[photo credit: The Huntington]
“Second Sundays: Radical Histories” celebrates “Radical Histories: Chicano Prints from the Smithsonian American Art Museum,” presenting 60 works by some 40 artists and collectives spanning more than six decades of Chicano printmaking as a form of resistance, community building, and cultural reclamation. The exhibition traces how Chicano artists have used printmaking to address labor, immigration, borders, and war, capturing pivotal moments in community activism beginning with the 1965 Delano Grape Strike that led to the formation of the United Farm Workers labor union.
Los Jornaleros del Norte, an Altadena-based band regarded as the soundtrack of the immigrant labor movement, headlines with three half-hour musical sets. The group formed after an immigration raid in the City of Industry in 1995. “That’s when we decided we were going to sing our own stories. We had no one to tell them,” said Omar León, reflecting on the band’s origins.
The band’s mission is “to inform, educate, organize, and mobilize day workers, sensitize the general community about day labor related issues, and denounce the abuses committed against them.”
Curator-led conversations explore how Chicano artists used printmaking as a tool for resistance and cultural reclamation. Additional programming includes a printmaking workshop with Self Help Graphics & Art, family readings of “Barrio Rising: The Protest that Built Chicano Park,” and a free commemorative poster by Alfonso Aceves of Kalli Arte Collective.
Second Sundays: Radical Histories will run on Sunday, December 14 from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens, MaryLou and George Boone Gallery, 1151 Oxford Road, San Marino. For more information, call (626) 405-2100 or visit https://www.huntington.org/event/second-sundays-radical-histories. Tickets: Free with general admission.
