M.I.X.: A Third World Painting and Sculpture Exhibition was the first exhibition of painting and sculpture to feature solely “third world” artists, predominantly from the Bay Area, at the San Francisco Museum of Art (later renamed the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 1975). Among the notable artists included were Jose Ramon Lerma, Carlos Villa, and Raymond Saunders. Though categorized by the traditional mediums of painting and sculpture, the works in the exhibition spanned a range of mediums that blurred categorical distinctions through mixed-media works, installations, photography, and in certain instances, the inclusion of live props. The exhibition not only marked a first for SFMOMA but also served as one of the first major institutional efforts to explicitly center artists of color, extending from the jury to the curatorial and exhibition programming. As part of these efforts, the museum organized a Third World Visual Arts Conference, serving as a platform for participating artists to engage with critics, fellow artists, and the public. The first panel consisted of an open discussion, moderated by Bellow, followed by a session with notable art professionals from local institutions. Participants included artist Ruth Asawa, art critic Thomas Albright, curator Tom Garvel from the de Young, and artist and faculty member, Monty Caldwell, from the San Francisco Art Institute.
Founded by Sally Lilienthal, M.I.X. (1972–75) aimed to broaden the museum’s outreach and engagement with local communities to reflect the diversity of San Francisco by offering community events that included concerts, performances, exhibitions, and mural commissions, hosted both at the museum as well as public venues throughout various San Francisco neighborhoods. As part of its charge, M.I.X. sought to include artists of minorities within the museum’s exhibition circuit, launching the M.I.X. exhibition series. In its first year, Jenkins and Castellón served as the joint program director and coordinator of M.I.X. After 1972, Castellón directed the program until its discontinuation in 1975.
Rolando Castellón (b.1937) is a Nicaraguan artist and curator who moved to San Francisco in 1956 at the age of nineteen. During his time living in the Bay Area, he was a prominent advocate for community arts programming and minority artists, working actively as a practicing artist, curator, gallerist, and cultural worker. In the late 1960s, he became involved with Casa Hispana de Bellas Artes, serving as the director of artistic programs in 1969. Coming out of this work, Castellón became a cofounder of Galería de la Raza in 1970 and was elected as the Galería’s first director before it became more established and moved away from a cooperative model. After two years, he left Galería to work at SFMOMA, first as the program coordinator and art director of M.I.X. (1972–75), and later as a full-time curator (1975–81). After his appointments at SFMOMA, he served as the director of the Mary Porter Sesnon Art Gallery at UC Santa Cruz (1982–92). During this time, he opened different iterations of Castellón Gallery, and curated exhibitions at various venues across San Francisco; among them, Drawings from the Fourth World at Meridian Gallery in 1989. In 1993, he moved back to Costa Rica, where he had briefly lived as a young boy, and was appointed the chief curator of the Museum of Contemporary Art and Design (MADC) in 1994. He continues to live and work in San José, Costa Rica.
