our work
ACTIVATING CONOCIMIENTO, ARTE Y HISTORIA
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PRESERVING AND ACTIVATING THE LEGACY
Cariño for the Collection
Organizing and caring for Malaquias's prints, paintings, photographs, ephemera, and archival materials.
Exhibitions, Loans, and Image Requests
Supporting museum exhibitions, permanent acquisitions, loans, and image requests.
El Archivo: a Lasting Public Presence
Building an enduring home for his work and history, online and in the world by making his archive, along with the interviews, articles, and films made about him over the years, accessible to artists, museums, scholars, educators, and researchers in one central online location.
Why it Matters
When an artist’s work is scattered, unrecorded, or held only in private hands, their story gets told by others, or not at all. By keeping Malaquias’s work cared for, documented, and in public view, we make sure his voice as a Chicano artists is written into social-political and art history on our own terms. An open archive also means the next student, curator, or organizer doesn’t have to start from zero or be dependent on “the algorithm” in wayfinding.
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resources for talleres, artists & educators
La Lúz de Malaquias: Liberatory Arts Pedagogy as Legacy
As Malaquias taught the mechanics of creating a silkscreen poster, he engaged them in understanding wider power dynamics and social conditions. He created an environment for young raza and allies to reclaim their power and use their voice to express themselves con consciencia y CON SAFOS. Over decades at California College of the Arts, UC Davis, at Taller Arte del Nuevo Amanecer (TANA), and in community settings across Northern California and the Bay Area, he built spaces where dialogue, political education, and art-making emerged side by side.
Capturing His Unique Pedagogy
We are gathering how Malaquias approached his workshops and why; how he guided students conceptually from idea to image, and how he created an environment that invited reflection, conversation, and social engagement.
Through interviews with former students, fellow artists, and community members, we are capturing how his teaching shaped their lives and work, and how it lives on in what they do today. We will share this knowledge as practical resources, so that community talleres, teaching artists, and educators can bring his approach into their own spaces.
Why it Matters
Technique can be learned from a manual, but the conditions Malaquias created, where young raza could question, speak, and see their own experience and voice as a worthy basis for creating art through the silkscreen poster, currently lives only in the people who experienced it. By documenting Montoya’s workshop designs and pedagogy, that knowledge can continue to live and educate for generations to come through talleres, classrooms, and community spaces.
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cultivating & documenting the next generation
Cultivating
A tradition stays alive only when it’s practiced. Bringing printmakers together with Malaquias and his longtime students creates the direct, hands-on transfer of knowledge that no archive can replace. It also ensures that el arte de la resistencia keeps answering the struggles of today, not just remembering the ones of the past.
Printmaking Portfolios, Workshops & Exhibitions
Regional printmakers will be invited to create periodic portfolios responding to the issues that have always informed Malaquias' practice: immigration, labor, inequality, war, globalization, and international solidarity. The result is a living dialogue between generations.
Workshops for Socially Engaged Printmakers
In partnership with Taller Arte del Nuevo Amanecer (TANA), which Malaquias founded, we bring emerging and mid-career printmakers together to learn alongside advanced silkscreen techniquies. Through workshops, pláticas, and hands-on instruction, Malaquias and advanced printmakers who have studied with him over decades will share the technical knowledge, political history, and artistic philosophy he has built over a lifetime.
DOCUMENTING
At a time when raza communities face dehumanization and political attack, an accessible archive lets contributors see themselves reflected, honors the intergenerational impact of elder Chicano artists, and inspires the next seven generations.
A Community Taller Poster Archive
Malaquias's legacy lives in the talleres he helped build, and in the gente who still gather there to make prints. We aim to digitize 600–800 large format silkscreen posters created over the past two decades at Taller Arte del Nuevo Amanecer (TANA) in Woodland and the Washington Neighborhood Center (El Centro) in Sacramento, community spaces where poster-making is still taught in Chicano activist and cultural traditions.
Today these prints sit hidden in flat files and back rooms. Made by everyday gente across generations and rooted in social change, they speak to many struggles and many voices. Together, they are the missing next chapter in Chicano art history. We aim to photograph each poster and document its medium, size, artist, and year, including new work made during the project. The collection will be edited, tagged by theme, and published online. A public call will help us find and credit unknown artists, and curated exhibitions will open at both Talleres.