AAHHE William Aguilar Cultural Arts Award

The AAHHE William Aguilar Cultural Arts Award recognizes individuals who have contributed significantly to the understanding of the national Latino community and/or culture through the fine, creative, and performing arts.

2024 William Aguilar Cultural Arts Award Recipient 

María Esther Fernández is the inaugural artistic director of the Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art and Culture, which opened at the Riverside Art Museum, California, in June of 2022. Formerly the chief curator and deputy director of the Triton Museum of Art, in Santa Clara, California, Fernández has curated numerous group and solo exhibitions, including Xicana: Spiritual Reflections/Reflexiónes Espirituales in 2010 and Consuelo Jimenez Underwood: Welcome to Flower-Landia, in 2013. In 2019, she co-curated Xicanx Futurity with Carlos Jackson and Dr. Susy Zepeda at the Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art at the University of California, Davis. Most recently, she co-curated, Amalia Mesa Bains: Archaeology of Memory at BAMPFA with Dr. Laura E. Peréz. She is working on a major retrospective of Judithe Hernández’s work set to open at The Cheech in 2024. Fernández was included in the inaugural list of LA Vanguardia by the LA Times and the inaugural permanent collection, Cheech Collects, was voted one of the top 50 exhibitions in the world by Hyperallergic in 2022. The recipient of an American Association of Museums Standing Committee on Education Multicultural Fellowship and a Smithsonian Latino Museum Studies Program Fellowship, Fernández is a former member of Silicon Valley’s Multicultural Arts Leadership Institute. She received her BA in Chicana/o and ethnic studies from the University of California, Berkeley, and her MA in visual and critical studies from California College of the Arts.  

List of Past William Aguilar Cultural Arts Award Recipients: