CSRC Library Exhibitions
Rotating exhibitions drawn from CSRC collections are on display inside the library and in the vitrine near the front entrance. All exhibitions are free to the public and viewable during regular library hours, Monday-Friday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m.
Profiles of Activism
Curated by Xaviera Flores and Angélica Becerra, with the assistance of Douglas Johnson and Michael Aguilar
October 17 – December 20, 2019
Extended through March 2020
Opening reception: Thursday, October 17, 5:00-7:30 p.m.
UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center Library
144 Haines Hall
In the library and vitrine

The Chicano Studies Research Center (CSRC) celebrates its fiftieth anniversary this year. Beginning in 1969—when the CSRC and UCLA’s three other ethnic studies centers were founded under the umbrella of the Institute of American Cultures—the CSRC has promoted student activism, civil rights leadership, artistic expression, and the power of community. Since the center’s inception, CSRC staff and affiliated faculty have dedicated themselves to research and teaching that make a difference.
To honor those who did what was right, not what was easy, the CSRC presents three mini exhibitions and an installation that celebrate fifty years of Chicanx and Latinx activism through art, literature, and scholarship.
Profiles of Activism gathers together prints, photographs, and books from the collections of the CSRC Library. These objects highlight the work of activists who defied the social norms of their times to pursue justice for their communities, often placing their lives on the line.
In Give Us Our Flowers: Latinx Artivist Portraits, artist and UCLA doctoral candidate Angélica Becerra presents watercolor portraits of four emerging or established artivists—artist-activists who are responsible for visual culture in contemporary social movements. The title of the exhibition articulates her belief that artivists of color, who work to dismantle structural oppression, should be nourished while alive, not ignored until after their deaths. The paintings are a visual appendix to Becerra’s dissertation, “Envisioning a Chicana Radical Aesthetic: Digital Artivism in the Twenty-first Century.”
Salomón Huerta’s Portrait Series of Chicana/o-Latina/o and Mexican-Latin American Icons honors the leaders—both women and men—who have played a key role in making positive differences in the United States and Mexico. Huerta, who received his MFA from UCLA in 1998, created the seven portraits, painted in oil on plywood panels, while he was a UCLA Regent’s Lecturer in 2017.
The La Raza Interactive Touchscreen was commissioned by the Autry Museum of the American West (in collaboration with the CSRC) for La Raza, a 2017 exhibition that was part of the Getty’s Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA initiative. Designed and developed by Narduli Studio, the touchscreen contains images from the CSRC’s La Raza Photograph Collection, a digital archive of 25,000 photographs taken by the staff of La Raza newspaper and magazine. CSRC launched the La Raza project in 2013, when it began digitizing and preserving the photographs with the goal of providing public access to the images. The touchscreen allows users to explore the collection and to discover how the images connect people, place, and time.
Image: “Corky” © 2006 Raul Caracoza. From the Self Help Graphics and Art Research Collection.
Previous CSRC Library Exhibitions
Family, Community, Country: The Nell and Phil Soto Story (October 11, 2018 - June 30, 2019)
The 1968 Walkouts: Selections from UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center Collections (March 10 - May 11, 2018)
Casos de Justicia: The Los Angeles Street Vendor Movement (February 8 - 23, 2018)
Raphael Montañez Ortiz: Shred Your Worries and Other Destructions (May 30 – December 15, 2017)
Taking to the Streets: Art in Public Space at the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center (November 17, 2016 – March 24, 2017)
Selections from Star Montana: Tear Drops & Three Dots (August 22 - October 28, 2016)
Selections from Star Montana: Tear Drops & Three Dots (August 22 - October 28, 2016)
Mexican Surf and Turf: Mexicano Cultural Continuity in West Los Angeles through Surfing and Soccer (February 26 - June 10, 2016)
Selections from the Grace Montañez Davis Papers, 1940-1990 (October 13 - December 18, 2015)
Untamed: Cultivating Collaboration in Arts, Activism, and Scholarship (May 15 – June 12, 2015)
Young Workers Rising: Demonstrating a Movement for Better Wages (April 6 - May 1, 2015)
Make 'Em All Mexican: Works by Linda Vallejo (January 12 - March 20, 2015)
That's Entertainment: Dan Guerrero and the Making of a Hollywood Original (October 29 - December 19, 2014)
Embodied Aesthetics: 30 Years of Chicana and Women of Color Printmakers at the Self Help Graphics Atelier (May 7 – June 13, 2014)
You Found Me: Photographs by Christopher Anthony Velasco (January 3 – March 21, 2014)
Sal Castro: Legacy of a Teacher (October 15 - December 13, 2013)
Mujeres in the Movement for Chicana/o Studies at UCLA (May 28 – June 28, 2013)
Chican@s (re)Imagining Zapata (April 15 - May 10, 2013)
Ramiro Gomez: Luxury, Interrupted (February 4 – April 8, 2013)
Alex Donis: Floating World (November 13, 2012 – January 21, 2013)
Dichos: The David Damian Figueroa Collection (September 19 - October 30, 2012)
Mapping Truth: Following the Paper Trail in the Murder of Ruben Salazar (August 20 - September 12, 2012)
La Cocina (April 2 - August 15, 2012)
Mural Remix: Sandra de la Loza (February 6 - June 1, 2012)
Gronk: Paper Napkins (January 5 - March 23, 2012)
Chican@s Collect: The Durón Family Collection (September 22 - December 9, 2011)
Rubén Salazar & the Chicano Moratorium (July - August 2011)
LGBT & Mujeres Initiative (May – June 2011)
Cesar E. Chavez (March 31 - April 2011)
CSRC Collection Highlights (March 2011)