Chicano Art Inside/Outside the Master's House : Cultural Politics and the CARA Exhibition

by de Alba, Alicia Gaspar

• ISBN13: 9780292728059
• ISBN10: 0292728050
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1998-02-01
• Publisher: Univ of Texas Pr

Summary

In the early 1990s, a major exhibition--Chicano Art: Resistance and Affirmation, 1965-1985--toured major museums around the United States. As a first attempt to define and represent Chicano/a art for a national audience, the exhibit attracted both praise and controversy, while raising fundamental questions about the nature of multiculturalism in the U.S. This book presents the first interdisciplinary cultural study of the CARA exhibit. Alicia Gaspar de Alba looks at the exhibit as a cultural text in which the Chicano/a community affirmed itself not as a "subculture" within the U.S. but as an "alter-Native" culture in opposition to the exclusionary and homogenizing practices of mainstream institutions. She also shows how the exhibit reflected the cultural and sexual politics of the Chicano Movement and how it serves as a model of Chicano/a popular culture more generally. Drawing insights from cultural studies, feminist theory, anthropology, and semiotics, this book constitutes a wide-ranging analysis of Chicano/a art, popular culture, and mainstream cultural politics. It will appeal to a diverse audience in all of these fields.

Table of Contents

List of Figures	x
List of Tables	xii
Pre-Face/Pre-CARA	xiii
Acknowledgments	xix
A Theoretical Introduction: Alter-Native Ethnography, a lo rasquache	1	(30)
PART ONE. OPEN HOUSE
The Solar of Chicano/a Popular Culture: Mi casa [no] es su casa	31	(60)
The Color Gallery	88	(3)
PART TWO. CARA'S POLITICS OF REPRESENTATION
Through Serpent and Eagle Eyes: Intercultural Collaboration	91	(28)
Out of the House, the Halo, and the Whore's Mask: The Mirror of Malinchismo	119	(42)
PART THREE. PUBLIC RECEPTION
``Between the Ghetto and the Melting Pot'': Popular Hegemony	161	(38)
Conclusion: The Mutation of Multiculturalism	199	(24)
Appendix A: Selected Viewer Comments	223	(16)
Appendix B: The Organizational Structure of the CARA Exhibition	239	(2)
Notes	241	(38)
Bibliography	279	(18)
Index	297