Exhibiting Mestizaje: Mexican (American) Museums in the Diaspora

In this authoritative study, Davalos challenges the sometimes hidden, sometimes blatant assumptions that underlie the practice of creating museum exhibits, and asks what happens when people of Mexican (American) descent put themselves in command of the collection, display, and interpretation of their cultural products. Davalos pays particular attention to museum and cultural centres in major Mexican diaspora communities, including the Mexican Fine Arts Museum in Chicago and Galeria de la Raza in San Francisco. Throughout she critically examines Chicano, Mexican, Mestizo, and Mexican American subjectivities as they are expressed in curatorial decisions and practices, in educational materials and catalogue texts, and in the performances and other public events that accompany museum exhibits. That practice -- what Davalos calls 'exhibiting mestizaje' -- produces complex representations of Mexican (Americans). Davalos's analysis shows clearly that the value of mestizaje and diaspora lies in their ability to create a cultural poetics from fluidity and conflict.

About the Author :
Karen Mary Davalos is assistant professor of Chicana/o Studies at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. She won a Smithsonian Institution Latino Studies Fellowship in 2000.

Review :
. . . "Exhibiting Mestizaje" is a must-read for any cultural critic, art historian, or native ethnographer . . . Ýit¨ contributes to the ongoing dialectic in a highly readable, theoretically sophisticated, often-brilliant text. ""Exhibiting Mestizaje" is a deliberate, well-developed book. The narrative is densely written but worth every effort to read with care." ""Exhibiting Mestizaje" is an important work and, because of Davalos's strong and sustained critique of Chicano nationalism, is also likely to be controversial. It offers both a rich, in-depth case study of a highly regarded Mexican cultural institution, the Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum in Chicago, and a critical study of Chicano/a art that recognizes the complex representational practices of people of Mexican descent. Davalos draws on different theoretical models from multiple disciplines. As a result, the book will undoubtedly make a lasting contribution to the field of museum research and studies, gender stidies, Chicano/a studies, cultural studies, and art history. . . Davalos has contributed a very important body of work in "Exhibiting Mestizaje."" "Davalos's exciting, nuanced study makes . . . significant contributions to the history of Chicano/a art. She provides an innovative new approach that circumvents traditional binary judgements of Chicano/a art as either folkloric or Marxist. . . ." ." . . "Exhibiting Mestizaje is a must-read for any cultural critic, art historian, or native ethnographer . . . [it] contributes to the ongoing dialectic in a highly readable, theoretically sophisticated, often-brilliant text."