Telling Stories of Mexican California: Real Life & Myth Making

Description

Though it lasted less than three decades, California’s Mexican period (1822–1846) helped shape the distribution of land, wealth, and power after California officially entered the union in 1850. Telling Stories of Mexican California reflects on this past, and how romanticized retellings made lasting impacts on the state’s culture and popular understandings of its history.

Telling Stories of Mexican California: Real Life & Myth Making broadly outlines California’s history leading up to statehood as a backdrop to the factual and fictional stories that emerged after the US takeover. It considers nineteenth-century Mexican American individuals and families who told their stories and looks at some of the early narratives that helped create an enduring California mythos, as well as the stories that were ignored in favor of this new, often exaggerated or fictionalized lore.

The exhibition is developed by the California Historical Society, drawing extensively from their collections and consisting of 11 free-standing pop-up banners. The first three bookings of this exhibition are generously sponsored by the Henry Mayo Newhall Foundation.

Telling Stories of Mexican California: Real Life & Myth Making was developed and organized by the California Historical Society and tours through Exhibit Envoy.