Américo Paredes Distinguished Lecture featuring Dr. Emilio Zamora on Art, Memory, and Movement: A Conversation We Cannot Miss

Américo Paredes Distinguished Lecture featuring Dr. Emilio Zamora on Art, Memory, and Movement: A Conversation We Cannot Miss

“The young Chicano and Chicana artists who emerged in Austin during the 1970s were part of an unprecedented national flowering of creative expressions, galvanizing meanings, and rousing identities meant to serve their communities.” 

— Emilio Zamora

There are moments in our history when art does more than reflect the world—it helps make it. In Austin during the 1970s, Chicana and Chicano artists did exactly that. Through murals, prints, performances, and collective organizing, they gave visual and cultural form to a movement grounded in dignity, resistance, and community.

This Thursday, we have a special opportunity to revisit—and learn from—that powerful moment.

The Center for Mexican American Studies at The University of Texas at Austin invites us to a lecture by Professor Emeritus Emilio Zamora, titled, "The Emergence of the Chicano Art Movement in Austin, Texas." 

Drawing from history and the artists’ own voices, Dr. Zamora will walk us through the early days of this movement—when creative expression became a vehicle for confronting marginalization, imagining new futures, and asserting cultural and political presence.

This talk is part of the Américo Paredes Distinguished Lecture Series, which honors Américo Paredes—a towering figure in Mexican American Studies, a musician, scholar, and the founding director of CMAS in 1970. His leadership came at a pivotal time, when student activists demanded a university that recognized their histories, their communities, and their ways of knowing. This lecture continues that legacy.

There is something especially meaningful about gathering in this moment—when questions of representation, voice, and belonging remain as urgent as ever. The Chicano Art Movement was never only about aesthetics; it was about claiming space, telling truth, and building community through culture.

Join us:

📍 Texas Union, Santa Rita Room (UNB 3.502)
🗓 Thursday, April 16, 2026
🕓 4:00–6:00 PM
🎟 Open to all

I hope you can be there. I hear you need to get there early to get a good seat.😊