For decades, Gilberto C\u00e1rdenas worked at the intersection of Latino culture, scholarship and community engagement, and he sought to elevate the profiles of Latino artists through a variety of avenues, including creating a national gathering devoted to studying and advancing U.S. Latino visual art.<\/p>\n
Later in his career, C\u00e1rdenas taught Latino studies at the University of Notre Dame, where he was the founding director of the university\u2019s Institute for Latino Studies. He was also assistant provost at Notre Dame, and he later served as the executive director of Notre Dame\u2019s Center for Arts and Culture.<\/p>\n
C\u00e1rdenas was also a major art collector. He and his wife donated thousands of works to various museums, including about 2,000 works to Chicago\u2019s National Museum of Mexican Art, on whose board he served. He also donated artwork to the Snite Museum of Art at the University of Notre Dame, as well as to museums in Texas and Washington, D.C.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was instrumental in ushering in a new era where Latino and Chicano art are part of the canon of American art,\u201d said retired Smithsonian Latino Center director Eduardo Diaz, a longtime friend and colleague. \u201cThat wasn\u2019t really the case before.\u201d<\/p>\n
C\u00e1rdenas, 79, died of complications from cancer on July 26 at his home in Austin, Texas, Diaz said. He previously had lived in South Bend, Indiana.<\/p>\n
Born in San Gabriel, California, in 1947, C\u00e1rdenas was the son of a single mother who worked as a secretary. Growing up near Los Angeles, C\u00e1rdenas was, by his own reckoning, a gang member as a teen. After graduating from East Los Angeles College in 1967, he earned a bachelor\u2019s degree from California State University in 1969. During college, C\u00e1rdenas took a keen interest both in Mexican American student organizations, as well as in documenting the Chicano movement of Mexican American identity through photography.<\/p>\n
C\u00e1rdenas earned a master\u2019s degree in sociology from the University of Notre Dame, and in 1975 a doctoral degree from Notre Dame. While at Notre Dame, C\u00e1rdenas assisted Notre Dame professor and Latino studies pioneer Julian Samora on \u201cLos Mojados: The Wetback Story,\u201d a seminal 1971 nonfiction book published by the University of Notre Dame Press that explored immigration to the U.S. by undocumented Mexicans and dissected the various dynamics at play in migrant workers\u2019 lives.<\/p>\n
After graduate school, C\u00e1rdenas began teaching sociology at the University of Texas at Austin, where he earned tenure and taught for more than two decades. As a scholar and educator, C\u00e1rdenas built a Mexican American studies program at the U. of Texas, and he also researched and wrote on topics such as immigration, labor, race, ethnicity and border communities.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re trying to use the whole educational process to improve society,\u201d C\u00e1rdenas told the Indianapolis Star in 2001. \u201cI want to motivate and train a new generation of scholars \u2014 to make them more aware of (Latinos).\u201d<\/p>\n
Though a sociologist by training and profession, C\u00e1rdenas found himself more deeply drawn and connected to the work of artists.\u00a0 During his years in Austin, he became an enthusiastic collector, advocate and champion of Latino art. In 1986, he founded Galer\u00eda Sin Fronteras in Austin, a gallery and gathering place for artists, scholars, activists, collectors and those in the community.\u00a0 C\u00e1rdenas \u2014 who often quipped that the often cash-strapped facility should have been named \u201cGaler\u00eda Sin Dinero\u201d \u2014 prided himself on nurturing artists whose work had been overlooked by mainstream institutions.<\/p>\n
Starting in 1995, C\u00e1rdenas spent 18 years as the executive director of the Inter-University Program for Latino Research, a New York-based collaborative of 21 university-based Latino research centers, departments and programs across the country that sought to define the national research agenda for Latino studies. C\u00e1rdenas\u2019 specific interest in art led to his 2005 creation of a national gathering of U.S. Latino visual art, called \u201cLatino Art Now!\u201d<\/p>\n
In 1995, C\u00e1rdenas left the University of Texas to join his alma mater, Notre Dame, as a professor, assistant provost and as the founding director of its Institute for Latino Studies. The university asked C\u00e1rdenas to open the institute in 1999 as a way to demonstrate a stepped-up commitment to the (predominantly Catholic) Latino community.<\/p>\n
C\u00e1rdenas also served on the Smithsonian Institution\u2019s task force on Latino issues, which led to increased Latino representation throughout the Smithsonian. He also spearheaded the creation of a national Latino museum studies program, and in 1994 he was the founding executive director of the nationally distributed \u201cLatino USA\u201d radio program that shared Latino voices and stories on National Public Radio.<\/p>\n
Throughout his working life, C\u00e1rdenas invested well financially, allowing him to assemble a massive personal collection of nearly 20,000 pieces of art from Latino artists. After retiring from Notre Dame in 2018, he focused on donating thousands of pieces from his art collection to various museums.<\/p>\n
In 2023, C\u00e1rdenas and his wife donated more than 7,000 works of art from their collection to the Blanton Museum of Art in Austin, Texas. C\u00e1rdenas previously had gifted prints to the Blanton in 2019 that had been produced at a landmark printmaking workshop in Los Angeles. That earlier gift dovetailed with his past work with printmaking, including establishing a consortium of Latino printmaking workshops across the U.S. in 2000 that came to be known as Consejo Grafico Nacional.<\/p>\n
C\u00e1rdenas also donated about 2,000 works to Chicago\u2019s National Museum of Mexican Art<\/a> in Pilsen. The National Museum of Mexican Art president emeritus and founder Carlos Tortolero<\/a> called C\u00e1rdenas \u201cone of the most important and impactful Mexicans in U.S. history.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cHe was a Renaissance man,\u201d Tortolero said. \u201cIn the arts, education, social justice and the list goes on, Gil was both a Mexican and American leader. In gratitude for his art, the National Museum of Mexican Art named a gallery for him and his lovely wife.\u201d<\/p>\n Ces\u00e1reo Moreno, the visual arts director and chief curator at the National Museum of Mexican Art, said in a statement that C\u00e1rdenas \u201cbelieved deeply in the power of art to preserve history, shape identity and inspire change.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cGil moved with ease among artists, entrepreneurs, scholars and politicians, always making the case that the arts deserved greater equity recognition and investment,\u201d Moreno said. \u201cHe possessed a rare ability to connect people and ideas, bringing enthusiasm and generosity to every endeavor. Many of us will miss Gil \u2014 his gregarious laugh, his playful skips and little dances whenever he was excited about a new idea, a remarkable acquisition or simply a wonderful meal shared with friends. Those moments reflected the joy with which he embraced life and the people around him.\u201d<\/p>\n C\u00e1rdenas also donated artwork to the Snite Museum of Art at Notre Dame and to the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington.<\/p>\n \u201cHe was an extraordinarily generous man,\u201d Diaz said. \u201cHe had the ability with his collection to make a difference.\u201d<\/p>\n C\u00e1rdenas rediscovered his religious faith in the mid-1990s, and he long had viewed his work as part of his faith and the quest for freedom, opportunity and racial equality.<\/p>\n \u201cFor me, the idea of the American dream is the dream for equality,\u201d he told the Indianapolis Star in 2001. \u201cIt\u2019s important for us to have values and pursue them in ourselves. I want to see us fulfill the values of our society.\u201d<\/p>\n A first marriage ended in divorce. C\u00e1rdenas is survived by his wife, Dolores Carrillo Garcia; two sons, Xoan and Alessandro; a stepdaughter, Jessica Duarte; two stepsons, Jason and Jon Paul; nine grandchildren; and two brothers, Frank and Robert.<\/p>\n A celebration of life service is being planned.<\/p>\n Bob Goldsborough is a freelance reporter.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For decades, Gilberto C\u00e1rdenas worked at the intersection of Latino culture, scholarship and community engagement, and he sought…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":405808,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[132,134,133,3607,223,104699],"class_list":["post-405807","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news","tag-latest-headlines","tag-news","tag-news-obituaries"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/405807","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=405807"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/405807\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/405808"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=405807"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=405807"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=405807"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}