In his foreword, former New York governor and vice president of the United States Nelson A. Rockefeller remembers his first trip to Mexico in 1933 and his subsequent, life-long fascination with the Mexican people and their popular art. Rockefeller's collection of more than 3,000 pieces of Mexican folk art is widely considered to be the most exceptional in the U.S., and Folk Treasures of Mexico celebrates these icons, created from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries, with more than 150 photos of the pieces, many of which are quite rare. This updated edition of the long out-of-print book focusing on this stunning collection of Mexican folk art contains a new foreword by Rockefeller's daughter, Ann Rockefeller Roberts, and a new prologue by Marion Oettinger, Jr., the director of the San Antonio Museum of Art, who wrote the principal text about the collection. Oettinger describes the objects according to function: utilitarian, ceremonial, decorative, or for play. Among the many noteworthy objects are a wooden-carved centurion helmet mask from the eighteenth century depicting a Roman guard, which is one of the few remaining masks of this type in existence, and a nineteenth century ceramic pitcher from Oaxaca that combines many stylistic techniques. Other objects include a variety of children's toys, clothing, and items for eating and drinking. First published in 1990, the book also contains the original preface by Rockefeller's daughter, who was instrumental in finding permanent homes for her father's collection, which can now be found in the San Antonio Museum of Art and the Mexican Museum in San Francisco. Including a glossary, bibliography, and chronology, Folk Treasures of Mexico is a must-read for anyone interested in Latin American art, culture, and history.

Provides a detailed look at the political and artistic climate in Mexican-American relations through an examination of the folk art collection amassed by Dwight and Elizabeth Morrow when he was U.S. ambassador to Mexico in the late 1920s.

The Mexican Museum of San Francisco was founded in 1975 by artist Peter Rodriguez to "foster the exhibition, conservation, and dissemination of Mexican and Chicano art and culture for all peoples." Its holdings include some 14,000 objects with a historical range extending from pre-conquest Mexico to contemporary Mexican American and Latino communities in the United States. The Chicano Studies Research Center's collection includes a broad selection of the museum's administrative papers and related materials. Karen Mary Davalos draws on these documents to trace the origins of the museum and explore how its mission has been shaped by its visionary artist-founder, local art collectors and patrons, Mexican art and culture, and the Chicano movement. A detailed finding aid and a selected bibliography complete the volume.

Since the mid-1980s, whimsical, brightly colored wood carvings from the Mexican state of Oaxaca have found their way into gift shops and private homes across the United States and Europe, as Western consumers seek to connect with the authenticity and tradition represented by indigenous folk arts. Ironically, however, the Oaxacan wood carvings are not a traditional folk art. Invented in the mid-twentieth century by non-Indian Mexican artisans for the tourist market, their appeal flows as much from intercultural miscommunication as from their intrinsic artistic merit. In this beautifully illustrated book, Michael Chibnik offers the first in-depth look at the international trade in Oaxacan wood carvings, including their history, production, marketing, and cultural representations. Drawing on interviews he conducted in the carving communities and among wholesalers, retailers, and consumers, he follows the entire production and consumption cycle, from the harvesting of copal wood to the final purchase of the finished piece. Along the way, he describes how and why this "invented tradition" has been promoted as a "Zapotec Indian" craft and explores its similarities with other local crafts with longer histories. He also fully discusses the effects on local communities of participating in the global market, concluding that the trade in Oaxacan wood carvings is an almost paradigmatic case study of globalization.

Born in Bryan, Texas, and raised in Houston, Dorothy Hood won a scholarship to the Rhode Island School of Design in the early 1930s, then worked as a model in New York to earn money for classes at the Art Students League. On a whim, she drove a roadster to Mexico City with friends in 1941 and ended up staying for more than twenty years. Hood was front and center at the cultural, political, and social crossroads of Mexico and Latin America during a period of intense creative ferment. She developed close friendships with the exiled European intelligentsia and Latin American surrealists: artists, composers, poets, playwrights, and revolutionary writers. She married the Bolivian composer José María Velasco Maidana, and together they traveled all over the world. Once back in Houston, Hood produced epic paintings that evoked the psychic void of space: large-scale works evoking primordial seas, volcanic explosions, and the cosmos contained within the mind. The Color of Being / El Color del Ser establishes a vital connection among Texas, Latin America, New York, and Europe. It celebrates this important Modernist painter whose oeuvre is integral to the ongoing dialogue of abstraction by artists of the postwar period. Sponsored by the Art Museum of South Texas

Very little has yet been written about the cultural or economic contributions of woodcarving to people's livelihoods or the consequences of felling hardwood and softwood trees for the international woodcarving trade. Carving Out a Future is the first examination of this trade and its critical links to rural livelihoods, biodiversity, conservation, forestry and the international trade regime. A range of case studies from Australia, Bali, India,Africa and Mexico provides a lens for examining the critical issues relating to the significant impacts of woodcarving on forests, conservation efforts, the need to promote sustainable rural livelihoods and efforts to promote trade so that skilled artisans in developing countries get a fair economic return.Livelihoods, Carving and Conservation * Global Overview * The Case of Woodcarving in Kenya * Drums and Hornbills * Sculpture and Identity * Carving Wood in Southern Zimbabwe * The Kiaat Woodcrafters of Bushbuckridge, South Africa * Carvers, Conservation and Certification in India * Colour, Sustainability and Market Sense in Bali * Aboriginal Woodcarvers in Australia * BurseraWoodcarving in Oaxaca, Mexico * Linaloe Wood Handicrafts * Learning from a Comparison of Cases * Carving, Sustainability and Scarcity * Certification of Woodcarving * Planning for Woodcarving in the 21st Century *