by Carolyn Mountain
General Library
and Stella de Sa Rego
Curator of Pictorial elections
Center for Southwest Research
The UNM General Library is focusing on two events within the next week: a forum with former UNM Presidents and the launching of a newly developed Web site dedicated to the Mexican Popular Prints Collection located in the Center for Southwest Research.
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Presidental visions
We invite you to attend a forum that is part of the Library's Open Doors Series, "Crossroads in UNM History: Presidential Voices and Visions" next Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2-4 p.m. in the west wing of Zimmerman Library. The event will bring together five former UNM Presidents - Tom Farer, Bud Davis, Ferrel Heady, John Perovich and Richard Peck. We believe this is an opportune time to think about the qualities of leadership needed by the next president. We have drafted three questions for them each to address:
1. You were at the helm of UNM at a unique time in its history. Based on that experience, what are the qualities and strengths that the Search Committee should look for in the next president?
2. Please discuss some of the achievements, as well as the difficulties you encountered, during your administration at UNM.
3. Based on your experience during your administration, as well as any subsequent years at UNM, what do you see as a vision for the University?
President F. Chris Garcia will make the opening remarks and Camila Alire, dean of library services, will welcome everyone to the Library. Mari-Luci Jaramillo, Emeritus Vice President for Student Affairs, will serve as the moderator. This forum is free and open to the public.
Mexican popular print website highlights library's collection
A Web site dedicated to the Center for Southwest Research's extensive collection of Mexican popular prints will be launched beginning Nov. 2. The inaugural date was chosen to coincide with the Mexican celebration of the D°a de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) because many of the prints feature the comical or satirical skeletal figures, called calaveras, which were popularized by JosÇ Guadalupe Posada in Mexico around 1900.
Largely unrecognized in his own time, Posada's work was rediscovered after the Mexican Revolution. The great Mexican muralists and printmakers of the 1920s-40s regarded Posada as their predecessor in the creation of popular, national art accessible to the masses. While few of Posada's prints specifically address the Revolution (he died in 1913), his work is considered revolutionary because it speaks from and to the viewpoint of the Mexican working class of his time in an original, forceful, and comprehensible visual language.
Posada and Manuel Manilla, another well-known printmaker represented in the collection, worked in the print shop of Antonio Vanegas Arroyo. There, they produced illustrations for the penny press; children's stories and games; how-to books on such diverse subjects as cooking, sewing, and composing love letters; almanacs; books of sorcery; popular songs and most importantly single-sheet broadsides recounting some newsworthy event. These were printed on cheap, brightly-colored paper and sold for a few centavos on the streets. Comparable to today's supermarket tabloids, the most sensationalistic broadsides depict natural disasters, impossible monstrosities, and the bold adventures of legendary bandits and popular heroes. No one could have imagined then that these quickly produced and cheaply distributed prints would ever be preserved by libraries and museums. Yet, today, these ephemeral and fragile little prints are collected and esteemed for both their artistic and historical merit.
The electronic archive was created to make the content of these works available to a large audience, while protecting the originals. The Web site includes nearly four-hundred images in the public domain which can be used without restriction. In addition, the site includes texts about the collection, the artists and publisher of the prints, and a scholarly bibliography. The URL for the Mexican Popular Prints electronic archive is: http://eLibrary.unm.edu/posada/
