of Utah.
Josephine S. Talamantez
Founder and Board Chair, Chicano Park Museum and Cultural Center
Josephine S. Talamantez (Chicana/Yaqui) is an Organizational Management, Public Policy and Governmental Relations consultant with a specialization in Arts, History and Cultural Public Programming, Historic Preservation, Cultural Resource
Management and Public History. Founder and Board Chair—Chicano Park Museum and Cultural Center (CPMCC www.chicanoparkmuseum.com) San Diego, CA; Former Chief of Programs/ Legislative Liaison, California Arts Council, a State agency; Executive Director, La Raza/Galeria Posada-Sac, CA and Centro Cultural de la Raza- San Diego— nonprofit arts organizations, CA; Past executive board member, National Association of Latino Arts and Culture (NALAC); and Co-founder of Latinos in Heritage Conservation (LHC) a national organization. She has served as an Advisor to the California Office of Historic Preservation for the development of the Ca. Latino American Theme Study and Multiple Property Registration Form (MPRF.) Co-founder—Chicano Park & Chicano Park Steering Committee (CPSC), and member of the Royal Chicano Air force (RCAF). She authored Chicano Park and the Chicano Park Monumental Mural’s successful National Register nomination and co-authored its National Landmark nomination. In addition, she serves on Barrio Logan Planning Group; Barrio Logan Association/Maintenance Assessment District; Air Pollution Control District Portside Communities Steering Committee; Latinx Advisory Committee for San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria and was inducted to the California Women’s Museum, San Diego’s Women’s Hall of Fame. She has a Master degree in History focusing the Chicano civil rights era and on public history programming.
Leticia Gomez Franco
Executive Director, Balboa Art Conservation Center
she/her/ella
Leticia Gomez Franco is an arts administrator, advocate and cultural producer. Her work is rooted in the intersection of culture, representation and social justice, all values that play a role in her position as Executive Director of the Balboa Art Conservation Center. She previously served as Senior Arts and Culture Funding Manager for the City of San Diego where she led the City’s arts and culture funding program, oversaw the development and implementation of professional development, technical assistance and capacity building to incubate and build capacity of artists and arts and culture organizations and supported the departments diversity, equity and inclusion work. Before that, Gomez Franco served as Director of Programs for the New Americans Museum where she supported the grand reopening of the immigrant narratives based institution and led curatorial efforts. Her career in the arts began as Exhibitions Director for Casa Familiar’s The Front: A Collaborative of Arts, Culture, Design & Urbanism, where she oversaw development and program management for multiple art spaces as well as headed a rigorous and culturally conscious exhibition calendar with a commitment to local arts, diversity and community empowerment. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of California, Berkeley in English and Chicana/o Studies and a Master of Arts in Curatorial Theory from San Diego State University's Liberal Arts & Sciences Program. She is also a two-time fellow of the National Association of Latino Arts & Culture Leadership Institute (NALAC). Leticia remains steadfast in her commitment to use her experience in arts administration, development, and curating to increase access to the arts for all communities.
Magdalena Solano
Graduate Fellow at the Winterthur/ University of Delaware Program in Art Conservation
she/her
Bio:
Magdalena is a Graduate Fellow at the Winterthur/University of Delaware Program in Art Conservation with a focus in Paintings Conservation. In the summer of 2021, she was the Graduate Paintings Conservation Intern at the Balboa Art Conservation Center where part of her internship focused on BACC’s Preserving Community Art Program, Preserving Chicana/o/x Art. Magdalena is now currently completing her graduate training at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Her professional interests include the research of paints and materials used by modern and contemporary artists, particularly from Latin America in the late 20th-century and advocating for diversity, equity, accessibility and inclusion in the field of cultural heritage stewardship. She holds a Bachelor of Arts Degree from the University of California, Los Angeles in Art History where she devoted her undergraduate research to the study of art from Latin America, both pre-colonial and modern. She has completed conservation internships at private practices in Southern California, the J. Paul Getty Museum, The Dallas Museum of Art, LA County Museum of Art, and the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures. Prior to conservation, she worked for museums and galleries in Los Angeles conducting curatorial research and museum education.
Maria Figueroa
Professor of English, Literature and Humanities at MiraCosta College
she, her, ella
María Figueroa is a maestra, mamá, teatrista, poeta, hija, hermana and traditional Aztec dancer. Originally from Santa Ana, California where her roots run three generations deep, Maria attended UC San Diego where she received her BA in Theatre with minors in Ethnic Studies and Spanish Literature, and went on to complete her MA in Comparative Lit from Dartmouth College in New Hampshire. Maria’s work has been published in various anthologies including Velvet Barrios: Popular Culture & Chicana/o Sexualities, edited by Alicia Gaspar de Alba, Fleshing The Spirit: Spirituality and Activism in Chicana, Latina, and Indigenous Women’s Lives, edited by Elisia Facio and Irene Lara, Voices from the Ancestors: Xicanx and Latinx Spiritual Expressions and Healing Practices and most recently in In Search of Our Brown Selves, a transdisciplinary reader designed with Chicano/a/x students in mind.
She makes her professional home as a professor of English Composition, Literature, and Humanities at MiraCosta College in Oceanside California, where she has also served as an English Professor for the Puente program, a program to which she has dedicated 16 years of her professional career. In 2018 Maria was recognized by the Latino Book & Family Festival with their “Excelencia del Maestro” award and recognized as Woman of the Year Award by Assembly Woman Tasha Boerner-Horvarth, in the same year.
Her community work spans over 25 years predominantly in the area of cultural preservation and traditional arts. She is co-lead of Danza Coatlicue a traditional Aztec Dance group committed to preserving the dance and spiritual traditions of the Mexican Indigenous diaspora. In her role as Community Advisory Chair and board member of the Centro Cultural de la Raza, she ensures the voice and perspective of the local community is represented. Maria recently chaired the Centro Cultural de la Raza’s 50 th Virtual Gala Kickoff honoring the 50 th anniversary of the founding of the historical Centro Cultural de la Raza, in Balboa Park.
Along with her precious masterpieces, Cuauhtemoc and Esperanza Tonantzin, and her loving partner, she makes her home in the Kumeyaay coastal lands of north county of San Diego, where she also enjoys long spiritual runs.
María Esther Fernández
Artistic Director, The Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture of the Riverside Art Museum
she/her/hers
María Esther Fernández is the Inaugural Artistic Director of The Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture of the Riverside Art Museum. Formerly the Chief Curator and Deputy Director of the Triton Museum of Art in Santa Clara, CA, Fernández has curated numerous group and solo exhibitions, including Xicana: Spiritual Reflections/Reflexiónes Espirituales and Consuelo Jimenez Underwood: Welcome to Flower-Landia. In 2019, she co-curated Xicanx Futurity with Carlos Jackson and Dr. Susy Zepeda at the Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art at UC Davis. Fernández is currently working on a major retrospective, Archeology of Memory: Amalia Mesa-Bains with Dr. Laura E. Pérez set to open at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive in 2023. She was the recipient of the Standing Committee on Education American Association of Museum’s Multicultural Fellowship, the Smithsonian Latino Museum Studies Program Fellowship, and a member of Silicon Valley’s Multicultural Arts Leadership Initiative. In 2018, Fernández received a California Arts Council grant to advance her research on curatorial practices and their impact on representation and access for the Chicanx community in the contemporary art museum. She received her BA in Chicana/o and Ethnic Studies from U. C. Berkeley and her M.A. in Visual and Critical Studies from California College of the Arts in San Francisco.
Morgan Wylder
Associate Conservator of Paintings, Balboa Art Conservation Center
she/her/hers
Morgan is an Associate Conservator of Paintings at BACC, formerly an Assistant Conservator of Paintings and a Mellon Fellow in Paintings Conservation. Morgan earned a dual undergraduate degree in Fine Art and Art History at Cornell University. After university, she interned with different conservators specializing in paper, paintings, and historic interiors in New York City and Washington, D.C. She later received her graduate degree in Conservation of Easel Paintings from the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London. During graduate school, Morgan interned in the paintings conservation department at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Before her Andrew Mellon Fellowship at BACC, Morgan worked as the NEH Fellow in Paintings Conservation at the Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, VA. Morgan is a Professional Associate with the American Institution for Conservation.
At BACC, Morgan examines and treats a broad range of paintings from historic to contemporary and also carries out technical analysis of cultural heritage objects. Her areas of interest include the conservation and technical study of 20th century painters, open-access digital publication in the conservation and technical art history fields, and helping artists to better understand materials to support their artistic practice. Morgan is a co-founder and co-editor of Materia: Journal of Technical Art History, an international, open-access, peer-reviewed journal for technical art history.
Roberto D. Hernández (yehuatl, yehuantin)
Board President, Centro Cultural de la Raza
Dr. Roberto D. Hernández (Xicano) is an associate professor of Chicana and Chicano Studies at San Diego State University and current Chair of the National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies (NACCS). His research, publications, and teaching focus on the intersections of colonial and border violence, the geopolitics of knowledge and cultural production, decolonial political theory, social movements, Xicano indigeneity, and comparative border studies. He co-edited the anthology Decolonizing the Westernized University: Interventions in Philosophy of Education from Within and Without (Lexington, 2016) and is the author of Coloniality of the U-S///Mexico Border: Power, Violence, and the Decolonial Imperative (Univ. of AZ Press, 2018). Dr. Hernández also coordinates several advanced international research institutes for junior scholars: Decolonizing Knowledge and Power (in Barcelona), Critical Muslim Studies (Granada), and Latin American Decolonial and Feminist Thought (Mexico City). Lastly, he is a volunteer handyman/janitor/curator/gardener and President of the Board of Trustees for the historic Centro Cultural de la Raza in unceded and occupied Kumeyaay territory (aka, San Diego, California).
Victor Ochoa
Artist and Activist
he/him/his
Victor Ochoa is a artist and activist that has worked with in many communities throughout the world, based in the border zone of Tijuana and San Diego, his work stems from the human rights issues of the 60’s that still remain his topics. His process has developed from that community democratic dynamics that he learned from countless community based murals . he is the a cofounder of the Centro Cultural de a Raza serving in the organization as Director, Artists in resident and binational liaison between San Diego and border cultural organizations, from all states along the border, in both countries. Member of the, Border arts workshop/taller de arte fronterizo as well as the Chicano Park Steering Committee since 1970. He has been responsible for coordinating murals at Chicano Park in restorations as well as new, currently working on the Anastasio Hernandez Rojas mural, about immigration and the current situation at the border. Has been working with the archives of UCSB for over 30 years, contributing his documentation, slides and video, leading up to currently in a advisory capacity with the CHICANO PARK museum and cultural center. His work includes art exhibitions,
museum displays and art installations, currently has one at the San Diego History Center in Balboa Park, with a 39 ft long x 9 ft high wall installation of large scale photo montage. Throughout his experience as a muralist he has worked in the development of El Taller de Grafica workshop that has involved him in various levels of education including elementary,
high school to university classroom instructor. Victor has been involved in Chicano murals and graphics as well as various types of Public art and sculpture, including graffiti since 1983 developing the first permission walls projects WRITERZBLOK AND BATTLEGROUNDZ to public art collaborations including the creation of the NEW URBAN PUBLIC ART a mixture of many styles of muralism including the new graffiti. Victor Ochoa wrote the CHICANO PARK RESTORATION MANUAL to be used to restore the park and guide future artists about maintenance and restoration.
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Questions? Email Project Coordinator, Bianca Garcia at [email protected]
Banner Image Credit: Dualidad, Collective Mural. Guillermo Aranda, Lead Artist