Oral History Collection from the Archives of American Art

The 1974 "Los Four" exhibition at the L.A. County Museum of Art received a scathing review in the L.A. Times from art critic William Wilson. The critic argued that the Los Four artists Frank Romero, Gilber Lujan, Carlos Almaraz, and Roberto de la Rocha could not legitimately represent a Chicano street style. Wilson wrote that the four educated artists, "by the very act of leaving the barrio, ceased to be authentic folk artists." Romero defends the exhibition in this interview with Jeffrey Rangels.

The "Los Four" exhibition—considered the first Chicano art exhibition in a Los Angeles museum—opened at the Art Gallery at University of California, Irvine in 1973 and then traveled to the L.A. County Museum of Art (LACMA) in 1974. In this interview, founding member of the Los Four art collective, Gilbert "Magu" Luján, described the show's unexpected success.

In an interview with Paul Karlstrom, Carmen Lomas Garza discusses how she made two major life altering decisions at the age of thirteen. Watching her mother paint loteria tablas and monito still-life drawings in her Kingsville, Texas home, Lomas Garza decided to sacrifice the prospects of a family life in order to commit herself to the arts.

Pop sculptor Luis Jimenez moved from El Paso Texas to New York in 1966, where he apprenticed with Seymour Lipton and rented a studio under Richard Serra. Discouraged by the malaise of rejection from several galleries, he impulsively tried to garner attention of Ivan Karp, the famed director of the Leo Castelli Gallery.

Artist Joan Snyder often includes text in her large, emotionally evocative, abstract paintings. In this excerpt from an oral history interview conducted in 2010 for the Archives of American Art, Snyder considers her conflicted feelings about adding words to her abstractions. The interview was funded by the Terra Foundation for American Art.

Ralph Goings is celebrated for his highly-detailed photorealist paintings of diner interiors, countertop still lives, and antique pick-up trucks. In 2009, the Archives of American Art interviewed Goings for its oral history program. In this excerpt he talks about a turning point in his career in 1963, when he began photographing subjects for his paintings. Through photographs he found a different way of seeing the world. This interview was funded by the Terra Foundation for American Art.

Feminist artist, author, and educator Judy Chicago inspired a generation of women artists to find a place for themselves in the art world. In this segment of an oral history interview for the Archives of American Art conducted in 2009, Chicago talks about the act of discovery as the central motivating force in her life and art. This interview was funded by the Terra Foundation for American Art.

In the course of a life, there is often one teacher who changes everything. For painter Joan Snyder, that teacher was Billy Pritchard. Snyder was on the path to becoming a social worker when she took an art elective with Pritchard in her senior year at Rutgers. In this excerpt from an oral history interview conducted in 2010 for the Archives of American Art and funded by the Terra Foundation for American Art, Snyder talks about her shift from social work to painting and renting her first studio in New Brunswick, New Jersey, in 1962.

Looking back on the 1950s, artist Dennis Oppenheim talks about Abstract Expressionism as a sort of "scientific pursuit" that was solitary and esoteric. It was pure fine art, created in a studio, as opposed to sculptors making public art in the real world. In this excerpt from an interview conducted in 2009 for the Archives of American Art, Oppenheim talks about the tensions between what he calls "pure studio art" and public art. This interview was funded by the Terra Foundation for American Art.

Judy Chicago's bold do-it-yourself attitude empowered her to make her own reality in the art world. In this excerpt from an interview conducted in 2009 for the Archives of American Art, she talks about her major collaborative piece, The Dinner Party, an installation of place settings for 39 mythical and historical famous women. When The Dinner Party was first exhibited in 1979 to critical acclaim, Chicago was surprised that it also generated controversy. This interview was funded by the Terra Foundation for American Art. The first voice you will hear is interviewer Judith Richards.