Author’s Note: This is the third in a series of articles about my travels related to a series of articles I am writing that are funded by the Andy Warhol Foundation’s Arts Writers Grant.

Earlier this Spring I embarked on two fast-paced trips to San Antonio where I met with artists and arts professionals who are doing important work in the city. I visited the McNay Art Museum, the San Angel Folk Art Gallery, Ruby City, Artpace, Centro de Artes, San Anto Cultural Arts, and Presa House. Yet, there were more places I needed to learn about, both out of personal interest and in relation to the series of articles I am writing about art spaces in Texas founded by BIPOC artists. So, in September I went on a follow-up trip to visit and interview the directors of the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center and Esperanza’s Peace and Justice Center. Like all great Glasstire road trips, other adventures got added into the mix, including a tour and lecture at the San Antonio Museum of Art (SAMA) and a tour with artist Rolando Briseño of his retrospective (curated by Ruben Cordova) at Centro de Artes. As with past trips for this series of articles, photographer Raul Rodriguez accompanied me to take portraits of interviewees and location shots of the various places we visited.

We arrived in San Antonio on a Thursday afternoon and had the opportunity to get a sneak peek of the Amalia Mesa-Bains: Archaeology of Memory exhibition at SAMA. Though Lana Meador, SAMA’s Associate Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, has undertaken curatorial responsibility of the show at this venue, the exhibition is organized by María Esther Fernández, the Artistic Director at The Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture of the Riverside Art Museum, and Laura E. Pérez, Professor of Chicanx, Latinx, and Ethnic Studies and Chair of Latinx Research Center at the University of California Berkeley. 

Archaeology of Memory brings together four large-scale installations Mesa-Bains created from 1993 to 2023 as part of her Venus Envy series. Prior to this exhibition, these four pieces had only been staged separately at different institutions, including the 1993 Whitney Biennale, the Williams College Museum of Art, the Bernice Steinbaum Gallery, and the Menil Collection. The work is intricately layered and each space tells a unique story and has a distinct mood. At the end of the weekend, I was so captivated by Mesa-Bains’ work that I wrote a short article about her installation Circle of Ancestors on the car ride home.

Saturday morning kicked off with a tour of the two locations of the Esperanza Peace & Justice Center. I had never visited the site before, but as Glasstire’s News Editor, I have written about the organization, which has received national attention in recent years. In 2024 Esperanza received $55,000 through the National Endowment for the Arts’ Grants for Arts Projects and in 2022, the organization was included in a Wallace Foundation research initiative. The organization was founded in 1987 by a group of mostly Chicana activists and actively works for a variety of peace and justice movements often using arts as a facilitator for discussion and learning and a catalyst for change. Graciela Sánchez, the Director of Esperanza, spoke about the history of the organization, including its challenges and successes. In the early 1990s, Esperanza’s was evicted from its original location following its fifth annual exhibition showcasing LGBTQ artists. This pushed the institution to consider purchasing, rather than renting a building so that it did not have to worry about similar issues arising in the future. Sánchez told me that at the time their organization had a budget of around $75,000 and was looking to buy a $200,000 building. They were not interested in corporate funding but also knew that banks would not be supportive. The organization raised $40,000 for the down payment and worked to pay off the building within six years. Throughout our time together Sánchez often deflected acknowledgment for her work, noting that Esperanza’s success, including the fundraising, comes from the work, dedication, and commitment of everybody in the community.

We walked through the spaces of the Esperanza Center at 922 San Pedro Avenue, which includes offices, a small gift shop, an art gallery, and a multi-use space that was set up for a performance. Much like the Mexic-Arte Museum, Esperanza’s has an air of rasquachismo. It is a space developed by the community and from the physical space to the ideological, it is built through creativity and resourcefulness. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

We then drove about a mile away to Rinconcito de Esperanza, a second location that serves as a hub for cultural programming and community. In 2022, Esperanza purchased Casa de Cuentos, a 1,320-square-foot home, and five years later it also acquired the adjacent Ruben’s Ice House, a 1,300-square-foot commercial property that was a neighborhood gathering place. A studio space for the MujerArtes program is at the back of the lot, and to the left construction was underway. When we arrived the space was bustling with various groups gathering throughout the space. Meetings were taking place, art was being made, flowers were being planted, and preparation work was being completed on the property where some small casitas had been temporarily removed.

Esperanza is a dream come true brought about by the will and the work of the community. It was exciting to see everything coming together and clear that this has been decades of investment, a labor of love. The organization is currently in the process of transforming Ruben’s Ice House into the Museo del Westside, a community participatory museum.

We left Esperanza and headed to Centro de Artes, a city-run arts organization in San Antonio’s Historic Market Square. Artist Rolando Briseño and curator Ruben Cordova provided a tour of the retrospective, Dining with Rolando Briseño: A 50-Year Retrospective. Originally slated to debut pre-pandemic, the exhibition has been years in the making. Cordova explained that the delay was due in part to the fact that a few significant and necessary works were already committed to national exhibitions.

I had previously met Briseño at a dinner with Rigoberto Luna and Jenelle Esparza, which is appropriate because of the significance the artist places on meals as spaces of community gathering. I asked him about the table as a recurring element in his work and he explained that growing up he was used to eating all of his meals at the table with his family. It wasn’t until he went away to college that he realized other people had different experiences of eating alone or consuming snack-like meals such as cereal for dinner as opposed to the lavish time-intensive productions he was accustomed to. 

Cordova curated the show beautifully, starting with works that the artist is perhaps most known for, his food-focused and table-centric pieces and then diving into other areas. One small section featured early works, including Briseño’s first painting. The idea of having a first painting in an exhibition may be a little intimidating for most artists, and perhaps Briseño felt the same way, but his first painting was captivating. These early pieces stood out as many of them focused on the human form and motion, themes that do reappear in Briseño’s later work but in unexpected ways.

Of course, a highlight of the show is the Spinning San Antonio de Valero (Upside Down Saint Anthony). The statue sits in a prominent place in the gallery, but it is deceptive. The work is necessarily stationary, but that is not how it was intended. Instead, the piece is a relic of a performance titled Spinning San Antonio Fiesta, which was performed on June 13 for four consecutive years (2009-2012). The date marks the feast of San Anthony, the patron saint of lost items — as well as travelers, the poor, priests, the elderly, expectant mothers, infertility, the starving, and unmarried women (which is a lot to unpack) — and the namesake of the city. Spinning San Antonio de Valero is a double-sided piece that has a statue of the saint holding a book that reads “Truth in History/History in Truth” at one end and the Alamo at the other. The way the piece is constructed, only one component can be upright at a time, either the saint or the Alamo. In a video installed around the corner from the sculpture, the performance plays out. The piece is carried by four actors and spun via a hand crank, highlighting the spinning of the story of the Alamo.

Dining with Rolando Briseño will be on view through February 9, 2025.

Our final stop was at The Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center. Its main building is currently under construction, but Cristina Ballí, the Executive Director, gave us a tour of the facilities, including the theater, book shop, and educational center. Having never visited before, I had always assumed the Guadalupe was simply the theater space, however, Ballí explained that over the past 40 years the organization has grown, purchasing buildings as they become available. There are other adjacent and nearby buildings owned by the organization that have yet to be developed. The delay is rooted in a lack of funding to renovate the spaces, but the organization has a long-term plan for its campus. Ballí specifically pointed to a reduction in the National Endowment for the Arts’ (NEA) budget as a hindrance to the Guadalupe. She noted that in the 1980s and 1990s, the NEA would give multiple grants of $250,000 but since the 1990s, the budget has been reduced and The Guadalupe receives one annual grant of about $25,000.

Like many of the other organizations I am writing about through the Warhol Foundation grant, the Guadalupe was founded by a group of artists. However, something that makes it unique is that the artists involved were coming out of the Chicano Art Movement and, from the beginning, the organization had a multidisciplinary approach, encompassing music, dance, literature, film, theater arts, and visual arts.

The tour began at The Guadalupe’s Latino Bookstore and Gift Shop. Opened in 2022 in the former Progreso Pharmacy building, the shop features an array of books by Latino Texas authors as well as books about Mexican American culture, all curated by Tony Diaz, a Chicano literary activist, writer, and professor of Mexican American Literature and Rhetorical Analysis at Lone Star College in Houston. The building is also home to The Guadalupe’s offices and a multipurpose community space that can be used for small talks, art exhibitions, and other events. 

During the tour we learned about the forthcoming renovation at the theater, which includes addressing structural problems, noise and light issues, and expanding the dressing rooms. Currently, the organization is finalizing design details, and the stage is still being used for rehearsals, though performances are taking place at other venues such as the Buena Vista Theater on the University of Texas at San Antonio’s Downtown Campus. But beyond that Ballí spoke to the space’s rich history and beloved annual programs, like La Pastorela Folklorica.

The visit ended at the education center, which is home to various arts classes for the community. The Dance Academy offers Folklorico and Flamenco classes for ages four and up. The Music Academy has instrument specific Mariachi classes for ages 8 and up and Conjunto classes for accordion and bajo sexto guitar for ages 10 and up. While visual arts classes have been held in the past, currently the demand for dance and music education has led to a decrease of those offerings. As the organization grows, perhaps a renewed focus on the visual arts will be more possible. 

There are fuller stories to tell about all of the places we visited on this recent San Antonio trip. While I organize the research and prepare to put pen to paper, I’m also looking ahead to the next cities I will dive into for the Warhol Foundation-funded article series. Some places top of my list include Lubbock, Houston, and El Paso.