Alana Hernandez is the Senior Curator at the ASU Art Museum. In her curatorial practice, Hernandez co-creates and develops relational projects and exhibitions that amplify intersectional and multifaceted interpretations of Latinx art. Her practice endeavors to bolster critical engagement with U.S. Latinx art that is inclusive of Afro-Latinx, Indigenous, and queer histories, underscoring that these narratives are formative to an understanding of the sociopolitical histories of this country. She has recently organized artist projects with Carolina Aranibar-Fernández, Sam Frésquez, Luis Rivera Jimenez, Alejandro Macias, and Sarah Zapata. She is currently at work organizing a large contextual retrospective of Carmen Lomas Garza.
Hernandez was previously Executive Director & Curator at CALA Alliance. She has held curatorial positions at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Páramo, Guadalajara, Mexico; Hunter East Harlem, New York; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Phoenix Art Museum; and BRIC Arts Media, Brooklyn. Her writing has appeared in several exhibition catalogues and online journals. Hernandez received her M.A. from CUNY Hunter College, where she specialized in Modern and Contemporary Latin American Art. She currently lives and works in Phoenix, Arizona.
How has the museum collection evolved?
One of the first major collections in the state, the museum’s collection was founded in the early 1950s with a significant gift of artworks from the Early Americas by Oliver B. James. Guided by Director Rudy Turk (1965–1992), the Museum continued to expand its collection with significant acquisitions in print, craft, and contemporary ceramics, primarily from makers in the United States. Under the leadership of Director Gordon Knox from 2012–2017, the museum’s physical presence expanded to the Ceramics Research Center, one of the country’s most important collections of contemporary ceramics.
Today, under the leadership of Director Miki Garcia, we seek to champion the power of the visual arts to promote democratic values, social justice, and empathy. The collection now numbers over 13,000 objects and is organized around the five interconnected areas: Contemporary art, Latinx and Latin American art, 20th-century and Contemporary Craft, Historic and Contemporary Prints and Drawings, and 19th and 20th-century art of the Americas.
What is your process for selecting contemporary paintings, drawings, prints, experimental works, and ceramics?
As a guiding collecting philosophy towards collections and exhibitions, we seek to center absent and excluded narratives. We are guided by ASU’s charter of innovation and inclusion, which measures institutional success by the ways it includes rather than excludes. For exhibitions, the curatorial team has a robust process of asking specific questions that challenge our biases and push us to further our mission. For example, we ask ourselves questions such as how potential exhibitions work towards our goals of inclusion and justice, are the artists from an underrepresented community, and how the project relates to the local context, among others.
What do you look for in the artists who you select for the Artist Residency?
Established in 2011, the museum’s artist residency program activates the university’s distinguished faculty, scholarship, research, and vast relationships with institutions in the broader Metro-Phoenix region to enable innovative and experimental projects. We look for artists who have a multidisciplinary and process-based approach to their practice. Indeed, we seek artists who will harness the breadth of the university’s vast resources and also respond to the museum’s unique site and culture.
What are some of the most important themes and messages that you hope to instill through your curatorial projects for students, faculty, staff, and patrons?
My curatorial practice seeks to amplify intersectional and multifaceted interpretations of Latinx art. In recent years, much of my work has focused on Latinx art and artists working with print and craft-based mediums, investigating how the aesthetic statements thus employed are integral, often political producers of cultural consciousness. My practice seeks to bolster critical engagement with Latinx art that is inclusive of Afro-Latinx, Indigenous, and queer histories, underscoring that these narratives are essential to understanding the histories of this country. We cannot tell a complete history of the United States without including our stories, which have historically been left out of institutional spaces.
How do you decipher if a curatorial project is exceptional?
This is a tricky question. Curators constantly think of fantastic ideas, but only some of them make it into an exhibition or program format. What distinguishes a great project is one that includes many voices, not just one singular curatorial voice. This is the exciting thing we do differently at the ASU Art Museum. All of our exhibitions are a result of a collaborative effort with a Community of Practice — comprising elders, activists, scholars, and artists — who share a common purpose of lending critical cultural perspectives to developing the exhibition and related programs. We all hold various forms of knowledge, from lived to learned experience, and the Community of Practice prioritizes bolstering all forms of expertise. That is key to genuinely transformative and meaningful projects. In my opinion, those are the best projects.
Can you speak to your collaboration with ASU’s Hispanic Research Center in developing the Chicano/a/x Prints and Graphics: Selections from the Hispanic Research Center’s Collection, 1980–2010, and the cultural significance of this current exhibition?
The museum works closely with several partners. Importantly, we must work in community with organizations within and outside our arts ecosystem. The Hispanic Research Center on the ASU campus is a beautiful example. Led by Stella Rouse and Anita Huizar-Hernández, the HRC is an interdisciplinary research unit that empowers Latino/a/x and Hispanic individuals and communities by generating and disseminating knowledge of public value and creating programs and partnerships that support the success of a multicultural society. They have a fantastic collection of over 500 objects, primarily prints, that they currently care for. We began working together last year, deciding one way to work together was through exhibition, disseminating a Chicanx art history typically not taught in art history courses or seen in institutional spaces.
What was the inspiration for and process like of creating the current exhibition, Spiraling, Twisting, Unraveling: Explorations in Pattern and Form?
Looking at the exhibition calendar, I wanted to build more opportunities to show our multifaceted collection. I was especially interested in exploring themes and linkages within our craft and ceramics collection, which led to this fun exhibition exploring the dimensions of pattern, decoration, and form as it relates to themes of the natural world and the alternative concepts of eternity, life cycles, space and time represented across millennia through diverse cultures. I’m a huge fan of how textured the exhibition is and how it encourages deep and considered looking.
What are the most evident signs that an artist is in a pivotal moment in their career?
Generally, the artist is questioning and pushing themselves to expand their project and research. They have taken time to articulate how their past work informs their current work and what they are building upon.
Which artists are having a strong influence on their peers and the artists of the next generation?
I love to see cohorts of artists working in community, with artists ideating and working alongside their peers and supporting each other. It’s so important to underscore that artists don’t work in isolation or silos, but there are deep networks of support and understanding among each other. For my purposes, I think of our foundational Chicana artists in Texas and the Bay area who have been incredibly influential, like Amalia Mesa Bains, Carmen Lomas Garza, and others, as artists, scholars, and teachers.