Season 2 Episode 12: Cracking the Wall Open: Murals and Community with Willie Herrón

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[Theme music plays]

Nanibah Chaon: I see Willie Herrón's work as being a conduit between mural work graffiti work and the fine art world. And I think that has been very important in shaping the way that we view Chicano Chicana works made in the public format.

Willie Herrón: This whole anti-graffiti attitude was major. And the way that I felt that I was communicating to the home boys, communicating to that lifestyle that my brothers were involved in and that influenced me in the first place to create "The Wall That Cracked Open" was that incorporating the graffiti and the graffiti becoming an integral part of the work of art like "The Plumed Serpent" also incorporated graffiti.

Ben Gillespie: Hi and welcome to ARTiculated. I'm Ben Gillespie, I work as the oral historian here at the Archives of American Art. This podcast receives support from the Alice L. Walton Foundation.

Since 1958, the Archives of American Art has been building the largest collection of oral histories related to the visual arts in the world. These more than 2,500 long form interviews. Give witness to history as it unfolded through the voices of the figures who shaped and reimagined it. This episode is the sixth in a series of six, each curated by a contemporary artist in response to, and in conversation with past speakers from the archives oral history program. Our guest is Nanibah Chacon.

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Nanibah Chacon: Hi, my name is Nanibah Chacon I am an artist, muralist, a painter, and an illustrator. I'm from Albuquerque, New Mexico, and also from the Navajo Nation. is, the majority of the work that I create is public work pieces in the form of murals, and a lot of that is community-engaged.

I enjoy creating this work because I like bringing in landscape. I like bringing in people and culture into the context of the work and being able to have work that's a hundred percent accessible. This way of creating work has always been at the forefront of my philosophies on why, why I wanted to become an artist.

Ben Gillespie: Chacon spent time with the oral history of Willie Herrón, an East Los Angeles-based muralist and musician known for his community outreach and enrichment as well as his innovation with graffiti's graphic lexicon. Herrón was interviewed by Jeffrey Rangel in 2000. Listen to history through Nanibah Chacon's headphones:

Nanibah Chacon: Willie Herrón was born in 1951 and he has had an art career that has spanned over 40 years and spans outside of mural making. His career includes conceptual art and music performance art mural, as well as other public artworks.

One of the areas that I feel Herrón is most known for being one of the founding members of ASCO, an LA artist collective whose members included Patsy Valdez, Gronk, Henry Gamboa, and they were all influential Chicano Chicanoa artists in their own right. Herrón’s work, I think because of these different avenues that his work went into—it didn't only stay within mural work, but breached into all of these different areas—was able to speak and kind of infiltrate many, many different types of people and movements within and beyond Chicano culture itself.

Of course, his work is seen not only in Los Angeles. His mural works are still preserved and still reside there. But his contemporary works can see, be seen globally.

I see Willie Herrón's work as being a conduit between mural work graffiti work and the fine art world. And I think that that has been very important in shaping the way that we view Chicano works and work made in the public format. He makes very clear distinctions on why it's important to make work that's in the public realm very pure and very indicative of the places that they reside. And his ability to capture the landscapes and the environments that he creates his work in and not make it contrived, not make it about making his own statement but rather kind of weaving in the stories that are already integrated into those landscapes into the imagery and into the context of the work is very important. It's almost that he's saying that his work is in conversation with the landscape and with the people and with the concepts that are already residing there

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and that his murals and that his ideas around that aren't to be an authority on any of the topics or the subjects but rather to add to the conversation of the community.

What I thought was the most interesting about his early childhood and its relationship to the mural-making process is his emphasis on how his grandparents were Pachucos. And think understanding that his voice as a young brown person, of course, was very nomadic and it traveled all of these different places, he was able to gather up all of these experiences, but to look at his grandparents and understand that they were Pachucos and kind of lived within that subculture, I think is really understanding that when we have a voice and when we're able to define our voice, that it an ounce of bravery and rebellion, I think, to really find that. And I think a lot of the Pachuco culture was really about defining that. It was understanding that, aside from being brown, from being an immigrant, from being migratory, from living within a country that seems to reject you even though you are indigenous to this landscape more than those that reject you out of it, that you still find ways, ways to breach and define your own culture and your ways of being.

What I think about his mural work that is important is that he has never attempted to erase the landscapes and not acknowledge the landscapes where the work resides.

A lot of mural work often refers to histories, reciting the history. History is basically the greatest story ever told by millions and millions of people. So there is never a truth to any history.

His work as a muralist always refrained from recollecting, any one history. Instead, it integrated all histories. It integrated his own history, his own background, his own observations, and his own learnings, but also what was contemporary and what was there, and also the presence of what was already happening on walls and what was happening around him and kind of integrated into an entire mesh of ideas and concepts.

Willie Herrón: I spent a lot of time…my parents were divorced when I was eight years old, so I spent a lot of time with my grandparents. My grandfather, originally from Chihuahua and my grandmother American Indian from northern California. So they had a great deal of influence on me growing up, for the mere reason that they were a very tight, very close-knit relationship where I didn't have that. I didn't feel like I belonged with my mom. And I didn't feel like I belonged with my dad. Since they were separated, I kind of felt like I didn't belong anywhere. So my grandparents gave me that stability, gave me the feeling like I had something and I came from some place. And then when my mom kind of got on her feet, after the divorce, she started to work in downtown L.A. in a donut shop. And then we were able to afford to move into Maravilla Projects in the late fifties. So I spent maybe a good three or four years going to the elementary school there in Belvidere Park. And then, because my mom was having I guess such a hardship with supporting us, I opted to go and move with my uncle back east who was in the military. So I spent several months in different states traveling with him from station to station and going to different schools, all the way back to Georgia. So I spent about a year and a half with him and in 1962, I won my first art award. And I was in the fifth grade, I believe, when I won my first state art award and that was in Kentucky. As an artist. And that kind of really propelled me into making me feel really like I had something that I should follow through with. And I got a lot of support from people I didn't know.

Jeffrey Rangel: So where was the initial desire to start making art coming from?

Willie Herrón: I think it was a desire and a need to communicate

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but not having anyone to communicate to. So I did a lot of…I mean, I had extensive sketchbooks as a kid. I was already like developing sketchbooks. And so when I did all that traveling for that year and a half with my Uncle George, my book was filled with landscapes, filled with animals, and just drawings of things that I saw. I really experienced all the seasons which I hadn't experienced up to the age of—

Jeffrey Rangel: So powerful.

Willie Herrón: Yeah. I mean, to walk through the snow. To be in heavy rain storms while we're driving in the night. And lightning storms. And then seeing beautiful horizons. I really became, I think, very, very sensitive to nature. And I think that really fulfilled me in a way that I really couldn't explain. I just felt that it was a natural thing for me to pick up on that and to want to document it. And it was all about everything happening around me, wanting to document it at an early age. I just felt a need for that.

Jeffrey Rangel: I can already see some themes developing in terms of murals and documenting what's going on around you.

Willie Herrón: Right. And being so that nature is so huge. I mean, you can't even look one way! Everything is huge. That was my natural instinct, to create huge art, to create huge pieces. And to me, I still could create bigger works. The opportunity doesn't come along to do anything any bigger. So I've worked as big as I've had the opportunity to work, basically.

Jeffrey Rangel: So were there any teachers in those early years, up to fifth grade, or this is all self-taught?

Willie Herrón: No. This is all self-taught. I basically went…once I was approaching further out of the edge of the Midwest, getting closer to Georgia and Tennessee and Kentucky, I spent very little time over there but that's where I started to learn foreign languages in elementary school. And I started to become more aware of things outside of my Spanish-speaking home or the way I was raised. I wasn't raised speaking English; I was raised speaking Spanish predominantly. So I had this sort of a state of confusion with education because I didn't…I wasn't picking any of that up in school. I wasn't picking up the language I was used to growing up, and I wasn't picking up any of the history that I remember growing up and my grandparents talking to me about things that happened in Mexico. Things that were happening in East L.A. My uncles were all involved in the zoot suit period. My grandparents talked to me about the whole zoot suit period.

Jeffrey Rangel: Do you remember what their take was on it?

Willie Herrón: Well, their take was that it was basically a political take over and the pachucos got finger-pointed basically as the troublemakers. They were the punks of that era and everything that went wrong, they blamed the Pachucos. And they were like the scapegoats to anything that was happening locally and so were all the pickers from across the border. And I mean, that's still an issue today. Just that now the Pachucos dress different. [laughs]

Jeffrey Rangel: Exactly. But they're still getting the finger pointed at them.

Willie Herrón: Yeah. A lot of our artists are Pachucos in their own right still because it's a lot of that same, similar mentality. We're just different but we get blamed for a lot of things that go wrong.

[Musical transition]

Nanibah Chacon: Coming from a graffiti background, going into being a muralist wasn't a first choice that I had thought of because I saw those worlds as being very different I felt like graffiti was this art form that emerged from the streets and it had a conversation with the streets it had a conversation with and it seemed like it was its own language its own culture,  it had its own ability to live kind of in isolation as its own culture murals. On the other hand, I think I always saw them as being something that was these sanctioned walls. It was kind of like an extension maybe of a larger community, and sometimes I didn't always see those images reflective of the community I saw them know kind of having these nationalistic approaches to imagery or maybe having a narrative approach of history that sometimes seemed false or wasn't anything that I could relate to.

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Going into East LA and seeing murals that were reflective of Chicano culture reflective of Indigenous culture, reflective of movements was very very influential because I understood them and I understood my placement of them. When I first had seen Willie's murals at City Terrace, parts of his murals, especially the wall that was cracked open piece has integration of graffiti at the bottom of the mural itself. For me that was him not trying to cover up any parts or sections of the history of that landscape and of that street that had already existed. It was acknowledging the people that were in that vicinity and acknowledging their histories their truths their own levels of communication, and it was also something that I understood. It was an integration and a weaving between the landscape the culture, peoples, and language and using that to form new ideas and have new connections.

Even when looking at old masters of muralists I think that—and even to now—that it became very reflective of whoever was commissioning the piece whether that was a city or whether that was a school or an institution. To see his work starting as a muralist but also being very free was very inspirational.

Willie Herrón: I think "The Cracked Wall" put me under the microscope because at that time there was throughout the community this anti-graffiti which is still common today. This whole anti-graffiti attitude was major. And the way that I felt that I was communicating to the home boys, communicating to that lifestyle that my brothers were involved in and that influenced me in the first place to create "The Wall That Cracked Open" was that incorporating the graffiti and the graffiti becoming an integral part of the work of art like "The Plumed Serpent" also incorporated graffiti.

I was being criticized by the art world. I was being criticized by other artists for the most part for incorporating graffiti rather than approaching muralism and approaching graffiti by using murals as a replacement and getting rid of the graffiti. That was the early murals from the early seventies, the late sixties where artists were dealing with graffiti and were being hired in the early seventies to do murals was so that they could get rid of and replace the graffiti. And I did not do that with my murals. I did the total opposite. I embraced graffiti and graffiti became part of my work because I respected the voice of the community. And I added to their voice. I didn't get rid of their voice and say, "My voice is superior." Again, it's the image that my uncles portrayed, that machismo, that street savvy with the intellect wanting to fuse rather than saying, "I'm better than this" or "You're better than that. And we're separate."

Jeffrey Rangel: That's interesting, Willie, because I think the way that…there seems to continue to be a lot of controversy about graffiti, not only as an eyesore or a system of signification for youth and stuff like that but in terms of Chicano aesthetics, Chicano art aesthetics. And literature says that graffiti was one of the sources in which artists of your generation were drawing from and inspired their work that was incorporated into murals. And so on the one hand, there's this drive to cover it up with murals, to wipe it away. On the other hand, there is a recognition in it and evaluation of it where it's actually incorporated into the artwork. In a different way that maybe it's replicated into art work rather than incorporated the way that you're talking about.

Willie Herrón: Right.

Jeffrey Rangel: I wonder how all that's co-existing at the same time in your circle of artists.

Willie Herrón: The comment that comes to mind with what you just said right now is—and I have a lot of respect for a lot of artists that were doing works before I came along and continue to do works—but I don't feel that compelled when I view a work of art that's a piece of canvas that was done in an enclosed controlled environment and it incorporates that street savvy.

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I have a totally different perspective of it than the graffiti that is the real graffiti that was really painted by the real people it represents and most of them aren't artists in a traditional sense. They're not the type of artist that can show at MOCA, that can show at LATC or at the University or at the museums. And then in the middle seventies, you had the Los Four exhibit where they incorporated graffiti in almost every single one of their pieces. It was very difficult for me at that time to look at it and for me to accept it as the way that I accepted the existing graffiti that was already part of the landscape. Because it was created consciously for the purpose of exhibition. And that approach just made it very difficult for me that when I attended along with Gronk and Harry and Patssi and they, at that time, I feel strongly that they agreed with me. They agreed with that idea which really I thank Los Four for that.

Jeffrey Rangel: How so?

Willie Herrón: Because they made me realize what I didn't want to do. I didn't want to end up from "The Cracked Wall," "The Plumed Serpent" and now I'm doing graffiti-incorporated paintings hanging at the museum. They did what I—it crystalized in my head that I definitely don't want to do that. I don't want to go there. I don't want my work to end up that way. That it was okay because they had degrees. They went to college, universities and they had their degrees. That's fine. There's a place for their interpretation and their reasoning for that having a purpose. But I didn't want to go there. I didn't want to be in that circle in that realm. So we costumed to the max. We painted our faces. We hung things from our bodies. And we went to that exhibit like we were going to a costume party or like we were going trick or treating. And we just went like wanting people to see some part of Chicano art that still didn't exist, that wasn't in that show that we felt had to be in that show. So we attended that exhibit, the opening, but we were moving works of art that then ASCO became integrated into the Los Four opening. We performed without even performing. It was there at the L.A. County Museum.

Jeffrey Rangel: What was the reception of you guys?

Willie Herrón: Oh, people just like had the same similar reaction like they did on the streets when we did a lot of our performances. They had some funny comment to make because they thought that we were funny. It wasn't like . . .

Jeffrey Rangel: They thought of it as humor.

Willie Herrón: Yeah. Humor rather than we were seriously trying to make a statement about Chicano and Chicano art, Chicanismo and where it was headed with the exhibition of graffiti at the museum. And so it wasn't really putting down Los Four because we attended their opening in support of them, but like I said, for me, it crystalized that I'll never do a graffiti painting because Los Four—that's what they do. So I won't do that.

Nanibah Chacon: A lot of the time I think we forget that mural work is different from work that happens inside of a museum because the work inside of a museum is never 100% inclusive. Work on the streets is always a hundred percent inclusive. Anyone can see it at any time. It's there, it's exposed. It is not protected in any. And I think that that differs in the way that you approach the work and the way your sensitivities of understanding how you want to communicate these ideas.

In some ways, it can be very freeing, in some ways you have to be respectful of the people who are there and how their perceptions of it are going to change that work are gonna interact with that work. And I think that that makes a very vulnerable place to create work. And he talks about the vulnerability of creating work with his collaborators and with the other artists in ASCO.

I think that they were very cognizant of each of one another in creating this work, but that their work also played off one of one another. If the objective and the means of creating work in a public space is just to put up your own singular idea and have that work exist so everybody can see it, I think that it is similar to putting up a very large painting and a very large to be admired and it's not too much different than being in a gallery. I think if you put up a work with the intention of it being in conversation with the environment, conversation with people, maybe with youth that you are working with,

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with people that you interact with on the street, with graffiti or tags or markings on a building that are preexistent and you don't aim to cover those up…you aim to, let them live and let them live as part of the piece, as part of preservation. Then I think that you are creating a work that is exceptional and it extends beyond your ego. It extends beyond the limitations of your own mind and the own conversation that you originally set out to have. It changes the work indefinitely.

And I think that leaving space and room for that is what sets Willie's work apart from other muralists in time and really pushed mural making into having this ability to  be fine art, but also to exist and acknowledge the people of a space.

Willie Herrón: I think because primarily we worked in a similar medium to say the pen and ink and the rapidograph approach to expressing ourselves was the common thread. But the way we executed our imagery, I think, there was some similarities, where sometimes it was very easy to say, "Okay, let's do a drawing together." And for us to work on a drawing together made sense because our styles weren't so different that, like you're saying, it's hard sometimes to tell where Gronk left off and where I started off and maybe where Harry left off and Gronk started or where Patssi left off and I started. Sometimes it's hard to tell. But, that I think, when we started to become bored with staying separate and isolated from influencing each other, that's when we truly started to integrate our work together and truly become influenced by each other and not because, "Oh, I see, this Almaraz mural and I like this little section so in my mural, I'm going to do something that's kind of similar because I like that." But it was more like Almaraz calling me and saying, "Help me paint this section right here." And then me going and actually painting that section with him. There's really a difference between how we started off as a group and then how we evolved into actually working on the same pieces together, even though in the beginning when we were working separately, it seemed like we were influencing each other. We probably were but not the same way as when we would actually draw on the same drawing. And I think we did a lot of that. Gronk and I worked a lot together. Patssi and I worked on artworks together. Harry. All of us, we all painted together. We all drew together. And it was a completely different approach and it wasn't traditional in that sense for four artists to work on one piece. And to me, that was what made it Chicano. Was the idea that . . . like when I did the mural, the concept for the mural for the World Cup, was the way the players are from different countries, different ideas, different nationalities and different people work together to achieve one goal. We felt that we were symbolizing Chicanos working together to achieve one goal. And that's by working on the same work of art. There was a design by that.

Jeffrey Rangel: Including performances.

Willie Herrón: Yeah. Including performance, it's like we were telling the world, Chicanos have to get together. We have to work together. We have to respect each other's differences but we have to fuse together and become this integrated puzzle that's complex. And you have all these pieces but they all create . . . Ahora los Veras, the Mexicano drawing where there's like Gronk does five faces, I do three, he does some of the arms, I do some of the fingers. But it's all of us together creating the finished piece. So to me there was that symbolism without us being totally conscious of it. [screaming child in back ground] That's good, man. [chuckles] How old is that guy? Give him a microphone! It's just like, "Oh, is that me?!"

[Musical transition]

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Nanibah Chacon: I think one of the things that we are seeing right now in the form of mural making is this definition of understanding the place and placement of graffiti art and the place and placement of street art and the place and placement of mural art and then public art. And all of those I think are being defined and kind of pushed and pulled in different ways.

One thing that he makes a very clear distinction on is that if we are going to continue on and have this art form in a public, a public format, all of these whatever these are works on walls are in a public format that we also have to be teaching youth how to communicate in these ways. And not necessarily that we should have any kind of jurisdiction on the kind of content that they're making, but that they have the tools and knowledge to be able to create works like this, however they choose to do it. I feel like that is again, you know, understanding art as revolution. It's one thing to be able to create work and have it exist on this very intellectual level, but if that, if that work isn't, isn't breaching youth, youth is basically the ones that will carry on into the future and they are the ones who are gonna preserve this work to understand this work, to continue and to, create more ideas that are reflective of their communities and reflective of, of their own movements that they also need to be included into this dialogue. The other part of that is that, I think it's not enough that a lot of what is communicated on walls is originally started and appreciated by young people.

In coming from urban situations and understanding graffiti, graffiti is an art movement that was created by children. And as these children mature, it's important that they have the skills and the know-how to continue on and express their ideas and the organic nature of the way that Willie learned to create work.

Of him, you know, not kind of being this self-led artist and very observant of his environments, being very observant of you know, everything, the good, the good, the bad, and the uglt around him and understanding that all of that related to the conversations and the larger political conversations that were at stake, that it wasn't, you know, an us and them, it was all of us.

It's everybody. And not one factor is, is above the other. So bringing in children into the work and using it as a tool to teach, as a tool to provide a way to communicate and to express ideas, I think is a revolutionary act.

A large portion of mural making has always been about asserting political identity and about asserting revolution, about asserting having a public format to talk about concepts and ideas, um, in a free format. I think that to be able to teach that to kids, that whatever they're thinking, whatever they're feeling, whatever they want to express is important.

And that it can be done through art, it can be done in a visual manner, and it can be in a way that everybody will see it. Everybody will be, they may not hear your voice. Your, literal voice and every, in every instance. Or you may not have the bravery to be able to say all of the things that you want, but you can express them and people will always feel that expression.

And to be able to teach children that is a very important tool that I think carries that will carry us into the future.

Willie Herrón: I think that the body of work that I created in the seventies came out of the desire to communicate change and to document things that seemed really obvious on the street. To document those things but to also inspire change. For me, the nineties made a big turn around too with the whole invasion, or just the whole issue of the Persian Gulf.

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That was a very strong message to me that really was an event that took place that sort of retainted me in a sense that made me start to become more deeper involved with social issues and the way people just have this disregard for other people. And the whole idea of respect, the whole idea of getting to know other cultures and getting to know other people and giving their space and their room to be who they are, where they came from, rather than this concept of everybody's got to blend and mix in and everybody has to eliminate some of their culture, eliminate some of their past in order to move into the future. All of those issues, for me in the nineties, helped to create a person within me that is kind of a culmination of the seventies, a culmination of the eighties and that's the nineties was for me. And then now I'm dealing with really, really going back to the early seventies and working on projects and inspiring projects with the youth again. And I'm going full circle, beginning with the restoration of The Wall That Cracked Open. So I'm like it's 1972 all over again. But it's cool because - And I really have a lot of energy about it because I just feel that it's a whole new generation. And now I'm in a position to educate where before, in '72, I was a sponge. And now I'm not a sponge. I'm kind of like squeezing myself and putting water on other sponges.

Jeffrey Rangel: Does your re-commitment to youth have anything to do with being a parent and raising your own daughter and so forth?

Willie Herrón: I think it has something to do with that but it also has a lot to do with feeling like I didn't belong and feeling kind of disconnected as a child and growing up. I think it starts there. Whether I would have had children or not, in the early seventies when I was doing it and working with children and youth that were having problems, it's because I could relate. Because I grew up that way too. And I turned to the streets and I saw nothing but violence and nothing but drugs and nothing but things that I don't know why to this day I wasn't inspired to be that way. I was inspired to paint and to draw and to document it, but to send a message of hope and the fact that there's light at the end of the tunnel and you don't have to grow up this way. To me, that's been my plight. And I feel that there are a lot of youth out there, if not more than when I was growing up, that need that. And there's a need for people to have that compassion out there.

Jeffrey Rangel: Well, you have the experience to share.

Willie Herrón: Yeah. And I don't need to collect money for it. I mean, I don't feel compelled to be paid for it. And that's another thing why I have the motivation that I do is that I'm not looking to get paid for it. But if I get commissioned to do projects, those projects, I need to include children to assist me because they get the experience while someone else covers me to do the work and to make sure it's done the right way, professionally, from a person that's experienced. But at the same time, I get to share that experience and that knowledge with the children. And I think that's important.

Jeffrey Rangel: What about—is there a different approach to the murals? What you're trying to communicate in the murals? Or is that same approach, that same sense of wanting to communicate that there as well in that medium?

Willie Herrón: Well, I think with my murals, of course, it depends on the commission and the amount of liberty sometimes that I'm given as an artist by the people that are commissioning me or by the organization that has contacted me to produce a work of art.

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 Often, I'm like many other muralists probably could agree, or maybe disagree, that I find that today a lot of the murals including some of my own have a tendency to have to deal with too much bureaucracy and too many people wanting these pieces, these public works of art, to be too much to too many people. And I think a lot of the murals have lost that oneness and that sense that some of my earlier works and some of the works that I've done don't fall into that category. But I just feel as a whole, muralism has just taken a step towards being too commercial. And that's the thing where I stopped. For almost eight or nine years, I actually stopped doing murals and concentrated more on my music because, again, it seemed like I was having to come up with new icons and new approaches and new concepts for muralism because everything was just becoming so commercialized. And the problem being that a lot of the corporate involvement and monies had been using these huge panels on the sides of buildings and they're really, really taking the whole concept of these huge paintings and commercializing them so that people don't want and don't embrace anything that represents the people and represents the political issues, the situations. So what I have been inspired to do and I'm hopefully going to be working on my second project is to start targeting high-risk communities and approaching institutions that are within that geographical city and presenting high risk youth programs and start to involve them in mural painting, and start to re-create and re-generate new works of art that are by and from the youth, with my supervision and my control to be able to make sure that that comes across. That the youths aren't over-shadowed or overpowered by commercialism. So their message and their ideas of things out there really come out the way that's truly their voice, what they really want to say. And I feel that a lot of them are in an oppressed situation that there's a good possibility that we're going to see a resurgence of revolution and resurgence all over again. Yeah. The kids feel . . . I mean, there's too much conservatism, way too much. And they're totally, totally oppressed. And I wouldn't be surprised because I'm seeing it. It's the beginning.

[Outro music plays to end]

Jennifer Neal: Hi, I'm Jennifer Neal, I work as an archivist here at the Archives of American Art.

This podcast is produced by Ben Gillespie and Michelle Herman at the Archives of American Art. It was edited by the team at Better Lemon Creative Audio

Our music comes from Sound and Smoke composed by Viet Cuong and performed by the Peabody Wind Ensemble with Harlan Parker conducting.

For show notes, work cited, and additional resources, visit aaa.si.edu/articulated.

The Archives is grateful to Nanibah Chacon for her vision, scope, and spark.

This guest-curated episode received support from the Smithsonian American Women’s History Initiative.

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The Archives of American Art at the Smithsonian Institution is a nonprofit organization that relies on donations from individuals like you to sustain our ongoing operations and special programs like ARTiculated. To support our work, please visit aaa.si.edu/support. Thank you.

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