Take to the Streets! Political Posters in the Albuquerque Museum Collection ca. 1950 to 1990
A collection of nearly 300 posters, flyers, calendars, and other printed materials produced in response to the widespread geopolitical and social upheavals of the 1960s, 70s, and 80s, generously gifted to the Albuquerque Museum by artist and activist Diane Palley. Comprised largely of offset lithographic prints, these artworks range from starkly illustrated denunciations of authoritarian regimes to energizing, brightly colored expressions of solidarity with revolutionary causes, grassroots literacy programs, and the culture heroes whose names have become synonymous with the struggle for human rights. Among the peoples represented are the citizens of Burundi, Mexico, Palestine, Vietnam, and Zimbabwe; the Pueblos of New Mexico and Indigenous communities everywhere; teachers, poets, and farm workers; and all those who have fought to restore universal access to education, land, and the freedom to vote.
Donated to the Albuquerque Museum by photographer, printmaker, and cut-paper artist Diane Palley, who collaborated with printmaking and artist collective on many of the works included here, a large portion of the collection derives from posters that Elizabeth “Betita” Martínez (1925–2021) collected and left in New Mexico in 1976. The Albuquerque Museum is indebted to Martínez for tirelessly amassing and preserving these posters over the course of five decades of continuous activism, and grateful to longtime supporter Palley for generously transferring them to the Museum’s permanent collection.
A Chicana feminist and long-time community organizer, activist, author, and educator, Martínez found her political voice following a pivotal visit to Cuba, where she befriended revolutionary artists, writers, and community leaders. Upon returning to New York, she became an active supporter of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and, in 1967, returned to Cuba with Stokely Carmichael, Julius Lester, and George Ware to represent SNCC at a gathering of Latin American intellectuals and social activists.
After moving to New Mexico in 1968, Martínez continued to devote her life to supporting and vocalizing the struggles of disenfranchised communities, eventually founding the newspaper El Grito del Norte (Española, New Mexico), which covered the Chicano Movement, the Black Panther movement, and other anti-racist struggles. She is perhaps best known for her groundbreaking publications 500 Years of Chicano History in Pictures (1990), which combines over 800 photographs with brief explanatory texts to tell the history of Mexican-descent people in America prior to the 16th century and up to today. She followed this with the equally important 500 Years of Chicana Women’s History (2008).
