Student curators at Central Connecticut State University are honoring the late Gilberto Cárdenas, a Latin American sociologist and art collector, with an exhibit for Hispanic Heritage Month.
The exhibition “Perspectivas: In Honor of Gilberto Cárdenas” offers a visual journey through the experiences of Latinos and Latin Americans. It is on display at the Chen Art Gallery through Friday, October 2.
A well-known figure of the Chicano Movement of the 1960s and ‘70s, Cárdenas was a fierce advocate of Latino and Chicano identity in art and academia. He died in July at the age of 79.
Among his achievements, he collected nearly 20,000 pieces of Latino art with his wife Dolores Carrillo García. Cárdenas and García donated a part of that collection to the Latin American, Latino and Caribbean Center at CCSU.
“He wanted [Latino art] to spread all over the world,” said Pricila Cabezas, one of the student curators of the exhibit.
The exhibit features artists of varying backgrounds, including Puerto Rico, Chile, and Mexico. Their artwork depicts themes that are both serious, such as social justice and immigration, and cultural, like family life and faith.
As a Mexican Ecuadorian American herself, Cabezas said she hopes the exhibit expresses how Latinos and Latin Americans live daily life.
“We’re just like everyone else living their lives,” she said.
Carrying on legacy through art curation
Other pieces accompany the artwork from Cárdenas’ collection. Student curator Alyssia Rolfe pointed to one of her favorites: “How do you say Boricua in English?”
“We really wanted to have some Puerto Rican artists in the show because New Britain has such a high population of Puerto Rican individuals,” Rolfe said. “We really wanted to show some love to the community and make sure that they were represented in this.”
Honoring local Latinos and Latin Americans was especially important to Rolfe and her fellow student curators given the ongoing immigration enforcement.
“I wanted to show a love for the Latin community,” she said, “and show them that they have support here in New Britain.”
The acrylic artwork is on loan from Dr. Anthony De Jesús and Dr. Madeline Pérez De Jesús, a local family in West Hartford. Fellow student curator Katherine Plotkin said it’s just one example of the many lessons they learned in art curation.
“All of these pieces need to be transported and insured and evaluated for their value, and they all need to be researched for all the text that you see on the wall, and there's a lot that goes into the placement of the pieces,” Plotkin said.
According to Plotkin, what makes this exhibit so unique is it brings artists into a gallery who often steered clear of those types of spaces, because they wanted their work to be accessible to the public.
“A lot of the artists that [Cárdenas] collected specifically worked outside of the gallery system,” Plotkin said.
“So you get a perspective that you might not normally see in the gallery walls,” she said. “It's something that you might normally see outside the gallery walls and more reaching the public that it's supposed to get to.”
That legacy lives on with Galería Sin Fronteras, a gallery Cárdenas founded in 1986.
Cárdenas did not see the gallery as an alternative to mainstream art galleries, according to the site’s history, but rather “an opportunity to introduce new and important artists to the art world.”
For Cabezas, curating an impactful exhibition is important to carry on this legacy.
“That ability is very important, especially with this kind of topic,” she said, “where it would be nice if everyone knew how Latino and Latin American art is in the world.”
Learn more
The exhibit runs through Friday, October 2 at the Chen Art Gallery at Central Connecticut State University.
Discover more about Latino artists through Galería Sin Fronteras.
