The New Face of Arts Leadership in the West - westaf - The Western ...

concept because there is still a need for specialists
in cultural production. That is why I am so
interested in furthering Latino contemporary
art and documenting it because I know that
institutions are starting to become more aware
of the need for diversity. Even though, at a
local level, we might not see that interest, at the
national level, there is a strong push for that.
In the educational arena, we must continue to
push for curriculum change. One of the reasons
I became very engaged with art history and
curating, even though I was a studio art major,
was that I would be so upset when I would
attend my art history classes that I wouldn’t see
that representation. I was just searching for role
models, and I would get so frustrated. And that
is one reason I started the Women’s Art Forum
and helped that group bring in visiting artists
to give lectures. There remains a huge need
for those specialists in our cultural production.
Another very important topic to me is social
responsibility in the arts. This is a quote by Carol
Becker from a book she did called Surpassing
the Spectacle, and this was from the “Artist as a
Citizen” chapter. She says, “Although many of
us still structure our intellectual worlds with a past
sense of progress in mind, many well-meaning,
politicized young people in the United States do
not. They seem able to live without a sense of
an imagined, improved future and if there is no
organized hope through such engaged people,
simultaneously, there is not much apparent
despair.” 1 That is something I really struggle with
because I feel that there is a great deal of apathy
within my generation. Yes, there is that frustration
and that anarchistic feeling of wanting
to go against the system, but yet, “I don’t really
want to do the work,” you know. “I don’t want
to lead, you do that. Just tell me what to do.”
The second exhibition I developed was an
opportunity for me to have young people talk
about what their political issues were. This show
was mounted right before the 2004 elections.
It was called “Rebellion and Reaction,” and
it was a little biased. I wanted the artists to
talk about the issues that were important to
them that were leading up to the election,
and they did. Usually, for the opening night of
an exhibition, I have found that, to attract a
young crowd, you need a multisensory experience.
It is not just the visual art that is going to
get them out there. So I had a punk band, a
hip-hop band, spoken word, guest speakers
and that is really the way to engage young
people now—that multisensory stuff. That is
why installation art is so popular right now.
Career concerns and life balance—there are
many difficulties in balancing work, family,
and art making. I have found that many of
the young artists I work with cannot survive
as full-time artists. The older generation, the
parent artists that I work with, most of them
are divorced, which leads me to believe
that it is very hard to balance a family. I
just got engaged, so it is a little bit scary.
I know some of the art makers cannot afford
studio space. So, to survive, artists need to come
together and what some of them are doing
is starting artists’ cooperatives like Negative
Space, which is a photography cooperative
in Sacramento. All young artists, about 15 of
them, came together, leased a space. They
have a lab, they have a gallery, and they are
going to begin to launch some entrepreneurial
activities so they can sustain their effort. In
my case, I have difficulties balancing my
work as a curator and meeting the needs of
my community because I have developed
all of these special skills. For example, as an
independent curator, you have to do a little
bit of graphic design, a little bit of PR, a little bit
of everything. And there are many nonprofits
that need help, and I am asked to volunteer
a lot—and I have problems saying “no.” So
that is one of the issues with which I struggle.
There are a great many young artists who have
not had any professional development experiences.
Some artists are self-taught. We have a
number of young artists in Sacramento who are
engaged in what is termed “low-brow” art. I
don’t like the term, but I think that we need to
try to offer them affordable professional devel-
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