
Chon A. Noriega
Interim Dean, School of Theater, Film and TelevisionDistinguished Professor
Chon Noriega has been a faculty member at UCLA TFT since 1992. His work explores Chicano/Latino arts and media through their aesthetic, social and institutional histories. In conjunction with his scholarship, he has actively archived the works and papers of individual filmmakers and artists, art groups, and community-based arts institutions, as well as curated and co-curated research-based exhibitions for which ARTnews identified him as one of six curators “shaping the way art is presented around the globe.” Noriega has also been active in facilitating access for underrepresented groups working in media and the arts. He is co-founder of the National Association of Latino Independent Producers (NALIP, est. 1999) and in 2013 he co-established a national undergraduate mentorship program to diversify the curatorial ranks at six comprehensive art museums located in minority-majority cities. He has presented to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, the U.S. Congressional Hispanic Caucus, and the U.S. Congressional Entertainment Caucus.
Professor Noriega’s leadership contributions to UCLA and the arts writ large are substantial. As Director of the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center (CSRC) for 19 years, he advanced multi-year research projects on archival preservation and access, arts and culture, economic security, educational access, LGBTQ and gender equity, immigration rights, public health, voting rights, and urban poverty. He played a hands-on role in the CSRC developing the largest archival and library holdings in its field, publishing 32 scholarly books that earned 63 international book awards, and organizing public programs and exhibitions reaching over 800,000 people. Under his leadership, the CSRC organized several exhibitions at prominent Los Angeles institutions during the Getty’s 2017 PST Art initiative, including Home: So Different, So Appealing at LACMA and La Raza, at the Autry Museum of the American West, which highlighted the photographic archive of this important local magazine from the late 1960s and 70s, which is held in the CSRC collection.
Professor Noriega has received numerous recognitions for his research, academic leadership, and community service, including from the American Association of Hispanics in Higher Education, the College Art Association, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, the Society of American Archivists, the Society for Cinema and Media Studies. In 2021-22, he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. Noriega is a first-generation college graduate, receiving his Ph.D. and M.A. from Stanford University and B.A. from the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Specialization
Latino film and media art / contemporary art practices and movements / archival and curatorial studies.
Scholarly/Creative Works
“Space Overture and Chorizo Coda: An Introduction Against the Margins,” in Science Fiction Against the Margins: Cinematic Futures, Global Imaginaries, eds. Chon Noriega, Maya Montañez Smukler, and Nicole Ucedo. Los Angeles: UCLA Film and Television Archive, 2025
“Questionnaire on Diaspora and the Modern.” Invited. October no. 186 (Fall 2023), 65-68.
“Films That Changed Me: Raphael Montañez Ortiz’s Cowboy and “Indian” Film (1958).” Invited. Australasian Journal of American Studies 41.2 (December 2022): 102-13.
“A Picture of an Artist at Work: Performance, Experimentation, and the Images that Disrupted an Exclusionary Art World.” Invited. Aperture 245 (Winter 2021): 52-59.
“Not Inconceivable: Knowledge-Production, the Arts, and the Pre-History of a Puerto Rican Artist, 1934-1882.” Tapuya: Latin American Science, Technology, and Society 3.1 (2020): 63-91.
“Is There Such a Thing as Latina/o Art?” In A Companion to Modern and Contemporary Latin American & Latina/o Art, ed. Alejandro Anreus, Robin Adèle Greeley, Megan A. Sullivan. Wiley Blackwell Companions to Art History Series. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Blackwell, 2022. 504-13.
“Self-Portraits of Every-Person,” in Radical Conventions: Cuban American Art From the 1980s,” ed. Ana Clara Silva. Miami: Lowe Art Museum, 2022. 28-41.
Oral history interview of artist Daniel Joseph Martinez (b. 1957), November 23, 2019–October 4, 2020. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. Conducted at Martinez’s home in Los Angeles, California; 47 sound files (36 hrs. 29 min.) with 671-page transcription, July 2022.
Chicano and Chicana Art: A Critical Anthology, co-edited with Jennifer González, C. Ondine Chavoya, and Terezita Romo. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2019.
Home—So Different, So Appealing, co-authored with Mari Carmen Ramírez and Pilar Tompkins Rivas. Los Angeles: UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center, in collaboration with LACMA and Museum of Fines Arts, Houston, 2017.
Recognitions
Guggenheim Fellowship, Fine Arts Research, 2021-22
131st Faculty Research Lectureship, UCLA Academic Senate, 2022
CELJ Distinguished Editor, Council of Editors of Learned Journals, 2020
Alfredo G. de los Santos Jr. Distinguished Leadership Award, American Association of Hispanics in Higher Education, 2020
Excellence in Diversity Award, College Art Association, 2019
Education
Ph.D., Modern Thought and Literature, Stanford University, 1991
M.A., Modern Thought and Literature, Stanford University, 1988
B.A., English, University of Illinois-Chicago, 1986