San Diego Union-Tribune (Sunday)
‘It’s time to speak up and participate’
ALESSANDRA MOCTEZUMA GALLERY DIRECTOR AND PROFESSOR OF FINE ARTS, MUSEUM STUDIES AT SAN DIEGO MESA COLLEGE
2020 was a year of challenges and change. The pandemic forced colleges to quickly shift classes online. It was the year when we Zoomed along, utilized social media as our tether to friends and family, and pivoted to a virtual presence. As the economy shut down, students who were essential workers struggled to make ends meet, while “Dreamers” were left out of the national relief by the Trump administration. Our college gave out food and financial assistance while the college MECHA club (Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán) started its own student-led pantry helping dozens of families.
In my classes, the pandemic opened virtual portals, while social-distancing restrictions brought us close to those who were geographically inaccessible. Behind-the-scenes visits to museums were replaced with Zoom meetings with arts professionals from Los Angeles and New York. As I look ahead to at least the first half of 2021, I will connect the museum studies students with professionals from various cities with this technological platform.
My background in public art served me well in envisioning an outdoor project — the Mesa College Drivein: An Outdoor Art Exhibition — that opened in November. The art gallery is usually the site for a museum studies class-curated exhibition, but due to the shutdown it was off limits. I figured out how to teach the students the same skills and included 36 San Diego artists. Artwork was printed on large banners that lined the perimeter of the college parking lot. As cars arrived, they lined up and with their phones tuned in to an audio tour that described the artworks glimpsed through the windows. The drive-in exhibit was such a huge success that it will be repeated in 2021.
With galleries and museums closed, many of my museum studies graduates were furloughed or abruptly laid off. Artists found themselves adrift without the commercial gallery opportunities to sell their work and projects canceled. The city of San Diego, with the help of philanthropists, provided some grants for BIPOC artists and to purchase art outright. What these efforts laid bare was how unprepared we were to support our cultural workers and organizations. As we begin 2021, it should be our priority to address these inequities.
This past year, George Floyd and Black Lives Matter brought a time of reckoning. In my worldview, to the cry of “defund the police” was added this one: “decolonize the museum.” My 2021 museum studies and Chicano art classes will dive deep into discussions of change and reform. Being a Latina professor, I have attracted a diverse group of students. An art world that has historically been privileged and White is now being forced to change. In 2020, joining the boards of local organizations Medium Photo and the Women’s Museum of California, and participating in collectives such as the Feminist Image Group, has given me the opportunity to bring a unique perspective: as a woman, as an immigrant, as a Mexican/chicana. It’s time to speak up and participate.
When thinking about opening up other perspectives in the arts, 2021 will be a culmination of a couple of personal museum curatorial projects. I am organizing a retrospective of Chicana artist Judy Baca at the Museum of Latin American Art in Long Beach . My first art job out of college was working as Baca’s painting assistant at the organization she founded, the Social and Public Art Resource Center. Baca introduced me to Chicano art and the importance of having a presence in a contested public space. We had to do most of the curation through virtual meetings and models built on an online platform. The exhibition will open in the summer of 2021, and I’m looking forward to presenting important highlights of the life-work of my mentor. Life comes back full circle.
Another exhibition that I’m involved in will open in spring 2021 at the Oceanside Museum of Art. “Twenty Women Artists: NOW” is a reflection on the conditions women face today. When I was invited by the collective TWA to work on the project in 2019, we never imagined that 2020 would become one of the most turbulent years in recent history or that women would be on the front lines of many struggles. As COVID-19 spread, our planned studio visits had to be orchestrated through Zoom. I witnessed how the events of the year seeped into the artists’ paintings, drawings and sculptures. It will be interesting to see how audiences respond to the diversity of approaches of what seemed the longest year of our lives.