Located in a squat, nondescript former boathouse in Pilsen, the Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum at first appears unassuming. In only a decade, however, the museum has grown to become one of the most successful institutions of its kind.
Ground recently was broken for two new wings, which will triple the museum’s space to more than 50,000 square feet. This $7 million expansion caps a year in which the museum also gained accreditation from the American Association of Museums, making it one of only 750 accredited museums nationwide and one of two accredited minority institutions, the other being New York’s Studio Museum in Harlem.
Much of the Mexican Fine Art Center’s success is due to its executive director, Carlos Tortolero, the outspoken history teacher who helped found it.
Blunt and in-your-face, the stout Tortolero speaks in rapid-fire bursts that some liken to a barrage of fists.
“We have certain problems of equity in our society – the art world is elitist – (so) let’s correct them,”he says in a voice that sounds like Rodney Dangerfield’s. “Some think that one person of color in a room of 300 is diversity.
“The diversity issue is like cancer – you can’t just put Clearasil on it. It is painful and hard to heal. A lot of times in the art world, people don’t want to hear about something wrong. And there’s Carlos reminding them.”
Some describe his mouth as a machine gun. “But I have never held anyone up – not yet,” he says, laughing.
Tortolero, 43, relishes his roles as a cultural underdog. And he has confounded many who saw his grassroots museum plan as heresy.
“We said that we were going to build a first-class museum — not downtown but in a working-class community — and that we were going to conserve, preserve and interpret Mexicano culture for ourselves and for everyone else. But many people expected us to fail,” he says.
“We built it, and our vision has become an anchor in one of Chicago’s Mexicano communities.”
Tortolero’s style makes usually quiet grantmaking institutions uncomfortable. And yet the Joyce Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation eagerly fund the museum, which has always operated in the black.
The museum, which charges no admission and attracts nearly 100,000 visitors annually, runs a successful gift shop that stocks Mexican folk art, such as Mayan masks, pottery, fabrics and hand-carved wooden figures.
It also has a $1 million endowment, and recently has acquired a nearby building to house both a community radio station (WRTE-FM 90.5) and a youth museum.
The Mexican Fine Arts Center is the realization of a dream of a few Bowen High School teachers.
“When we started in 1982, we had $900,” says Tortolero. “A lot of people would say that we were just teachers (not artists or art historians), as if that made us subhuman, but we did things all over Chicago while we did our homework.”
Lacking a permanent space, for the next five years the teachers presented performance art shows and music recitals at various venues in Chicago.
“Our game plan was to do what we wanted to do — to establish a track record — so that corporate people could see that we knew what we were doing,” says co-founder Helen Valdez, who recently left the museum.
In 1986, the Chicago Park District granted the group the right to use the Harrison Park boathouse. The museum was inaugurated by then-mayor Harold Washington on March 27, 1987.
The museum employs 32 full-time and 15 part-time staff members ranging from curators to administrators. It is one of the largest American employer of Hispanics in the arts.
Art exhibits at the Fine Arts Center run the gamut from the traditional, such as the annual Day of the Dead celebration, which features altars and papier mache pieces, to the contemporary, such as the woodcuts of Carlos Cortez and the avant-garde multimedia installations of artists like Guillermo Gomez-Pena.
Many in Chicago’s arts community first heard of Tortolero in 1987 prior to a show at the Chicago Cultural Center. He raised hackles with threats of street protests — “mau-mauing” — because he thought the number of racial minorities represented was too small, even after officials had taken steps to ensure fair representation.
“But didn’t the Mau-Mau win independence for Kenya?” asks Abena Joan Brown, who has been one of Tortolero’s models. Brown co-founded the ETA Theatre, which is involved in an African-American/Mexican arts collaboration with the museum and the Muntu Dance Theatre.
Tortolero can speak for hours about his passions.
“I was at a foundation meeting recently with 23 people — 21 whites and two Mexicanos. I said, `Folks, we can’t talk about the future without African Americans, Asian Americans, Native Americans.’
“When a woman of any race has a strong opinion, a lot of men can’t take it. And society at large is intimidated when a person of color is so frank — it makes them nervous. People are shocked that I am so blunt . . .
“I never worry about saying something. My honesty might not get me invited to the right parties — but, hey, I want to live in a country where the arts are shared by everyone — everyone has access to all the arts, the museum, the opera, the theater.”
Friends and foes speak with fervor about Tortolero.
“We have never seen an institution like this before,” says art dealer Madeline Murphy Rabb, the former executive director of the now-defunct Chicago Office of Fine Arts. “They are single-minded and not easily deterred from their goals and missions and they have been relentless in their pursuit of excellence.”
Nick Rabkin of the MacArthur Foundation also admires Tortolero’s success.
“In a period when the arts have had to respond to a difficult economy and enormous political pressure, Carlos and the museum have grown and even prospered in ways that make it one of the most important success stories nationally in the arts over the last decade,” Rabkin says.
“And the reasons for their success include democratic principles which form the bedrock of their vision — the notion that they wanted to be a community-based organization presenting art in a way that was as serious as any downtown, mainstream institution; that there shouldn’t be hierarchy between art of Western traditions and those of Mexico; and that there should be cultural equity. Those principles are not new, but his success has been distinctive and pathbreaking.”
Art historian Victor Alejandro Sorell, director of the Center for Global Studies at Chicago State University, gives Tortolero credit for choosing talented people for his staff. But he cautions against too much recognition of Tortolero.
“I am sure that he has had a number of visions and has probably been visited by Our Lady of Guadalupe,” says Sorell, who in the ’70s was unsuccessful in his attempts to found a Hispanic museum.
“I think the guy is a kind of a myth-making megalomaniac and slimy politico who feels that if things do not revolve around him, they ought not to happen at the Mexican Fine Arts Center and Museum,” he continues.
But Tortolero is indifferent to carping.
“Who likes me? My mother, my kids,” he says. “The fact that we (at the museum) are listened to and that people do expect us to talk gives us more of a responsibility — we’d be anti-Mexican if we didn’t speak out, for God’s sake.”
Tortolero moved with his family to Chicago from Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, when he was 3. After graduating from Lane Tech High School, he enrolled at the University of Illinois at Chicago, where he aspired to be a baseball player.
He married early, fathered three children and wound up teaching bilingual history classes at Bowen.
“When I saw my (students) with sparks in their eyes and I told them that they could do anything they wanted to, I had to find a way for them to truly believe it,” he says.
“You can’t teach history without talking about arts and culture.”
The museum is involved in educational projects at two elementary schools, Jose Clemente Orozco and Tepochcalli School. All 250 students at Tepochcalli are learning about history and culture from Mexican examples.
Tortolero says that the museum is not just an arts organization, but a community cultural “center.” This integrated approach — where an institution plays numerous roles — appeals to many in the humanities and culture.
“As we go into the next century, you have to understand the artistic needs of our communities on a holistic level, on a global scale, and with a great deal of humanity,” says arts advocate Juana Guzman of the Department of Cultural Affairs. “Carlos is showing us the new cocktail mix that a cultural worker needs to be — the business, social work, advocacy and artistic components.”
