|
Local Artists Curate a Diá de Los Muertos Exhibition at the Legion of Honor
10/20/2004 Exploring new realms of artist outreach programming, the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco announces Dia de Los Muertos: Arco Iris de Culturas en Homenaje a Nuestros Muertos (Rainbow of Cultures in Homage to our Dead), a celebration of The Day of the Dead featuring over fifty local and international artists. Coordinated by the Museum’s Education Department, this community based and artist-curated exhibition opens on Tuesday, October 26, and runs through Sunday, October 31, at the Legion of Honor in Lincoln Park.
Dia de Los Muertos: Arco Iris de Culturas en Homenaje a Nuestros Muertos is a collaborative effort between the artists and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, with a dual mission of complimenting the Legion’s current exhibition “Courtly Art of the Ancient Maya” and engaging the museum and its visitors with community-based artists. The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, which will reopen the de Young Museum in Golden Gate Park in October 2005, is looking forward to a future when the Museum regularly engages with local artists and arts organizations. An extension of the Education Department’s Artist-in-Residence program, Dia de Los Muertos: Arco Iris de Culturas en Homenaje a Nuestros Muertos offers the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco the opportunity to make connections between art of the past and that being created presently, collaborate with the local artist community, and highlight the work of these individuals. For the artists, the exhibit opens the museum to the community based arts culture thriving in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Co-curated by San Francisco’s Mission District artists, Calixto Robles and Alexandra Blum, the artworks featured in the exhibit, by both well-known and emerging artists, pay homage to the deceased, and include traditional sand and sawdust painting, altars, and a variety of multi-media works. Participating artists include Enrique Chagoya, Casper Banjo, Esther Hernandez, Juan Fuentes, and Rene Yanez among many others, and range in age between twenty-one and eighty. “We wanted to have a multi-cultural exhibition,” says co-curator Calixto Robles, “because it’s through different points of view that people can learn best what Dia de Los Muertos is about.”
Scheduled to precede the annual Mission District’s Dia de los Muertos celebrations, Dia de Los Muertos: Arco Iris de Culturas en Homenaje a Nuestros Muertos also plays a central part in the Legion of Honor’s Magnificent Maya Friday Nights programming, sponsored by Univision Communications Inc., Univision 14, TeleFutura 66 and Univision Radio. The museum is offering a series of themed evening events, which celebrate the Legion’s current exhibition Courtly Art of the Ancient Maya, with extended evening hours at the museum until 8:45 P.M. on Fridays, through November 19. To recognize the Dia de Los Muertos exhibition, an evening reception will be held on Friday, October 29 and is open to all museum visitors from 6:00 P.M. to 8:45 P.M. Specially scheduled activities will include a lecture by Dr. Manuel Aguilar, “The Skeleton That Eats Maize: Day of the Dead Among the Ancient and Modern Maya” in the Florence Gould Theater, access to the Courtly Art of the Ancient Maya exhibition, an art-making project lead by artists from the museum’s education department, shopping for day of the Dead items at the Maya Store, and music by Xaguia Jura, as well as food and a cash bar.
The Legion of Honor is located at 34th Avenue and Clement Street in Lincoln Park. For public information call (415) 863-3330 or visit www.thinker.org. For event information call (415) 682-2481. Tickets for the event can be purchased at the time of the event. ($8.00 Adults, $6.00 Seniors, $5.00 Teens, free for museum members.) There is an additional $7.00 surcharge to view the exhibition Courtly Art of the Ancient Maya.
|
