|
 |
Notes on Peter Rodriguez
The Mexican Museum is proud to present a series of articles which addresses aspects of the Museum's 25-year history. The first of these articles focuses on Peter Rodriguez, the Founder of the Mexican Museum.
As the Mexican Museum celebrates its 25th anniversary, we want to take a moment to honor our Founder, Peter Rodriguez. The Museum exists because Peter had the vision to establish—and the tenacity to lead—the Museum through its first critical decade. Personally, I have had the pleasure of knowing Peter for many years in his capacity as Founder and first Director of the Museum and also as an accomplished visual artist.
Shortly after I came to the Museum as Director in 1997, I had the opportunity to interview Peter regarding his life and the history of the Museum. I remember this interview well. I can still see the bright level of engagement in his face as he revisited his experiences as a child in the Central Valley, and recalled the travels and ventures which led him to establish the Mexican Museum. The following account is an excerpt from this conversation. Thank you Peter!
- Lorraine García-Nakata.
_______________________________________________
The year was 1956 and this was Peter Rodriguez's second trip to Mexico. He recalls that he had brought some of his paintings, hoping to exhibit them during his trip. In Guadalajara, he found the appropriate venue, but was faced with a problem—no frames for his paintings. Ever resourceful, and relying upon his background in advertising and window display, he used black yarn to draw frames around the paintings.
It was during this visit to Mexico that Peter began to dream of creating a museum in San Francisco which would showcase Mexican art. "I would walk through museums (in the United States) and look for Spanish surnames, and we couldn't find any. In fact, larger museums at the time had actively deaccessioned Mexican and Latin American art,"
In 1975, Peter’s dream took root. He opened the Mexican Museum as an institution designed to collect, preserve, interpret and present the artistic expression of the Mexican people, regardless of their birth-nation. "It is unique because the Mexican culture had never been shown in the way we did at the Mexican Museum. Even in Mexico, there wasn't a museum that showed all five components of Pre-Conquest, Colonial, Popular, Mexican and Chicano Contemporary Art. We were giving a chronological view of Pre-Conquest times to today."
Peter Rodriguez was raised in both Stockton and Jackson, California, where he first developed an interest in art. "As I recall it now, it was a primary school teacher who did a pencil portrait of me that inspired me to think in terms of becoming an artist. It seemed to me, at age seven, a miracle that someone could take a pencil and a piece of paper and capture the likeness of a human being."
When he first envisioned the Museum, Peter saw it as both a space in which to hold and present the culture of the Mexican people, and as a vehicle to present this work from the informed perspective of the people themselves. "For too long, people not of our heritage did these interpretations that were, for the most part, stereotypical and not well directed."
During the Museum's first ten years of operation, he devoted his full energy to opening and operating the Museum. As Director and Curator, he had little time to do his own painting. Peter continued to travel to Mexico however, to seek artists whose work could be exhibited at this newly-created institution. "The Museum became better known, and we borrowed paintings and exhibited Mexican art in one area and Mexican-American art in another area," he recalls.
As the Museum expanded, it began to attract the attention of a broad scope of individuals—including art collectors—and thus began to form a permanent collection. As the collection grew, so did the number and scope of exhibitions presented by the Museum to the public.
The Mexican Museum, which was first conceptualized during Peter’s trip to Mexico in 1956, had found a forum and a public. An entire community has since come together to nurture and extend Peter’s vision, building a major international resource for the arts and cultures of Mexico and the Americas — and a home for generations to come.
|
|
