For over 50 years, Chicanas/os have been creating art in various mediums at various venues. A great sample of beautiful Chicana/o art can be found in The Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture of the Riverside Art Museum. While not all Chicana/o artists have had the opportunity to exhibit at prestigious museums and galleries, the art pioneers of the past have broken the doors open for brown artists–present and future. The artists of Mexican origin in el Norte must be understood in the context of racial capitalism and anti-Mexicanism—a term best understood by the late and great historian, Dr. Juan Gómez-Quiñones, in his brilliant essay “La Realidad: the Realities of Anti-Mexicanism.”
In short, if we want more brown kids from America’s barrios to become great artists and exhibit their art–domestically and internationally–they must first see themselves in the best museums and galleries the world has to offer
