LACMA's locura: Art from the Spanish world, not in Spanish

Fitting that I've been musing lately on how the many faces of what it means to be Mexican intersects with the art world, because a big show on 300 years of viceregal art in Latin America opened this week at LACMA, covering the years between the arrival of the Europeans in the late 1400s and the national independence movements in the early 1800s. It is an impressive show, with paintings, sculpture, and decorative arts like insanely detailed silver-embossed chocolate mugs and spice boxes.

Trouble is, the information on such pieces and how they were made is unavailable to about half of L.A. None of the exhibition information panels are presented bilingually, in Spanish, the language that essentially binds most of the show together as a historical and aesthetic document. This is a serious error on the part of the curators and the institutions involved, particularly LACMA, L.A.'s county museum.

I overheard several the reporters from the Spanish media grumbling over the lack of Spanish panels in the show during the press preview last week. In light of the city's sharply shifting demographics, presenting such an important exhibition bilingually would have been ideal for encouraging scores of low-income immigrants who are thirsty for intellectual succor beyond working all day to send money to the countries where this art came from to become a museum-going population -- -- nevermind the public museum's high admissions fees. (Shouldn't all public museums be free, all the time?) LACMA's Latin American art curator Ilona Katzew told La Opinion's Antonio Mejías-Rentas, in an unsatisfactory excuse, that not presenting the show in Spanish was "a question of space, fundamentally."

Hmm. Space never seems to be an issue at the museums at San Diego's Balboa Park and in La Jolla, where the major institutions seem to make it a point -- given their positioning in a binational urban zone with Tijuana -- to present all their shows in English and Spanish. And in Mexico, going to museums is practically a routine of daily life, up and down the classes. Why can't immigrants be encouraged to retain this tradition?

It's not just LACMA's responsibility to be more inclusive and open the doors of the art institutions to the city's working class. Fundación Televisa provided a large chunk of funding for this particular show: Where was the foresight? Are there public campaigns on the part of the consulates to encourage Latino immigrants to pull away from the television and junk food and feed their soul?

The show is organized by the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Antiguo Colegio de San Idelfonso, and LACMA. One highlight is the presentation, once more, of a series of caste paintings, beautifully illustrating the diverse levels of hierarchy in New Spain's increasingly confusing racial caste system, from criollo to mulatto and everything in between. The faces in those panels are also the faces of the new Los Angeles.

* Links: Christopher Knight review, La Opinion story 1, La Opinion story 2, LACMA release 1, LACMA release 2, NPR piece. * Image: "Christ Child Crucified," 18th century, Guatemala.