Malaquias Montoya Gallery Reception Today

Dedication of the new Fredric Jameson Gallery in Duke's Friedl Building (formerly Duke Art Museum on East Campus) kicks off today with an opening and reception for Chicano graphic artist Malaquias Montoya's "Premeditated: Meditations on Capital Punishment."

WHAT: MALAQUIAS MONTOYA Opening & Reception
WHEN: Wednesday (3/4) Reception 5 pm, Gallery Talk by the Artist at 6 pm.
WHERE: Fredric Jameson Gallery, Friedl Building Room 115, Duke East Campus
COST: FREE, Open to the public.

Map of parking for this event on the East Campus Quad
Sponsored by Duke University's Program in Latino/a Studies in the Global South.

From exhibit web page:


From press release:

"Montoya is a leading figure in the West Coast political Chicano graphic arts movement, a political and socially conscious movement that expresses itself primarily through the mass production of silk-screened posters. Montoya's works include acrylic paintings, murals, washes, and drawings, but he is primarily known for his silkscreen prints, which have been exhibited nationally as well as internationally. This exhibition features silkscreen images and paintings, and related text panels dealing with the death penalty and penal institutions--inspired by the escalation of deaths at the hands of the State of Texas in recent years. As Montoya states, 'We have perfected the art of institutional killing to the degree that it has deadened our national, quintessentially human, response to death. I want to produce a body of work depicting the horror of this act.'

Since 1989 Montoya has been a professor at the University of California, Davis. His classes, through the Departments of Chicana/o Studies and Art, include silkscreening, poster making and mural painting, and focus on Chicano culture and history. He is credited by historians as being one of the founders of the "social seriography" movement in the San Francisco Bay Area in the mid-1960s. His visual expressions, art of protest, depict the struggle and strength of humanity and the necessity to unite behind that struggle. Like many Chicano artists of his generation, Montoya's art is rooted in the tradition of the Taller de Grafica Popular, the Mexican printmakers of the 1920s, 30s and 40s, whose work expressed the need for social and political reform for the Mexican underprivileged. Montoya's work uses powerful images that are combined with text to create his socially critical messages.

The exhibit will be on display from the reception through April 17th and from mid-May through Mid-September. Hours from March 5 through April 17th are 10am - 5pm. Summer and fall hours to be determined - please check back on our website after April for those hours."