M.I.X: A Third World Painting and Sculpture Exhibition was juried and curated by Ruth Tamura, Rolando Castellón, and Raymond Saunders, marking the first exhibition of painting and sculpture to feature solely “third world” artists, predominantly from the Bay Area. It took place at the San Francisco Museum of Art (later renamed the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 1975). As part of the exhibition programming, 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, followed by a session with notable art professionals from local institutions. Participants included artist Ruth Asawa, art critic Tom Albright, curator Tom Garvel from the de Young, and artist and faculty member, Monty Caldwell, from the San Francisco Art Institute.
Writing in his capacity as the program coordinator and director of M.I.X.,Castellón raised key issues brought up at the conference, including the “lack of diversity” that persisted at the fine arts museums in the Bay Area. As outlined in his letter, this “lack of inclusion” is reflected in the museums’ exhibition programming as well as employment demographic, including leadership positions. In addition, this lack of inclusion was compounded by the de Young Museum’s decision to cut Trip-Out Truck, a community-facing program that offered free art classes to various communities in San Francisco.
While raising these issues of diversity and inclusion, Castellón is keen to offer solutions, pointing to M.I.X as a model for community engagement and exchange within an institutional context. In line with this work, he addresses his commitment to serving as a liaison between underrepresented communities and institutions, extending his focus beyond the San Francisco Museum of Art to encompass the greater ecosystem of the arts in the city.
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.
