“A 21ST Century Mode of Accessing Art and Experiencing Culture”

By Dr. Pamela Anne Quiroz and Juana Guzmán

Under the leadership of Dr. Pamela Anne Quiroz, Director of the University of Houston’s (UH) Center for Mexican American and Latino Studies (CMALS), plans are underway to launch the groundbreaking digital board, Latino cARTographies: Mapping the Past, Present, and Future of Houston’s Latino Visual Art.

This portable, bilingual, and interactive digital board funded by the University of Houston is the result of a three-year collaboration led by Dr. Quiroz, with the curatorial leadership of former vice president of the National Mexican Museum of Art in Chicago, Juana Guzman, the CMALS Research Team, and the International Gibson Group.

Rigo Miller, Basurda de la Tempestad, 2010, 10 x 20 ft. painting

The idea for Latino cARTographies began when Dr. Quiroz organized the city of Houston to host the country’s premier Latino art event, Latino Art Now!  Dr. Quiroz conceived the idea for the digital board and viewed it as a way to create a dynamic but permanent tribute to the Latino artists of Houston. She then persuaded the Gibson Group to collaborate with CMALS to achieve this goal. The result is a twenty-first-century mode to access the arts and experience culture – Latino cARTographies –that maps the past, present, and future of Houston’s Latino art. By utilizing technology that preserves, represents, and promotes Houston’s Latino visual arts and communities in an equitable and inclusive manner, CMALS is transforming how we experience art in the twenty-first century.

Center for Mexican American Studies-University of Houston’s Latino Art Now Billboard Project & Expressway, HTX ART Bus- created by Veronica Cabrera Morena and Mobile Art Studio for the Artists, founded by artist Tony Parana.