‘Splendors’ Splits L.A., Mexico Art Supporters : Art: Upcoming County Museum extravaganza pits volunteer organizers of Artes de Mexico festival against competing event backed by Mexican government.

“Mexico: Splendors of Thirty Centuries,” a massive touring exhibition that opens on Oct. 8 at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, is a cause for celebration. Billed as a once-in-a-lifetime survey of Mexican art from 1000 BC to 1950, the 400-piece show inspired a plethora of related programs during its New York debut last fall and its current engagement in San Antonio. During the show’s three-month run here, Los Angeles is expected to turn into a giant Mexican spectacle featuring everything from painting and dance to economics and cooking.

But--perhaps because expectations are high and such celebratory occasions are rare--the exhibition and affiliated programs also have sparked controversy.

Art critics have objected to the Mexican government’s use of art as a public relations tool while others have questioned the coincidence of the exhibition as Mexico was seeking a free-trade agreement with the U.S. “Splendors” was actively promoted by Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari and underwritten by Emilio Azcarraga, the principal shareholder of Televisa network and perhaps the richest man in Mexico.

Historian and critic Shifra M. Goldman wrote in the April New Art Examiner that the exhibition symbolizes “the privatization of culture in Mexico concomitant with the trend toward the privatization of natural resources and public services in the Salinas government.”

Meanwhile, in the organization of local activities related to “Splendors,” festival participants have followed two different drummers in a parade of planned programs.

A behind-the-scenes struggle has pitted volunteer organizers of Artes de Mexico, a local grass-roots arts festival, against representatives of the Mexican government who plan to import Mexican star performers and trade programs in a festival called Mexico: A Work of Art, as they have in New York and San Antonio.

The two organizations are “parents of the same baby,” says Jesus Perez, executive director of Artes de Mexico, who claims both camps share a common interest in the baby’s welfare. Although Artes de Mexico will focus on cultural programs that emphasize Los Angeles’ Mexican roots and Mexico: A Work of Art includes the arts in a broad program geared to promote Mexican trade and tourism, the two groups profess no philosophical differences.

Indeed, their leaders praise each other’s programs and they have met occasionally over the past six months to coordinate their efforts, but they have failed to produce an integrated program to be promoted under a single banner. Unlike New York and San Antonio, where ancillary events were all swept under the Mexico: A Work of Art umbrella, Los Angeles is likely to have two parallel festivals accompanying the “Splendors” exhibition.

If so, Artes de Mexico will lose the benefit of the Mexican government’s $1-million advertising budget for Mexico: A Work of Art. The largely volunteer Artes de Mexico organization was seeded by a $175,000 grant from the Rockefeller Foundation. Established to encourage and coordinate independently produced events, Artes de Mexico projected a budget of about $450,000, but that figure is being revised, Perez said. An additional $150,000 will likely be needed for promotion, including $90,000 in cash and $60,000 in donated advertising space, he estimated.

The loss of Mexican-paid advertising is serious, but Artes de Mexico committee members say they must operate independently. The reason is not any disagreement over programs, but frustration with poor communications and with waiting for the government to firm up its plans. “We can’t seem to get their attention. We’re just not a priority with them,” said one local volunteer who requested anonymity. While a joint venture might have been preferable, it hasn’t been workable and the local committee must secure venues and events if the festival is to proceed on schedule, Perez said.

Losing advertising funds is not as drastic as it sounds, he said, because Mexico: A Work of Art ads will feature imagery from the “Splendors” exhibition, not locally organized attractions. Having the local organization’s name added to television ads, billboards and posters would be helpful, but it would not provide sufficient information to attract an audience, Perez said.

As recently as two weeks ago, Mexican government representatives said they hoped the two programs would be combined to avoid confusion. But a government press representative recently confirmed that two separate festivals are shaping up and that Artes de Mexico will handle its own promotion. Maria Teresa Marquez, director general of Mexico’s Department of the Exterior, is scheduled to be in Los Angeles today, working on Mexico: A Work of Art programs, but a meeting with Artes de Mexico leaders is not on her agenda.

Earlier this week, Mexico: A Work of Art released a list of 27 art events, including “Three Decades of Mexican Painting” at the Armand Hammer Museum, “Aspects of Contemporary Mexican Painting” at the Santa Monica Museum of Art and 16 exhibitions organized by local commercial galleries. Many more events--including trade-promotional programs--will be announced as they are finalized, Marquez said.

Meanwhile, Artes de Mexico has listed about 115 cultural events under its banner, including programs organized by the County Museum of Art.

The combined local festivals are expected to balloon to about twice the size of the celebrations in New York and San Antonio. This is due in part to two years’ work by the Artes de Mexico committee, which was formed in 1989 after the Los Angeles County Museum of Art announced its plans to host “Splendors.”

Seeing a golden opportunity to celebrate Los Angeles’ Mexican heritage and involve Latinos with the exhibition, a community advisory board at the museum set up the festival committee with attorney Armando Duron as president. Committee members say they became aware of festival plans at the other two venues, but they had little knowledge of Mexico: A Work of Art and no success in making contact with the organization until late last fall, when Ambassador Jorge Alberto Losoya, a member of President Salinas’ cabinet who heads Mexico’s foreign affairs office, came to Los Angeles and met with them.

He got a mixed reception. While the promise of promotional funds was attractive, some committee members were concerned that the Mexican government would obliterate extensive work already done at a grass-roots level or take all the credit. Relations between the two groups were strained at times--indeed some witnesses report pitched battles--but both sides downplay differences now.

The two groups aim to promote appreciation and understanding of Mexico, their representatives say, and the public won’t care who sponsors a particular event. One sign of cooperation is that a hot line, paid for by Mexico: A Work of Art, will offer complete information on both festivals.

Meanwhile, differences of opinion about the exhibition and the Mexican government’s motivations have raged in the press.

“Art is being used yet again for public relations,” charged Mark Stevens in a Vanity Fair article detailing the background of the show.

“The show bears the distinctive marks of Salinas, the economic reformist, whose tastes are those of the present Mexico, not those of the country’s tortured past,” wrote Dick Reavis in the San Antonio Light. “The works exhibited were largely produced by a cultural elite--an analog to the technocratic elite now managing Mexico--and, except for a few pieces, not by the untutored artisans whose crafts have made ordinary Mexicans famous around the globe for their radical tastes in design and color.

“Though the show is impressive in its scope, it is also timid and polite,” he concluded, citing the absence of Aztec artifacts of human sacrifice and a lack of revolutionary subjects in exhibited works by 20th-Century muralists.

But Michael Ennis countered some of these arguments in Texas Monthly. The use of Mexican culture “as a stalking horse for more favorable trade agreements with the U.S. . . . is a compelling criticism in the United States, where the idea of mixing art and politics is anathema across the ideological spectrum--as the recent ruckus over censorship of publicly funded art would attest,” he wrote.

“But in Mexico . . . art has always been political in the most basic sense, a common language conveying commonly held attitudes about what the world is and who runs it (or, in many cases, who should be running it). Almost all Mexican art, from a 2,000-year-old relief carving extolling a Maya king to a 20th-Century revolutionary mural extolling a barefoot peasant, is in that sense ‘official’ art. . . . In Mexico it is both normal and desirable for art to be a stalking-horse for community aspirations or national ambitions. . . .”

Times staff writer Shauna Snow contributed to this story.

Highlights of Artes de Mexico

ART

The Craft and Folk Art Museum’s “Folk Treasures of Mexico: Highlights From the Nelson A. Rockefeller Collection,” Sept. 8-Dec. 29.

San Diego’s Border Arts Workshop’s interactive installation, “Destination L.A.: Departing From ‘One Square Mile of Hell,’ ” at LACE, Dec. 13-Feb. 9.

“Prophets of Mexican Art: Tamayo, Rivera, Siqueiros,” at Oxnard’s Carnegie Art Museum, Sept. 19-Nov. 30.

East Los Streetscapers muralists group’s “Public Mural Painting Performances,” Oct. 6 at LACMA and Oct. 26 at MOCA.

“Encuentro: Invasion of the Americas and the Making of the Mestizo,” works by Chicano and Native American artists dealing with the 500th anniversary of Columbus’ arrival in America, at the Social and Public Art Resource Center, Oct. 19-Dec. 21.

MUSIC/DANCE/THEATER

The Bilingual Foundation of the Arts’ “Los de Abajos (The Underdogs),” a new adaptation of Mariano Azuela’s novel on Mexican Revolution and its aftermath, Sept. 24-Dec. 9.

Concerts of classical and popular Mexican music by the L.A. Philharmonic, at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion Sept. 28 and Nov. 23, the Hollywood Bowl Oct. 5 and LACMA Nov. 22.

A retrospective of modern dance works by L.A.-based choreographer Francisco Martinez, at Occidental College, Oct. 4-5.

“Epopeya Mestiza,” a full-evening dance-theater work focusing on the mestizo, created by Gema Sandoval, at the San Gabriel Civic Auditorium Nov. 1.

FILM/VIDEO

A weeklong festival showcasing contemporary Mexican cinema, at the Directors Guild of America, Nov. 6-12.

Three days of Spanish language films from Joseph Papp’s Latino Film Festival, at the California Plaza, Oct. 18-20.

“Border Crossings: Independent Mexican and Chicano Film and Video,” a series of screenings and conferences, at USC, Nov. 1-9.

EVENTS

Artes de Mexico Opening Ceremonies, at the L.A. Civic Center, Sept. 14.

A reading by Mexican poet laureate and Nobel Prize winner Octavio Paz, at LACMA, Oct. 13.

Four weeks of exhibits, workshops, performances and celebrations in honor of Mexico’s Day of the Dead holiday, at Olvera Street’s El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historic Park, Oct. 21-Nov. 15.

“Viva L.A.!” a free daylong festival in honor of Mexican Independence Day featuring Mexican music, arts, crafts, workshops and food, at the Music Center’s outdoor Plaza, Sept. 15.

Tours of East L.A.’s Chicano murals, Oct. 13 and Nov. 9.

“Mutual Influences: A Symposium of Contemporary Mexican and Chicano Art,” at LACMA, Oct. 19.

“Words Without Borders,” a Chicano and Mexican poetry festival, at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Oct. 26.

Highlights From Mexico: A Work of Art

ART

“Three Decades of Mexican Painting,” at the Armand Hammer Museum, Oct. 2-Nov. 11.

“Alfredo Ramos Martinez,” works by the Mexican painter and muralist, at Louis Stern Galleries, Oct. 1-Nov. 30.

“Between Worlds: Contemporary Mexican Photography,” at the Santa Monica Museum of Art, Sept. 12-Nov. 24.

“Mexican Graphics of the 20th Century,” at Mixografia Gallery/Workshop, Sept. 28-Oct. 30.

“Carlos Aguirre,” works by the contemporary Mexican artist, at Wenger Gallery, Sept. 21-Oct. 10.

“Roberto Gil de Montes: New Paintings and Works on Paper,” at Jan Baum Gallery, Oct. 18-Nov. 30.

“Aspects of Contemporary Mexican Painting,” at the Santa Monica Museum of Art, Nov. 7-Dec. 29

DANCE

Performances by Mexico City’s famed Ballet Folklorico de Mexico, at the Shrine Auditorium, Sept. 26-29.