Up Coming Events

National Hispanic Cultural Center

till August 5. 2007

The African Presence in México: From Yanga to the Present

This groundbreaking exhibition highlights Mexico's "Third Root" and provides an important opportunity to revisit and embrace the African legacy in Mexico and the Americas. For nearly 500 years, the existence and contributions of the African descendants in Mexico have been overlooked. Almost a century after Africans arrived in Mexico in 1519, Yanga, an African leader, founded the first free African township in the Americas (January 6, 1609). Since then, Africans have continued to contribute their cultural, musical, and culinary traditions to Mexican society through the present day. This exhibition is filled with paintings, costumes, masks, musical instruments, and other examples of art and popular culture. Also included in this exhbition is a companion exhibition entitled Who Are We Now? Roots, Resistance, & Recognition that investigates the complex relationship between African-Americans and Mexicans in the United States.

Organized by the National Museum of Mexican Art, Chicago, IL.

The National Hispanic Cultural Center

4th Street SW and Avenida César Chávez

Albuquerque, New Mexico 87102

505/245-2261

Red Desert, Green Prairie, Blue Sky: Photographing the West

Red Desert, Green Prairie, Blue Sky: Photographing the West unites the efforts of eight photographers working on three separate photography projects. Each project seeks to illuminate the beauty, tragedy, and strength of a different geographic region.

The first region, Red Desert, focuses on southern Wyoming. The lens of photographer Martin Stupich documents the loss of the wilderness, the red desert, to an industrial landscape amidst the energy boom gripping this region of the American West. Stupich’s work testifies to the destruction of landscapes of stark beauty at the hands of human industry, and it acts as a record of that landscape’s power.

Photographer George Jerkovich’s compositions encompass the second region, Central Kansas, in a very literal way. Through stunning panoramic photographs of sunflower-filled prairies and wheat-swept plains, Jerkovich explores the evolution of the landscape of Kansas. His work celebrates the beauty of the state while countering the negative stereotypes of rural Kansas and declining agricultural legacy.

The third region, the Llano Estacado (“Staked Plains”) of northwest Texas, is represented through the work of six nationally recognized photographers — Peter Brown, Rick Dingus, Steve Fitch, Miguel Gandert, Tony Gleaton, and Andrew John Liccardo. These photographers tackle a wide variety of issues facing the Llano today, including the decline of cattle ranching; the increasing difficulty of finding water in the area; and the challenges of an economy shifting from agriculture to medicine and education.

Red Desert, Green Prairie, Blue Sky: Photographing the West features 45 color and black-and-white photographs. Separately, photographs of each place have distinctive identifying characteristics. Collectively, the exhibition compares textures of the land, its artifacts, its buildings, its current occupants, and the environment within three separate and often forgotten regions of the central United States.

Exhibits USA

Tour Begins Fall 2007

Venues to Be Announces

Participating Artists: Anthony Briones, Alejandro García Nelo, Fernando Vázquez Jácome, Dr. Hermenegildo González Fernández, Adolfo Quinteros, Carlos López, Carlos Nebel, Claudio Linati, Rufino Tamayo, Celia Calderón, Francisco Mora, José Justo Montiel, Alberto Beltrán, Agustín V. Casasola, Romualdo García, Joaquín Santamaría, Manuel Alvarez Bravo, Mariana Yampolsky, Manuel González de la Parra, Marisela Salas, Arturo Vera Domínguez, Lourdes Almeida, Ron Wilkins, Tony Gleaton, Aydeé Rodriguez Lopez, Hugo Felix Tovar, Olegario Hernandez, Jose de Luna, Antonio Gómez R., Alfredo González, Guillermo Vargas Alberto, Ignacio Canela, Elizabeth Catlett, Francisco Toledo, Roberto Salazar Rodriguez, Mario Guzman Oliveres, Emmanuel Cruz Muñoz, Guillermo Olgin, Maximino Javier, Carlos Cons, Alfred J. Quiroz.

Traveling exhibition venues: Museo de Historia Mexicano, Monterrey, NL, México, National Hispanic Cultural Center, Albuquerque, NM, Museo Nacional de Antropología, Mexico, D.F. *Exhibition catalogue published by the Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum