This fellowship supports the research and development of an exhibition on Movimiento Artístico del Río Salado (MARS), which was a Phoenix-based arts collective and gallery established in 1978 by and for local Chicano, Indigenous, and Arizona artists. Robert C. Buitrón, Ralph Cordova, Lennee Eller, Liz Lerma, Annie Lopez, Joseph Sanchez, Larry Yáñez, and more were part of the collective throughout the years. Working in painting, printmaking, sculpture, performance, and photography, members expressed a distinctly Mexican-American and Native American point of view utilizing aesthetics and iconography that has come to be associated with the broader Chicano Arts movement. MARS organized exhibitions, created school programs, and visiting artist series that engaged students and attracted Latino/a/x and Indigenous artists from across the US and Mexico.

An example of their national impact can be seen through their 1988 exhibition, Rasquachismo, which was curated by Tomás Ybarra-Fausto, Lennie Ellen, and Rudy Guglielmo. Ybarra-Fausto wrote the seminal text Rasquachismo: Chicano Aesthetics for this exhibition, which laid the foundation for how Chicano/a/x art is discussed today. Yet, there exists little to no scholarship on MARS in the fields of art history, Chicano/a/x and Indigenous history, and Arizona history. This project aims to rectify the historical oversight of MARS and to redress the discrimination MARS faced as a Chicano-Indigenous arts organization and the resulting exclusion from American art narratives.