Olga U. Herrera - The Institute for Latino Studies - University of Notre ...

1941 is quite likely the first Midwestern
Latino mural. 6 Lozano enjoyed the
good fortune to have been mentored by
seasoned Midwestern muralists Edward
Millman and Mitchell Siporin. The
latter had acknowledged “the amazing
spectacle of the modern renaissance of
mural painting in Mexico,” adding that
his fellow Midwestern contemporaries
were “at work on a native epic in fresco
return[ing] to Giotto, Masaccio, [and]
Orozco.” 7 More than a decade earlier in
1929, the Art Institute of Chicago (AIC)
and the Chicago Arts Club had each
organized exhibitions of drawings and
paintings by Orozco.
In 1940 Roosevelt established
an Office for the Coordination of
Commercial and Cultural Relations
between the American Republics under
Nelson Rockefeller’s direction. Although
the establishment of that office was
motivated by concerns for the defense
of nations of the Western Hemisphere,
Rockefeller did initiate “cultural programs
to promote American art in the
Americas as well as Latin American art
6 MFACM catalog, op. cit. n. 2, page 3.
7 Ibid. and “Mural Art and The Midwestern Myth,” in
Francis V. O’Connor, ed., Art for the Millions: Essays from
the 1930s by Artists and Administrators of the WPA Federal Art Project
(Greenwich, CT: New York Graphic Society Ltd., 1973),
page 64.
in the United States through exhibitions,
publications, art contests and awards,
and art fellowships and scholarships.”
Herrera documents a long list of
Midwestern institutions, from museums
to colleges and universities and even a
high school, that hosted Latin American
exhibitions under this federal initiative.
It was in the midst of WWII, in April of
1944, that the AIC hosted a landmark
exhibition, Posada, Printmaker to the
Mexican People, loaned to the museum
by the Mexican Ministry of Education.
In exchange, the AIC loaned Mexico’s
National Institute of Fine Arts (INBA) an
exhibition of lithographs and posters by
Henri Toulouse-Lautrec. A letter written
by Daniel Catton Rich, then director
of fine arts at the AIC, addressed to
Charles A. Thomson, Chief of Cultural
Relations, US Department of State,
contains a testimonial to the efficacy of
Rockefeller’s cultural diplomacy: “this is
the first time within my knowledge that a
North American institution and a Latin-
American one have cooperated in such
a venture.” 8
Herrera’s observations about the
period spanning the late 1940s through
8 Ed. note: The letter dated March 14, 1944, is part
of the Daniel C. Rich Papers, Exhibition Records at the
Art Institute of Chicago, Ryerson Library.
Foreword
the early 1960s enter relatively uncharted
territory in Midwestern terms but for
the important scholarship of the once
Michigan-based Chicano art historian,
George Vargas. While Mexican artists
had arguably dominated and eclipsed
other Latin Americans in the Midwest
during the first three decades of the
twentieth century and into the 1940s,
the vital presence in Iowa of the
remarkable Argentine printmaker and
teacher, Mauricio Lasansky, would
have a profound influence from 1945
onwards, particularly within the academy.
Nonetheless, a Mexican imprint would
endure through the many murals Jean
Charlot did in several Midwestern states
through 1961.
According to Herrera, a
Puertorriqueño inflection would enter
in the person of Rufino Silva who joined
the faculty of the AIC during the 1950s,
a function of the “exponential growth
and subsequent appearance of Puerto
Rican communities” after 1947. The
late fifties witnessed an exhibition of
Pan-American art held at the AIC 9 and
the emergence of significant artistic
activity in East Lansing, Grand Rapids,
and Detroit, Michigan, during the late
9 An appreciation of its legacy will require further
investigation beyond the parameters of this publication.
xiii