Charlene Villaseñor Black

Biography

Charlene Villaseñor Black’s research focuses on the art of the Ibero-American world. She has edited and published numerous books on a range of topics related to Chicanx studies, contemporary Latinx art and the early modern Iberian world.

She is Professor of Art History and Chicana/o Studies and Central American Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. She is also the editor of Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies and founding editor-in-chief of Latin American and Latinx Visual Culture, a quarterly peer-reviewed journal dedicated to publishing the most current international research on the visual culture of Mexico, Central America, South America and the Caribbean as well as that created in diaspora.

Black is the author of Transforming Saints: From Spain to New Spain (Vanderbilt University Press, 2022) and Creating the Cult of St. Joseph: Art and Gender in the Spanish Empire (Princeton University Press, 2006), which won the College Art Association’s Millard Meiss award. Other notable publications include The Artist as Eyewitness: Antonio Bernal Papers, 1884–2019 (UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center Press, 2022); The Chicano Studies Reader (2020); Autobiography Without Apology: The Personal Essay in Latino Studies (UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center Press, 2020); and Renaissance Futurities: Art, Science, Invention (University of California Press, 2019).

Black was named a Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar for 2022–2023. Her grants include the University of California’s Multicampus Research Programs and Initiatives (2019–2022); Terra Foundation for American Art (2019, 2021, 2022 and 2021–2022); Albert and Elaine Borchard Foundation (2017); UCLA’s Gold Shield Faculty Prize for Academic Excellence (2016); Andrew W. Mellon Foundation (1998–2000 and 2003–2004); and Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation (1994–1995 and 2003–2004) as well as the National Endowment for the Humanities (1998); American Council of Learned Societies (2011–2012) and Getty Foundation (2013–2014 and 2020–2023).

Black received an MA and PhD in Art History from the University of Michigan (1990 and 1995, respectively).

Born in Arizona in 1962, she lives and works in Los Angeles.

SAF participation:
March Meeting 2023