Laura Aguilar, At Home with the Nortes, 1990. Gelatin silver print, 15 7/8 × 19 13/16 in. Gift of the Laura Aguilar Trust of 2016. © The Laura Aguilar Trust of 2016. The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens.
Photographs Laura Aguilar made of Día de los Muertos celebrations across Los Angeles go on view Sept. 20 at The Huntington in San Marino, on Pasadena’s southern border, through March 1, 2027.
“Laura Aguilar: Day of the Dead” fills a gallery in the Virginia Steele Scott Galleries of American Art with a lesser-known body of work the artist made between 1984 and 1992, and is anchored by an ofrenda, or altar, built in her memory.
The Huntington holds 21 photographs from the series, the largest group of works from it at any single institution. They came from the Laura Aguilar Trust of 2016, acquired with financial support from The Ahmanson Foundation and a gift in kind from the trust.
Aguilar, who died in 2018 at 58, was born in San Gabriel and grew up in the San Gabriel Valley, the region that includes Pasadena. A fifth-generation Californio, she studied photography at East Los Angeles College in Monterey Park.
Most of the Day of the Dead pictures were taken in 1989 at the Los Angeles Photography Center’s annual Día de los Muertos event, where Aguilar built a large coffin as a backdrop and photographed the people who stepped in front of it — among them the artists Harry Gamboa Jr., Barbara Carrasco and Ricardo Valverde. Between 1984 and 1992 she also followed the holiday to parades, cemetery visits and exhibitions mounted by the arts organization Self Help Graphics on the east side of Los Angeles.
Other pictures are quieter. “At Home with the Nortes,” from 1990, seats the artist Armando Norte and Consuelo Flores, known for her Día de los Muertos altars, with their two sons, Alain and Gian.
“Aguilar’s documentation of Día de los Muertos reveals scenes of a connected Mexican American artistic community in Los Angeles, one that integrates powerful dynamics of creativity and tradition,” said Dennis Carr, the Virginia Steele Scott Chief Curator of American Art at The Huntington.
The ofrenda was designed by Sybil Venegas and Christopher Velasco, co-trustees of Aguilar’s estate. Venegas, who introduced Aguilar to Day of the Dead traditions, said its materials come from the artist’s own subject matter.
“Land, a recurring subject in Aguilar’s photographs, is represented in this ofrenda by sand, rocks, and branches — beautiful and meaningful elements she often used when composing her nudes in nature,” Venegas said. Paper flowers around the altar were made by the altaristas Ofelia Esparza and her daughter, Rosanna Esparza Ahrens.
Velasco, Aguilar’s longtime studio manager, said the altar also holds objects that belonged to her, including her Mamiya 645 film camera. “Other elements include Aguilar’s wrought-iron cross, signifying her ancestors buried at the San Gabriel Mission,” he said.
The show is the second half of a pair. It follows “Laura Aguilar: Body and Landscape,” which closed Sept. 7 and traced her self-portraiture in the deserts and canyons of Southern California and the Southwest.
Programs follow in the fall. A public program on the series is set for Sunday, Nov. 15, with a panel discussion, hands-on activities and exhibition tours, presented in conjunction with the Getty’s “Every Minute Is History: Five Views of Los Angeles,” which includes Aguilar’s photography. Three Huntington U seminars on her work, taught by Candace Hansen, run on Wednesdays, Nov. 4, Nov. 11 and Nov. 18.
Support for the exhibition comes from the Hannah and Russel Kully Fund for American Art, the Robert F. Erburu Exhibition Endowment and the Pasadena Art Alliance.
The Huntington is at 1151 Oxford Road in San Marino, open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesday through Monday and closed Tuesday. Reservations are required Friday through Sunday, on holidays and during peak seasons. For more, visit https://www.huntington.
