Dear New Assistant Professor of Latin American Art History,

Welcome to the faculty! We are excited to meet you and we look forward to helping you and your students in the future.  As per your request, I’ve put together a list of websites that may be useful to your students and to you as a scholar in Latin American Art History.  As this academic field has grown over the last 15 years, so have the number of resources.  As your focus is on Chicano and Mexican art, most of the resources address this geographical area but there are others relating to South and Central American art as well.

One of the most remarkable resources is the Documents of 20^th Century Latin American and Latino Art hosted by the International Center for Arts of the Americas at the Museum of Fine Art Houston.  http://icaadocs.mfah.org/icaadocs/ .  This is a digital archive that gathers together important documents and primary sources related to the history of Latin American and Chicano art. They are also publishing a book series about documents critical to the study of 20^th century Latin American Art.  See http://icaadocs.mfah.org/icaadocs/en-us/publications/criticaldocumentsbookseries.aspx . On this site as well is a page devoted to relevant links related to this topic.  http://icaadocs.mfah.org/icaadocs/en-us/about/relatedsitesandlinks.aspx

Another useful set of links includes the professional societies and groups that provide news about current scholarship in Latin American Art.  These include the Association of Latin American Art under the umbrella of the College Art Association.  I know you are an active member of the organization but your graduate students may be interested in becoming members.  http://associationlatinamericanart.org/ Another important academic association is the Institute for Studies of Latin American Art, which is associated with four major universities and offers grants for the study of Latin American Art. http://islaa.org/faq.html

If you are interested in keeping up on the latest academic books on Latin American Art, take a look at these two major presses that have Latin American Studies catalogs.  http://www.psupress.org/books/subjects/ArtHistoryArchitecture-LatinAmericanTitleSort1.html Pennsylvania State University Press has ramped up its publication of monographs on the history of Latin American Art.  You may be interested in the titles or researching them as a possible publisher for your book.  The University of Texas Press also has division devoted to Latin American Studies and Latino/a Studies. See here http://www.utexaspress.com/index.php/books/search-by-category/categories/Latin-American-Studies and here http://www.utexaspress.com/index.php/books/search-by-category/categories/Latina+o-Studies

You may want to link to these museum websites on your class website for ARH 450 Contemporary Latin American Art: Museo del Barrio in New York City http://www.elmuseo.org/pc/ , Museum of Latin American Art in Los Angeles http://www.molaa.org/ and of course the National Fine Arts Museum of Mexico http://www.munal.com.mx/, where I understand you are co-curating an upcoming exhibition on contemporary Mexican women artists.

Finally, here are some blogs and aggregator sites that may interest you.  Latinopia covers more than fine art and is an active site with many contributors, including one of your interests former Asco member Harry Gamboa, Jr. http://latinopia.com/category/latino-art/ Julia Grace Cohn is an active blogger on Latin American issues and culture whose blog has an interesting section devoted to art.  https://mn.wordpress.com/tag/latin-american-art/ . Finally the following site was created by a group of Latino-focused arts educators who have interesting ideas about ways to teach art.  http://www.grupotramas.com.ar/en/grupo-tramas/

I know that you are aware of some of these sites but I hope this will be useful for you and something that you can pass on to your students who are new to the field.  I’m looking forward to doing the research workshop with your graduate seminar in a couple of weeks.  Again welcome to the university!

Best,

M. McTighe