^aLoyola Marymount University, CA

Abstract

Using ethnographic information and archival research, the essay investigates the meaning of Chicana art collections. It uses two connotations of Chicana art collectors: the Mexican American woman who acquires art and the person whose collection emphasizes art by Chicanas. Drawing on Latino and US third-world feminist studies, the essay finds that private collectors fill the vacancy created by local and federal museums and establish a public repository of Chicana art and culture. Chicana art collectors have less in common with the scholarly image of the collector and more in common with US third-world feminist activists who generate movements for social change. It argues that collections of art enact a poetics of love and rescue for Mexican-origin communities in the United States.