Xicanx Futurity exhibition at Manetti Shrem Museum

Intersectional Feminism in Museums: Panel Discussion

This discussion explores recent exhibitions and museum approaches that challenge mythologies about sexuality, gender, race and power. How are museums responding in light of #MeToo, LGBTQI advocacy, Black and Brown Lives Matter, and other activist movements (e.g. ongoing at the Whitney Museum; and Brooklyn Museum in 2016)? Museum leaders address the aims and challenges in confronting societal inequities in diverse cultural contexts.

(Supplemental Resource: La Tanya Autry's Social Justice & Museums Resource List).

A brief tour of Xicanx Futurity with guest curator María Esther Fernández will precede the panel discussion, meeting in the Museum’s lobby at 4:00 pm.

Panelists: 
Abby Chen, Head of Contemporary Art/Senior Associate Curator, Asian Art Museum
María Esther Fernández, Chief Curator, Triton Museum of Art and Guest Curator, Xicanx Futurity, Manetti Shrem Museum 
Heidi Rabben, Curator, Contemporary Jewish Museum
Maria Jenson, Creative and Executive Director, SOMARTS Cultural Center

Moderator: 
Paula Birnbaum, Professor and Academic Director, Museum Studies Program, Department of Art + Architecture, University of San Francisco

Co-sponsored by the UC Davis Feminist Research Institute

Xicanx Futurity Exhibition

This exhibition focuses on the work of six Xicana artists: Celia Herrera Rodríguez, Felicia “Fe” Montes, Gina Aparicio, Gilda Posada, Melanie Cervantes, and Margaret “Quica” Alarcon. These artists engage in an intergenerational dialogue that centers Indigenous forms of communal and hemispheric ceremony, rooted in sacred relations. Collectively, their respective artistic practices inform an emerging conceptual and aesthetic decolonial social practice within Chicana/o/x Art. 

Guest Curators: Carlos Jackson, Associate Professor & Chair, Chicanx Studies, UC Davis, Maria Esther Fernandez, Chief Curator, Triton Museum of Art and Susy Zepeda, Assistant Professor Chicanx Studies, UC Davis.

On view January 29–May 5 2019

Link: https://manettishremmuseum.ucdavis.edu/current-exhibitions#xicanxfuturity

Additional Programming Highlights

Cherríe Moraga In Conversation

4-5:30 p.m. Feb. 14

Moraga is an internationally recognized poet, essayist and playwright whose professional life began in 1981, with her co-editorship of the groundbreaking feminist anthology, The Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color. She is the author of several works of her own, and is a professor of English at UC Santa Barbara. She will be in conversation with co-curator Susy Zepeda, Chicana/o Studies, UC Davis.

Decolonizing Healing: Everyday Rituals & Remedies

3:30-5 p.m. March 5

This plática/discussion centers practitioners engaged in thoughtful dialogue about decolonizing healing. Zepeda is in dialogue with a Sacramento folk herbalist and “kitchen witch” Lola Venado.