Student Activism and the Three Peoples Paintings

Abstract

This essay chronicles fi ve decades of periodic student activism against the controversial Three Peoples paintings on the walls of the University of New Mexico’s Zimmerman Library. Painted in 1938–40 by Kenneth Adams, the paintings perpetuate the “tricultural myth”—a romantic, biased, stereotypical, and exclusive perspective of New Mexico. Student activists focused on what they saw as the racist and sexist imagery in the paintings’ portrayal of Chicano/Mexicano/Nuevomexicano/Hispanic and Native American peoples of New Mexico. Starting in 1970 with a Chicana student organization’s letter to the editor of the university newspaper, a twenty-fi ve-year protest campaign against the Adams paintings was mobilized. It peaked during 1993–95 amid a university climate of racism and sexism, exemplifi ed by UNM’s offi cial destruction of a set of large murals depicting Chicano/Native American life. Although the organized activism has abated since 1995, objections to the Adams paintings continue, and the artworks remain on display in the library, sanctioned by the institution. Drawing on newspaper clippings, archival documents, activist propaganda, and photographs, the essay demonstrates how students raised their collective voices to establish a counternarrative to the artworks and demand redress.