This spring, Pennsylvania College of Art & Design hosted six distinguished speakers as part of a lecture series featuring curators, art historians, and artists. The presentations brought a multitude of perspectives to our College community centering on exhibitions, history of Chicano/a/x art, and individual contemporary creative practices.

“COVID-19 canceled many activities and imposed countless restrictions on the exhibitions the program,” says PCA&D Director of Exhibitions Alana Coates, “but the possibility of hosting these artists, curators, and community activists via Zoom allowed for a greater number of speakers in one term and provided an excellent outreach opportunity for our Lancaster community. While our doors were closed to outside visitors, we were still able to bring stellar programming to our city.”

The series was open to the public and organized by The Gallery at PCA&D in partnership with the Liberal Arts Department and the College’s Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.

It was the second speaker series Coates has organized since her arrival at PCA&D, following last spring’s nine-speaker program presenting topics on art and the environment. Scientists, government officials, and artists visited campus in the spring of 2020 to complement environmental research assignments that were happening campus-wide.

The 2021 lecture series was recorded for archives and is compiled below

ISABEL SERVANTEZ

A Critical Perspective on the State of Chicano Art — a contemporary use

Feb. 8, 2021

Isabel Servantez presented a conversation on the contemporary use of the 1980 essay, “A Critical Perspective on the State of Chicano Art” by Malaquias Montoya and Lezlie Salkowitz-Montoya. Probing the text allows students and readers to investigate how artwork exists and acts within and outside accepted modes of art consumption, including museums and galleries. Servantez challenges students to consider how their own work is effective or ineffective once it moves from art studios into public and/or private art spaces. Examples of artists that fit consistencies and contradictions surrounding the essay act as a catalyst for discussion.

Servantez is currently the Semmes Foundation Curatorial Intern in Museum Studies at the McNay Art Museum in San Antonio, Texas. He holds a Master of Arts degree in Modern and Contemporary Art History from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His scholarship is focused on Chicano, Chicana, Chicanx, and Latinx art.

Isabel Servantez’s artist talk can be viewed here:

Sponsored by The Gallery at PCA&D in partnership with the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion and the Liberal Arts Department.

JOSÉ VILLALOBOS

Challenging Toxic Masculinity and the Marginalization of Queer Bodies

Feb. 22, 2021

José Villalobos juxtaposes patriarchal, religious, and social structures that marginalize queer identity. Using found objects, he manipulates material through the context of self-identity as he examines gender roles within family structures and culture. In his work, Villalobos protests the toxicity of machismo through the use of signs and symbols of Norteño culture. 

Some of Villalobos’s prestigious accolades include the Joan Mitchell Painters and Sculptors Grant and residency, Artist Lab Fellowship Grant, and the Tanne Foundation award. His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally including at Artpace, Albright College, Blanton Museum of Art, K Space Contemporary, McNay Art Museum, Mexic-Arte Museum, El Paso Museum of Art, and Museo de Arte de Cuidad Juárez.  

View the José Villalobos PCA&D lecture here:

Hosted by PCA&D’s Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in partnership with the Liberal Arts Department and The Gallery at PCA&D.

SARAH CASTILLO

Paths of an Artist

March 8, 2021

Sarah Castillo is an artist based in San Antonio, Texas, working in mixed media. She is co-founder of Mas Rudas Collective and was the founder of Lady Base Gallery, a premier platform for women and LGBTQIA artists in South Texas. With a Masters in Bicultural Studies, Castillo is highly engaged with identity formation, history, and cultural memory within her artistic and curatorial practice. She has exhibited at the University of Texas at San Antonio, Artpace, Contemporary Art Museum Houston, Institute of Texan Cultures, Mexic-Arte Museum, Mission Cultural Center of Latino Arts and was selected for the IV Biennial in El Paso and Cuidad Juárez in 2015. She was awarded a National Association for Latino Arts and Culture (NALAC) Fund for the Arts: San Antonio Artist Grant in 2016.

View Sarah Castillo’s Lecture at PCA&D here:

Sponsored by The Gallery at PCA&D in partnership with the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

MICHAEL MARTÍNEZ

Contradictions & Paradoxes I Have Not Yet Figured Out

March 15, 2021

Working artist Michael Martínez discussed their journey as a non-binary artmaker and worker. Underscoring the importance of media literacy, and introspection, Martínez argued there’s a dire need for creatives to actively imagine a better future amidst the uncertainty of the present and the embers of the past.

Martínez is a conceptual artist whose work deconstructs false dichotomies surrounding desire and the expression of gender. Employing a multidisciplinary praxis, Martínez seeks to underscore the diversity of the human condition via new media, installation, and performance. A Texas native, Martínez studied Intermedia at the Pacific Northwest College of Art, in Portland, Oregon.  

View Michael Martínez’s PCA&D Lecture here:

Hosted by the The Gallery at PCA&D and PCA&D’s Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in partnership with the Liberal Arts Department.

MARISSA DEL TORO

Curating Xicanx

April 5, 2021

Marissa Del Toro is an independent curator and art historian of contemporary, modern, and ancient art of the Americas (primarily Latin America and the U.S.). In both her professional and personal life, she continues to work towards the promotion and advocacy for diverse narratives within art. Del Toro is currently guest curating the upcoming exhibition, Cruising the Horizon: New York at The Latinx Project NYU in Spring 2021 and is the co-curator of the upcoming traveling exhibition, Xican-a.o.x. Body. She was recently the DAMLI Curatorial Fellow at Phoenix Art Museum from 2018-2020 where she was the project manager for the exhibition catalog and mid-career survey of Teresita Fernández: Elemental, co-organized with Pérez Art Museum, Miami. She previously held positions at Santa Barbara Museum of Art from 2017-2018; the Getty Research Institute as a Graduate Intern from 2016-2017; UTSA Art Gallery as the Curatorial Assistant Intern from 2014 to 2015. In July 2015, she participated in the Latino Museum Studies Program at the Smithsonian Latino Center.

Marissa Del Toro’s PCA&D Lecture can be seen here:

Sponsored by The Gallery at PCA&D in partnership with the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

NANSI GUEVARA

Making Art That Centers Home

April 12, 2021

Nansi Guevara is a designer, artist, and teacher based in Brownsville, Texas. Originally from Laredo, Texas, she holds a bachelor’s in Fine Arts in Design from the University of Texas at Austin and a Master’s in Education from Harvard University. She is currently focused on design, education, and community public art to create spaces of resistance and affirmation, and economies of community cultural wealth and support. She is a graphic designer, an illustrator, and a textile/rasquache based public artist. She runs her own freelance design & education practice, Corazón Contento, based out of Brownsville, Texas. She is co-founder of Las Imaginistas and works as an adjunct lecturer at the School of Art at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. Nansi has been awarded residencies, fellowships, & grants from the NEA, Artplace America, a Blade of Grass, NALAC, and most recently the Santa Fe Art Institute Artist Residency.

Watch Nansi Guevara’s PCA&D Lecture here:

Sponsored by The Gallery at PCA&D in partnership with the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion and the Liberal Arts Department