Rhizomes of Mexican American Art since 1848: An Online Portal

FAIN: PW-264041-19

University of Minnesota (Minneapolis, MN 55455-2009)
Karen Mary Davalos (Project Director: July 2018 to present)

A planning project to develop a digital portal to information and archival sources on Mexican American art.  The activities would lay the groundwork for establishing future partnerships with small institutions and for building a database for Mexican American art nationwide.

The University of Minnesota, The University of Texas, Rio Grande Valley, and the National Museum of Mexican Art (NMMA) seek an NEH HCRR Foundations grant to undertake planning efforts for an online portal, Rhizomes of Mexican Art since 1848, that will aggregate Mexican American art and related documentation from existing digital collections across the nation. Art attributed to Mexican heritage artists living in the United States is a rich aesthetic tradition that enhances how humanities scholars think about American art, history, and culture. Co-PDs Davalos and Cortez with a team of scholars and technical specialists will convene online and in-person to produce three Foundations-level outcomes: 1) a protocol by which relevant content from small-budget institutions feed into Rhizomes; 2) a curated search strategy, new metadata, and controlled vocabularies; and 3) submission of proposals for adoption of new metadata schema by the Getty Research Institute and the NMMA.

Associated Products

“Socio-Technical Protocol for Partnering with Small-Budget Cultural Institutions” (Blog Post)
Title: “Socio-Technical Protocol for Partnering with Small-Budget Cultural Institutions”
Author: Mary Thomas
Author: Cristina López
Author: Rebecca D. Meyers
Author: Raquel Aguiñaga-Martinez
Author: Cesareo Moreno
Author: Colin McFadden
Author: Karen Mary Davalos
Author: Contance Cortez
Abstract: Rhizomes of Mexican American Art since 1848 is, fundamentally, a decolonial strategy to make available the rich aesthetic and documentary history of art produced by and about Mexican America. Because Rhizomes will allow online users to search and interact with the holdings and collections of libraries, archives, and museums (LAM) across the United States, we depend upon relationships and technical connections. While these two types of linkages may appear equally significant, we privilege relationships. Whereas Digital Humanities scholars privilege technological sustainability (the robust nature of the tool, infrastructure, fixity, and interoperability), Rhizomes emphasizes relationships.There is no software or hardware solution for technological obsolescence that will support the ongoing function and growth of Rhizomes. Relationships between our team and our partner institutions will provide the foundation for sustainability. With such relations and connections, Rhizomes can grow its deep, horizontal, and vertical roots. The protocol clarifies how we do this work and reflects why we are doing this work. Imagined as an alternative to Eurocentric, colonial, or siloed collections, Rhizomes depends upon decolonial methods for collaboration that emphasize equity, transparency, trust, and reciprocity. Just as we welcome partner institutions into the Rhizomes community, our partners allow us to join them in their ongoing stewardship of Mexican American art.
Date: 12/15/2019
Primary URL: https://rhizomes.dash.umn.edu/socio-technical-protocol/
Primary URL Description: "Creando Raices/Creating Rhizomes: Making a Digital Portal of Mexican American Art Since 1848" is the blog for sharing work-in-progress with our parnters and the public.
Secondary URL: https://rhizomes.dash.umn.edu/
Secondary URL Description: "Creando Raices/Creating Rhizomes: Making a Digital Portal of Mexican American Art Since 1848" is the website/storyboard that describes the larger project and shares the work-in-progress with our parnters and the public.
Website: https://rhizomes.dash.umn.edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/RhizomesProtocol.pdf

Creando Raices/Creating Rhizomes (Web Resource)
Title: Creando Raices/Creating Rhizomes
Author: Karen Mary Davalos
Author: David Melendez
Author: Mary Thomas
Author: Cristina López
Author: María Olivia H. Davalos Stanton
Author: Constance Cortez
Author: Rebecca Moss
Author: Glennon Davalos Stanton
Author: Sara Ramírez
Abstract: Creando raices/Creating Rhizomes is a website to document the methods, various components, and the larger initiative of which the portal is one part. It is archived by the Library of Congress.
Year: 2019
Primary URL: https://rhizomes.umn.edu
Primary URL Description: The primary URL takes the user to the landing page or home page of the website, and from this site, the user can explore the Rhizomes Team, Map, Methods, Featured Artists, Contact information, and the EAR Fellowship.
Secondary URL: https://rhizomes.umn.edu/map
Secondary URL Description: The Rhizomes Instituional Map visualizes the locations of libraries, archives, and museums with holdings of Mexican American art and documents.

Decolonial and intersectional digital humanities: at what cost? (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: Decolonial and intersectional digital humanities: at what cost?
Author: Cortez, Constance
Author: Davalos, Karen Mary
Abstract: Rhizomes of Mexican American Art Since 1848 is an online digital tool that addresses the problem of discoverability caused by Eurocentric cataloging and vocabularies and historical erasure due to racism, sexism, and Western notions of art. Informed by intersectionality and decolonial theory, as proposed by Latina, Black, and Indigenous feminist scholarship, Rhizomes uses a broad notion of “art” in order to reach across humanities disciplines, types of institutions, time periods, and modes of creativity, as well as an inclusive notion of “Mexican America” that does not rely on citizenship. Conceived and designed in stages, Rhizomes will eventually assist under-resourced institutions with the digitization of artwork and provide a toolkit for light weight, low-tech online sharing, thereby linking libraries, archives, and museums with relevant materials and enhancing the discovery of Mexican American art. In the first iteration, Rhizomes harvests artworks and related documentation from large, national and midsized regional aggregators, such as the Digital Public Library of America and Calisphere, respectively. However, the first iteration of Rhizomes may not achieve its decolonial and intersectional goals. Although this post-custodial portal avoids the extractive methods of colonial collectors, code requires specificity and precision that limits the application of intersectional and decolonial frameworks. The presentation explores the complex decisions made in the building of Rhizomes that may not resolve the Eurocentricity of the existing aggregators, including the authority of Dublin Core and its erasure of intersectionality. Finally, it asks if the desire for sustainable, low-cost software is incompatible with intersectional and decolonial frameworks.
Date: 07/23/2021
Primary URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/tzcd-mr29
Primary URL Description: CORE Repository of Humanities Commons
Secondary URL: http://hcommons.org/deposits/item/hc:40679/
Secondary URL Description: CORE Repository list of deposits
Conference Name: Association for Computers and the Humanities, the United States-based constituent organization in the Alliance for Digital Humanities Organizations (ADHO).

Creating Sustainable Foundations for Rhizomes of Mexican Ameican Art Since 1848 (Report)
Title: Creating Sustainable Foundations for Rhizomes of Mexican Ameican Art Since 1848
Author: Cortez, Constance
Author: Davalos, Karen Mary
Abstract: The report summarizes the accomplishments of our team as we established foundations for building an open-source, post-custodial, aggregating portal for Mexican American art. The project was supported by a two-year NEH HCRR Foundations-level grant. It also describes the lessons learned and includes a protocol for partnering with small-budget institutions, new culturally-informed vocabularies that will increase discovery of Mexican American art, metadata schema for the forthcoming portal, and resources submitted to the Getty Research Institute.
Date: 07-01-2021
Primary URL: https://hdl.handle.net/11299/223207
Primary URL Description: The University Digital Conservancy of the University of Minnesota provides free and open access, increases visibility, ensures compliance with public access requirements, as well as provides full-text discoverability and long-term preservation of the records. Each record has a persistent URL.
Secondary URL: https://conservancy.umn.edu/
Secondary URL Description: This is the homepage for the University Digital Conservancy, which provides access to the record deposited by Karen Mary Davalos.
Access Model: Open access

Rhizomes of Mexican American Art Since 1848: a doorway to new research and innovation (Conference/Institute/Seminar)
Title: Rhizomes of Mexican American Art Since 1848: a doorway to new research and innovation
Author: Cortez, Constance
Author: Davalos, Karen Mary
Abstract: A special 90-minute presentation to introduce the portal, Rhizomes of Mexican American Art Since 1848, to the current fellows of the Latino Museum Studies Program, Smithsonian Latino Center. Fellows are graduate students interested in the museum, libraries, and archive professions, and the portal will assist in diversifying their knowledge about the cultural wealth of the nation.
Date Range: 07/30/2021
Location: Virtual meeting with participants from all regions of the nation.

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