‘Mira!’: Latino Artistry

Los Angeles artists Patssi Valdez and Robert Gil de Montes are among 29 Latino contemporary artists in a national traveling exhibition beginning Tuesday at the Municipal Art Gallery.

“Mira! The Canadian Club Hispanic Art Tour III,” a multimedia exhibit running through May 15, is the third Latino art exhibit sponsored by the company since 1983 to recognize the “important artistic achievements of Hispanic artists.”

The exhibit was co-curated by Susana Torruella Leval, an independent curator; Ricardo Pau-Llosa, associate professor, Miami (Dade) Community College-South Campus, and Inverna Lockpez, an artist and gallery director.

“A restless, unwieldy mass of images . . . confront the viewer at this exhibition,” writes Torruella Leval in the exhibit catalogue. “They resist the familiar art historical categories and easy generalizations. They reflect the complex and diverse worlds that make up Latin America.”

Overseeing the exhibit’s installation recently, Marie de Alcuaz, Municipal Art Gallery curator, said that while she would have liked to see more than two Los Angeles artists included, the show’s curators “have really put forth their best efforts to do a responsible, professional exhibition. There’s a nice balance between abstract and representational work.”

De Alcuaz acknowledged that the exhibit may have the effect of ghettoizing Latino artists. “For years an exhibit of this nature, whether spotlighting minority or women artists, was necessary to do for an affirmative action push. But now it’s becoming questionable. Still, we think it’s a valid thing to do, or, of course, we wouldn’t be participating.”

However, De Alcuaz added that she will moderate a free symposium titled “Minority Art Exhibitions: Opening or Closing the Door?” at the gallery on April 21 at 7:30 p.m. Seminar speakers will question whether these exhibitions “serve to promote or isolate minority artists within the mainstream?”

Speakers are artists Gronk and Gilbert Sanchez Lujan, art historian Shifra M. Goldman, Times art writer Suzanne Muchnic and Selma Holo, director of USC’s Fisher Gallery.

After Los Angeles, the exhibit will travel to Dallas, Miami, New York and Chicago.

COUNTING HEADS: Arts Inc., a local arts service organization, plans to publish a directory of nonprofit arts organizations based in Los Angeles County. It is soliciting information from local nonprofits in order to include them in the booklet.

The directory, planned to appear this year, is to list names, addresses, location, cultural identity, discipline and other facts describing about 800 arts groups. The book will be made available to policy makers, funders, researchers, audience members and the community at large. A census questionnaire may be obtained from Arts Inc., (213) 627-9276.

GRANTS: The Getty Center for Education in the Arts has awarded 10 American universities contracts of $25,000 each to develop new programs for teacher training in art education. The one-year contracts, beginning next winter, will support the development of programs that teach children to make, analyze and interpret art.

The institutions given the awards are Cal State Sacramento, Florida State University, Northern Illinois University, Indiana University, University of Kansas, University of Nebraska, Ohio State University, University of Oregon, Texas Tech University and Brigham Young University.

Representatives from these universities applied for a contract by presenting proposals for new programs at a national seminar on teacher training in art education held by the Getty Center for Education in Utah last August.

No Southern California university won a contract because “the 10 that were awarded were the 10 that presented the best proposals,” said a spokeswoman for the Getty Center.

In other funding news, the National Endowment for the Arts has awarded two Los Angeles organizations Advancement Grants. Recipients are the Los Angeles Center for Photographic Studies and Astro Artz/High Performance, which publishes High Performance, a national quarterly journal on new, experimental and under-recognized contemporary art.

As Advancement Grant winners, the organizations will enjoy 15 months of technical assistance with NEA-assigned consultants. They may then apply for an NEA grant of to $75,000 to be matched three to one in three years.

Astro Artz/High Performance has also received $20,000 from the Ford Foundation to to support a direct mail subscription campaign for its publication.

STEP ON UP: Tickets for “Andrew Wyeth: The Helga Pictures,” at the County Museum of Art April 28 to July 10, go on sale Tuesday at the museum’s box office, Teletron and Ticketron outlets located at Tower Record and Sears stores.

Tickets for the exhibition, featuring about 85 drawings and watercolors by the American realist, are $4.50 for adults, $3.50 for seniors, $3.50 for students, $2 for children aged 6-12, and free for children 5 and under.

EXIT LINES: Peter Sellars, the new director of the Los Angeles Festival (now slated for 1990), on the “embarrassing” discrepancy between governmental arts support in the United States and the Soviet Union: “We shouldn’t give the enemy the complete tactical advantage on the cultural front.”