INSTITUTIONAL RESPONSIBILTY (or lack thereof)

CHRISTINA FERNANDEZ adds:
Xavier, here it is: the contradictions about using the term Chicano/a as applied to either the show or the artists are really not that important to me to be honest nor are the discrepancies regarding "collaborative" and "community" of great interest....that being said I don't think your points are superfluous and they are certainly worth talking about. What is more important to me is the limited programming surrounding the exhibition; limited in both enabling or being a conduit for discourse amongst audience and speakers and in terms of the number of events (especially considering that it may be another twenty years!). There is also the larger issue of institutional responsibility that Phantom Sightings indirectly brings to the fore. Not in regards to LACMA necessarily (I believe with Phantom Sightings they have taken a giant leap forward) but being more specific, local venues such as MOCA and the Hammer and so, so many others both locally and internationally. Why is it that with all the talent around so few Chicano, Mexican - American, Brown, whatever they want to call themselves (or not) artists get incorporated into the mainstream art world? There have been a few, very few. Usually guys, usually with a hip hop or hipster or upstart factor working for them that can take the focus off of (because we get focused on personae instead perhaps), provide a buffer for confronting issues of race and class. This is a very, very narrow path, especially since half the population of working Chicano/a, Mexican - American, Brown, artists are eliminated because of gender! No other group is held to this standard. By privileging this work institutions and the art world at large limit the range of expression and discourse that we could have; in effect institutionalizing a form of censorship.