Previous Library Exhibition

TAKING TO THE STREETS: ART IN PUBLIC SPACE AT THE UCLA CHICANO STUDIES RESEARCH CENTER

November 17, 2016 – March 24, 2017
Opening reception: November 17, 4:00-7:00 p.m.

UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center Library
144 Haines Hall

Taking to the Streets highlights diverse selections from the CSRC’s archival holdings as well as previous projects that utilize public space as a site for artistic engagement and production. Artists represented in the show include the team of David Avalos, Louis Hock, and Elizabeth Sisco as well as Ramiro Gomez, Daniel J. Martinez, and Sandra de la Loza.

The impetus for this show is the recent donation of an important public artwork to the CSRC archive by Avalos, Hock and Sisco. “Welcome to America’s Finest Tourist Plantation” is the name of a public art project launched by the three artists in 1988 in San Diego, CA. The team collaborated, designed and executed a public-art campaign that reverberated throughout the region, made national headlines, and received critical attention. Theirs was a strategic deployment of artwork that utilized the advertising space on the back of one hundred city buses to communicate a dire message: undocumented workers are being exploited by San Diego’s tourist industry. The last remaining bus-mounted art poster was conserved at UCLA and is now on permanent public display at the CSRC.

This show’s title Taking to the Streets connotes a sense of purpose, even of urgency, that compels artists to move beyond the confines of traditional spaces such as museums or galleries, to show their work in broader, unexpected contexts.

Taking to the Streets is organized by Karen Rapp. Rapp previously was Director of the Vincent Price Art Museum at East Los Angeles College (2007-15); Civic Art Coordinator at the Los Angeles County Arts Commission (2005-07); and Curator and Director of Programs of Sweeney Art Gallery at UC Riverside (1998-05).