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The Folsom Street Years
November 1975 to 1982
The Mexican Museum is proud to present a series of articles that address significant aspects of the Museum’s 25-year history. The first article, which appeared in the Winter Newsletter of 2000, focused on Peter Rodríguez and his founding of The Mexican Museum. The following article examines the first seven years at the Museum’s original location at 1855 Folsom Street in the Mission District of San Francisco.
Original Mission Statement: "to foster the exhibition, conservation, and dissemination of Mexican and Chicano art and culture for all peoples."
"The Mexican Museum was scheduled to open November 20, 1975. We had a month to work on the space before the scheduled opening. This date was the anniversary of the Mexican Revolution and I considered that this was an artistic revolution that was about to be launched."
- Peter Rodríguez.
In 1975, The Mexican Museum opened its doors with its first exhibition, Inaugural Exhibit of Mexican and Chicano Art. It was an artistic manifestation of a powerful new American movement. In the early 1970s, the United States was reeling from a social transition fostered by the Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War. Americans of Mexican descent were redefining and asserting their cultural identity within a larger national landscape. Artist groups such as the Mujeres Muralistas dedicated themselves to creating murals that reflected the Chicana experience within San Francisco and Latin America; Yo Soy Chicano (I am Chicano) by Jesús Salvador Treviño was the first film about Chicano history that was televised nationally, and Polly Baca Barragán was the first Mexican American woman to be elected into the United States House of Representatives.
Despite the growing influence of the Mexican American voice on the national scene, this Latino presence was not well reflected in America’s visual art institutions. Mexican masters such as Rufino Tamayo, Diego Rivera, and Rodolfo Morales were rarely exhibited – and the artistic production of emerging Latino artists was nearly absent from museum walls. It was within this national context that Peter Rodríguez opened The Mexican Museum with the intention to provide a home in the United States for "museum-quality art" created by Latino artists, not limited to political and geographic borders.
The Museum provided extraordinary opportunities for both Chicano and Mexican artists. Gloria Maya, Raoul E. Mora, Carmen Lomas Garza, and Rupert Garcia, all gained increased attention after exhibiting at the Museum. "The Museum played an integral role in launching my career as an artist," states Lomas Garza whose works were first exhibited at the Museum in 1977, and then again in her one-person exhibition, Lo Real Maravilloso, (The Marvelous Real) in 1987. The Museum also provided a venue in which Mexican artists, such as graphic artist Esther González, painter Lauro López, and internationally known muralist Federico Cantú, could exhibit their work to an American public. From its modest, two-room space on Folsom Street, The Mexican Museum was an international intersection that presented the complex and vast aesthetic production of Latino culture of the Americas.
The Museum’s Permanent Collection was initially seeded by Peter Rodríguez’s donation of his exquisite personal collection of Colonial, pre-Conquest, and Popular artwork. Soon other illustrious works were donated to the Museum, such as the large bronze sculpture Maternidad by Francisco Zúñiga, Rafael Coronel’s haunting 1959 painting Cartucho Quemado (Burnt Out Cartridge), and ceramic figurines from the west coast of Mexico dating as far back as 500 BCE.
In addition, the Museum established a creative and successful education program that utilized the growing collection as a primary source to expand public awareness of Latino artistic production. The Education Department provided tours of the exhibitions; facilitated ceramic, papier maché and dance workshops; led mural tours of Balmy Alley in the Mission; and presented slide lectures to the public. All education programs were rooted in community participation, "We held teacher training workshops that provided sensitivity training for teachers…. to become familiar with major holidays and popular icons associated with the Mexican heritage of their students," recalls Bea Carrillo-Hocker, who helped to develop the Education Department in the initial years. Both Carrillo-Hocker, and former Curator of Education, Nora Wagner shared a single desk in the gallery space and interacted daily with people visiting the Museum to view the collection. For many visitors, The Mexican Museum offered exciting and new connections between art and their individual life experience. In addition, grounded in the exploration of a complex Latino aesthetic, the Museum pushed the boundaries of the national artistic discourse. For individuals such as Carrillo-Hocker and Wagner, whose involvement with the Museum has continued into its 25th year, the Museum has offered deep fulfillment and has continued to be a source of personal and professional inspiration. "The Museum is a multi-faceted jewel," exclaims Wagner, "¡una joyita!"
- Sherri Nevins, Development Associate
The Museum is grateful for the support of Bea Carrillo-Hocker and Nora Wagner for their contribution to this article.
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