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. The program was reviewed and approved by the Board of Trustees on September 9, 1971, and announced in the “Memorandum to the Community Service Committee,” that oversaw its development. The program sought to offer 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. At the start of the program, Becky Jenkins was appointed as the first program director, before Rolando Castellón was hired in May 1972. Following their resignation as part-time staff, Castellón was reappointed as the Director of M.I.X. , until the program’s 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.
