Installation view of “The City I” at David Shelton Gallery, Houston, 2016 ©Vincent Valdez Photo by Peter Molick, Courtesy of the artist and David Shelton Gallery
On July 1, The Blanton Museum of Art at the University of Texas in Austin opened the doors to a controversial exhibition, Vincent Valdez: The City. The show highlights an expansive and haunting oil painting, “The City I” (2015-16), which spans 30 feet across the wall of their contemporary and modern art gallery space. The massive panorama depicts a gathering of the Ku Klux Klan in modern times, with a Chevy truck, glowing smartphone, and surprisingly malicious-looking, hooded infant coddling a Pikachu plush, marking the scene as unmistakably current.
Vincent Valdez, “Untitled” (2013), from the series The Strangest Fruit, Oil on canvas, 92 x 55 in., Blanton Museum of Art, The University of Texas at Austin, 2016 ©Vincent Valdez
The Blanton sought after the painting in 2016 for its permanent collection. At the time, the museum was already hosting two of Valdez’s paintings in their collection, both from his series The Strangest Fruit. The almost eight-foot high depictions of modern-day Latino American men paint the subjects suspended in empty space, their body language implying that of lynching victims.
Valdez’s work often focuses on the history of Latino hate crimes in the United States, which he refers to as “almost entirely unknown, unheard of, and unspoken in the United States.” Records indicate that there were 547 reported lynchings of Mexican-Americans in Texas and California between 1848 and 1928.
These goals translate to his inspiration behind his City series, in which he tries to explore the connectivity between present racial politics and racial violence of the past — positing that the two eras are not nearly as different as often acknowledged.
Veronica Roberts, the curator of the exhibition and the Blanton’s Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, says the work was scheduled for exhibition immediately following its 2016 acquisition in their earliest available contemporary art opening during the summer of 2017. But these plans changed in the wake of the 2016 election of Donald Trump and nationally publicized acts of racial terror, including “Unite the Right,” a white nationalist riot in Charlottesville, Virginia. “Suddenly,” Roberts said, “we realized the world was a different place.”
The museum made the executive decision to postpone the show, fearing it would be misconstrued as a political action. After moving the opening to the summer of 2018, the Blanton extensively planned the painting’s inauguration for, what Roberts says, was about a year.
In preparation, the museum hosted roundtables in October 2017 with dozens of UT Austin faculty across departments — sociology, media, anthropology, Latino Studies, and economics experts were present. They met for three two-hour sessions, seated directly in front of the painting, an experience Roberts calls “intimate.” She says out of all of the faculty invited, none suggested the painting not be shown.
Installation view of Vincent Valdez: The City at the Blanton Museum of Art, The University of Texas at Austin, 2018. ©Vincent Valdez
Over the course of these meetings, they developed strategies to display the subject matter delicately, choosing to build a façade to block the painting from immediate view outside the gallery and including a content warning on this wall to allow patrons to “choose” to enter the space, according to Roberts. They also wanted to optimize the public educational potential of the painting through the development of an artist talk and a day-long symposium, led by keynote speaker and renowned Black art historian Dr. Kellie Jones. Eleventh and 12th-grade students in the Austin Independent School District will be visiting the museum as a part of their class — part of a “Doing Social Justice” program organized with the Austin Anti-Defamation League. University of Austin professors Dr. Cherise Smith and Dr. Leonard Moore have definite plans to incorporate the exhibition into their course syllabi in the upcoming fall semester.
Following the opening, the museum hosted a talk between Maria Hinojosa, anchor and executive producer of NPR’s Latino USA, and the artist Vincent Valdez. The auditorium where it was held allowed for 300 seats, which they easily filled, and they only regret having to turn away 40 additional patrons because of capacity regulations. Roberts explains that this is a first for the museum during her five years as a curator she’s seen such a large crowd for a museum talk, adding that during the Q&A, a number of audience members were moved to tears.
Vincent Valdez in his studio, 2016. ©Michael Stravato
Valdez’s identity as a Latino-American has been controversial in his depiction of the Ku Klux Klan. Valdez and his supporters cite the sometimes diminished history of the group’s animosity toward Latinos in addition to their widely known terrorization of Black Americans. In tackling such a weighty topic, the museum had conversations with local and national political organizations, including the Anti-Defamation League, about sensitively approaching the topic of racial hatred. According to the New York Times’ reporting, the painting’s controversy was furthered by the museum failing to discuss the opening with the local NAACP.
The San Antonio-born and Houston-based artist focuses especially on the state of Mexican-American racial violence in Texas, the state sharing a border with present-day Mexico and being a hotbed for immigration politics and often hate crimes. The exhibition opening unintentionally aligned with what seems like a crescendo of xenophobia across the United States, in the wake of highly broadcasted immigrant family separation and child detainment, and increasingly contentious conversations about the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). According to a report by the Department of Justice, hate crimes against Latinos have increased by 50% since 2016.
“Latino and Latinx artists have been extremely overlooked in the country and in conversations in the art world,” Roberts says. “I think of [“The City”] as one of the works I’m most proud to have championed.” Roberts considers the painting one of the Blanton’s most significant pieces in their permanent collection.
Vincent Valdez: The City will be on display through October 28 at the Blanton Museum of Art.
Visit their symposium, “Facing Racism: Art and Action” on Thursday, September 27, 2018 (all day). Keynote presentation at 6:30 pm by Dr. Kellie Jones, Associate Professor in Art History and Archaeology and the Institute for Research in African American Studies at Columbia University, New York.
Gallery guides about the show, including an essay by Andrea Lepage, Associate Professor of Art History at Washington and Lee University, and a list of additional readings and resources discussing racial politics, are available in English and Spanish on their website.
Whenin the white ladies in pink hats show their true colors.
When I first saw this this painting in David Shelton’s gallery in Houston in 2016, I’ll admit that it made me uncomfortable. So uncomfortable, in fact, that I left. So uncomfortable, in fact, that I challenged myself to return to see it again. Discomfort is a powerful way for us to learn about ourselves. It’s one of the only ways that we can challenge ourselves to determine what we hold most dear, as well as an undeniable way of challenging what we think we know and asking us to dig deeper into ourselves. The painting’s epic scale, alongside the meticulous beauty and undeniable skill with which this ugly subject matter is portrayed, adds to the discomfort. The dissonance that happens as a result of these things can make us feel the need for control. And, thus, our judgmental response is born.
I’m reminded of Charles Danto’s assertion that despite varied approaches, a work of art is always defined by two essential criteria: meaning and embodiment, as well as one additional criterion contributed by the viewer…interpretation. Today, more than ever, I am all too aware of the role that the visitor has in closing the feedback loop in the much-desired circular communication of the post-modern museum. That’s why this work, the dialogue around it, and its presence in a university art museum’s collection is so very important.
I think it’s also important to consider this work within the context of the museum that has acquired it. The first university art museum in the US, the Yale University Art Gallery, was established in the 1830s. This was followed by a host of others in the mid to late 19th and early 20th century, establishing the presence of art museums as a fixture on university campuses. Recognizing the importance of original works of art in the forming of the overall mind and heart of students, universities committed themselves to providing access to collections intended for the support of the academics and critical thinking exercises that were taking place around them. In fact, in a 1942 publication, Laurence Vail Coleman, then Director of the American Association of Museums, compared university museums to laboratories or other academic research resources and further emphasized his belief that they are equally essential for any serious institution that is in the business of developing its student body in a holistic manner.
Moving forward to this century, there has been a renewed critical interest and emphasis on university museums, not only as repositories of important and significant collections, but also as places where knowledge is organized and presented–as well as questions asked, in terms of ourselves and society. In times in which we see a shift of who exactly gets to be the “authority,” objects and works of art–the most immediate commentary and visual evidence that we can convey–hold new ways of presenting ideas and challenging questions to wider audiences. As a result, we must acknowledge, as well as remind ourselves and remember, that the university museum does, in fact, differ greatly from other art museums and so must our expectations of what we see there. The fact that the public has access is not something that should change the fact that university art museums can, and should, offer more intellectually risk-taking and challenging programs, exhibitions, and acquisitions to their collections. As I see it, the Blanton, as well as its curatorial department, is fulfilling their mission, as well as their philosophical mandate.
If you desire to feel uncomfortable I suggest you walk into a haunted house.
It’s a confrontational piece in scale- effective to make anyone who stands in front of it able to understand the horror of physically confronting organized terrorists- hate groups that could turn and go after them on a whim. I’d like to see it up close to see if what there is visible in the faces is as damaged and smirking as the real thing. What I’m curious about is why Valdez’s identity as a Latino-American has been controversial in his depiction of the Ku Klux Klan? I’ve been in two local community counter-protests when the Klan crossed state lines to rally in TN, and all they mostly rant on about is Latinos nowadays.
The author is the ‘Black friend’ coming over to look like this whole situation isn’t racist. Complicency in the arts is a huge problem.