Twenty-one years ago, Chon Noriega was a visiting scholar at Cornell when he co-curated an art exhibition that sparked a student revolution. He will reflect on those events in a sesquicentennial talk titled “‘Cornell on Trial’: The University and the Creative Arts, Revisited,” Oct. 28 at 4:30 p.m. in the English Department Lounge, 258 Goldwin Smith Hall.
“Chon Noriega’s visit will allow students and faculty to reflect on the role of art exhibitions and student activism as a catalyst for political change on our very own campus,” says Ananda Cohen Suarez, assistant professor of history of art in the College of Arts and Sciences.
The 1993 exhibition Noriega curated, “Revelaciones/Revelations: Hispanic Art of Evanescence,” featured the work of Latino artist Daniel J. Martinez and consisted of a series of black walls amid the pathways on the Arts Quad, topped with messages such as, “In the rich man’s house, the only place to spit is in his face.”
Students added their own messages to the artwork – until anti-Latino slogans appeared.
The vandalism inspired protests that led to the student takeover of Day Hall and, ultimately, the establishment of the Latino Living Center and the expansion of the Latino Studies Program.
Noriega is a professor in the University of California, Los Angeles, Department of Film, Television and Digital Media, and he is director of UCLA’s Chicano Studies Research Center and adjunct curator at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). He is author of
“Shot in America: Television, the State and the Rise of Chicano Cinema” and editor of nine books dealing with Latino media, performance and visual art. He is editor of “A Ver: Revisioning Art History,” a book series dedicated to the contributions of U.S. Latino artists to American and world art history, and since 1996, he has been editor of Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies, the flagship journal for the field since its founding in 1970.
For the past decade, Noriega has been active in media policy and professional development, for which Hispanic Business named him to its list of Top 100 Most Influential Hispanics. He is co-founder of the 500-member National Association of Latino Independent Producers and served two terms on the board of directors of the Independent Television Service, the largest source of independent project funding in public television.
In addition to his work in media, Noriega has developed numerous arts projects, including L.A. Xicano, which comprised five exhibitions for the Getty Foundation’s Pacific Standard Time initiative (2011-12). He has also curated or co-curated exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art, LACMA and Triangle France, among other venues. He has helped recover and preserve independent films and video art, including the first three Chicano-directed feature films. In 2009, Noriega curated and co-hosted a monthlong festival called “Latino Images in Film” on Turner Classic Movies.
Noriega’s talk is sponsored by the Latino Studies Program, the Department of History of Art and the Department of English Critical Race Lecture Series.
Linda B. Glaser is a staff writer for the College of Arts and Sciences.
