Our America

"On the one hand, the affirmation that Latino art is American art is simply a fact. Latino artists are American by birth, citizenship, residence, education, experience, and even sacrifice-a factor made clear by the large number of Latino artists that have served in the United States armed forces. On the other hand, the statement poses a challenge to the ways in which we traditionally think about what constitutes American art."-E. Carmen RamosIs Latino art an integral part of modern American art? Presenting one hundred major artworks from the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Our America seeks to "recalibrate" enduring concepts about American national culture by exploring how one group of artists-those of Latin American descent and heritage-express their relationship to American art, history, and culture.Highlights include an installation altar by Amalia Mesa-Bains, the "recycled" films of Raphael Montañez Ortiz, and a 1960 geometric painting by Carmen Herrera. Other notable artists include Olga Albizu, Melesio "Mel" Casas, Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons, Margarita Cabrera, Enrique Chagoya, Teresita Fernández, Ken Gonzales-Day, Luis Jiménez, Ana Mendieta, Pepón Osorio, Sophie Rivera, Freddy Rodri;guez, and John Valadez, among many others.Author and curator E. Carmen Ramos is the Smithsonian American Art Museum's curator of latino art. She has organized numerous shows, including the fifth biennial at El Museo del Barrio in New York City in 2007.Dr. Tomás Ybarra-Frausto, the "grandfather" of this subject, and formerly associate director for creativity and culture at the Rockefeller Foundation in New York, has written and published extensively on US/latino cultural issues"--