OAKLAND, Calif. - Outside, the cool overcast day cast a somber pall. Inside, it felt as if the warm rays of the sun had graced the tribute to Nell Ranta, who passed late last year at age 100, and the rebirth of her beloved center, the Niebyl-Proctor Marxist Library/Community Center, closed for three.
Now in its 22nd year, SOMArts’ annual Día de Los Muertos exhibit this year will feature works from 21 contributing artists at what’s expected to be one of the most internationally diverse Day of the Dead celebrations held anywhere in the United States.
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Because it’s awards season, I’ve been knee-deep in historian Mark Cousin’s 15-part doc “The Story of Film: An Odyssey” and it is thoughtful, informative and takes a refreshingly global perspective on cinema. I’m
Carolina A. Miranda, arts and urban design columnist at the Los Angeles Times, with the week’s essential culture news and Washington dogfluencers:
The legacy of Chicano graphics
“Mujer de Mucha Enagua, PA’ TI XICANA,” 1999, by Yreina D. Cervántez collages images that reflect a range of artistic influences.
(Yreina D. Cervántez / SAAM)
Corn tortillas and edible ink.
Those were the highly unorthodox materials employed by a group of four Bay Area artists in the mid-2000s who called themselves
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The influence of José Guadalupe Posada leaps to life on multiple Grateful Dead albums and explodes across the Day of the Dead.
Yet few people have heard of the Mexican printmaker.
José Guadalupe Posada, Art Hazelwood, Jim Nikas and Marsha Shaw, produced at Mission Gráfica, Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts, “La Calavera 99% (The 99% Skull)” 2012, serigraph on paper.
Organizers at the Albuquerque Museum hope to remedy that omission with “José Guadalupe Posada: Legendary Printmaker of Mexico,” online at cabq.gov/posada and in the museum through May 23, 2021.
Born in Aguascalientes, Posada was a Mexican artist who lived more than 100 years ago. He worked as a lithographer, engraver and cartoonist.
“As a non-collecting institution … several potential paths to financial stability could include endowing the mural in place … or major donor/s joining current contributors to create a well-funded endowment,” Levy wrote. “Regarding the Rivera, our first choice would be to endow the mural in place, attracting patrons or a partner organization who would create a substantial fund that would enable us to preserve, protect and present the mural to the public.”
Overlooking the city’s famed Fisherman’s Wharf, SFAI is unique in the US: a private institution of higher learning focused on pure art at the expense of more commercial degrees. You don’t matriculate at the San Francisco Art Institute to learn animation with the hope of getting a job at Pixar; you go there to be radical and make radical art.