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

1890s 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s
Arte Popular, presented as part of the centennial Third Institute of the Norman Waite Harris
celebrations of Mexico’s independence from Foundation which dealt with the problems of
Spain in 1921. According to James Oles, “this Mexico, particularly issues of class, race and
was the first exhibition that placed the aesthetic nation. Lectures delivered by Vasconcelos,
value of Mexican crafts in the foreground” Gamio, and Saenz were published by the
(Oles 2002, 19). Organized by artists Roberto University of Chicago Press in two volumes.
Montenegro and Jorge Enciso, the exhibition
traveled to Los Angeles and was also shown at the
1922 Centennial Exposition in Rio de Janeiro.
Featuring a broad range of media and objects, it
set the canon for future exhibitions of Mexican
folk art in the United States.
As part of this construction of a new
national cultural identity Mexico’s Secretariat
of Education, under the leadership of José
Vasconcelos, initiated government-sponsored
art patronage that offered Mexican artists
commissions to paint fresco murals in
government buildings. The Mexican “Mural
Renaissance” and its artists received international
attention and leading art magazines in the United
States reported on the latest art developments
in Mexico which departed from established
European canons.
In the Midwest this interest was augmented
in the summer of 1926 when Vasconcelos was
invited by the University of Chicago, along with
anthropologist Manuel Gamio, former Director
of the Bureau of Anthopology and Sub-Secretary
of Education, and Moisés Saenz, former Sub-
Secretary of Education, to participate in the
____________________________________________________________________________
Toward the Preservation of a Heritage page 26
23
Interest in Mexican culture in the United
States had first appeared in architecture as early
as the 1910s with the Mayan Revival style that
incorporated pre-Columbian Mesoamerican
Mayan, Aztec, Toltec, and Mixtec architectural
forms and details in façades of buildings
designed by the likes of Frank Lloyd Wright,
Walter Burly Griffin, and Francis Barry Byrne.
Although examples of Mayan Revival architecture
were more numerous in California, the Midwest
enjoyed a series of buildings designed by Wright
beginning in 1915, such as the A. D. German
Warehouse in Richland Center, Wisconsin.
Architects Walter Burly Griffin and Francis Barry
Byrne, former Wright associates at his Oak Park
studio, appropriated Mayan Revival elements in
their design of Midwest residences such as the
Frank Palma House in Kenilworth, Illinois, and
the James E. Blythe House in Mason City, Iowa.
23 Volume I included the lectures of José Vasconcelos and
Manuel Gamio entitled “The Latin American Basis of Mexican
Civilization” and “The Indian Basis of Mexican Civilization”
respectively. Volume two included lectures by Moisés Saenz and
Herbert I. Priestley entitled “Some Mexican Problems” and “The
Mexican Nation, a History.”