The Brief

Maybe this has happened to you: A loved one dies, and then, while sorting through their remaining belongings, you discover something about them, something that makes you see them in a different light.

A new art exhibition at Scripps College has the same effect.

In “Pintor de Poemas: Unseen Works by Alfredo Ramos Martínez,” a series of mural studies, drawings, and paintings by the acclaimed Mexican modernist — some of which have never been shared with the public — recasts the artist's legacy.

In art history circles, said gallery director Erin Curtis, there’s a tendency to regard Ramos Martínez’s work, which often features Mexican landscapes and Indigenous people, as merely “serene, beautiful, decorative.”

But the exhibition, guest-curated by Scripps alumna Robin Dubin, shows that Ramos Martínez’s work was anything but apolitical.

A quiet rebellion

The bilingual show is divided into four sections: “revolution,” “labor,” “indigenismo,” and “war.”

In the gallery, kept dim to preserve the artist’s work, viewers will encounter a series of arresting images. This includes: A woman weeping over the body of a loved one; torture victims hanging with their feet and ankles bound; men toiling over the construction of new buildings, while, in another frame, another gaggle of men, clad in suits and bowties, smoke cigars and sip apéritifs; in another frame, four barefoot women — a group of flower vendors — walk in unison, with a determined look in their eyes as they face a day’s work.

Through wall text in English and Spanish, attendees learn that after 10 years of studying art in Europe, Ramos Martínez returned to Mexico City, just ahead of the 1910 Mexican Revolution. During that time, he established art schools, where students were taught to get out of the studio and paint the world around them. In 1929, Ramos Martínez came to the United States seeking medical treatment for his infant daughter, who was battling a serious bone disorder. Then, in the 1930s, amid the Great Depression, the country expelled or pressured an estimated 1 million people of Mexican ancestry to leave, including scores of U.S. citizens.

To understand Ramos Martínez’s work — including what he made public and what he shielded from view — knowing these biographical details is important, said curator Dubin.

At a lecture in 2023, she said the artist “was somewhat pigeonholed by his reputation as a painter of idyllic, rural, and poignant religious scenes.”

“Any commissions that came his way probably would have been with the understanding that this was the type of imagery that they could expect,” she said.

For a Mexican immigrant, failing to abide by expectations could be perilous. In 1932, the famed Mexican muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros — one of Ramos Martínez’s former students — was deported after completing “América Tropical” in downtown L.A. The mural, a sharp rebuke of imperialism and the oppression of Indigenous people, was whitewashed after its unveiling.

“Ramos Martínez was the primary earner for his family, which included a sick child who needed regular and extremely expensive medical care,” Dubin added. “Especially in the midst of the Great Depression, it's probable that he could not afford any loss of income ... that could affect his ability to access or pay for medical care for his daughter. These realities likely had an outsized impact on the types of public art commissions he was offered or prepared to accept.”

But, in private, Ramos Martínez was more rebellious.

In 1932, he used conté crayon and tempera to draw a man on a page from the L.A. Times. The man has high cheek bones and a strong, straight nose — features that according to curator Armando Pulido, the artist typically used to represent Indigenous subjects. The work is titled “El Defensor/The Protector,” and in this image, the unafraid man holds up a fist. This piece is an integral part of the show.

"El Defensor/The Protector," one of several pieces created by the artist on newsprint.

(

© The Alfredo Ramos Martínez Research Project

/

Courtesy Louis Stern Fine Arts

)

Dubin named the exhibition after reading a line by Nicaraguan poet Rubén Darío, whom Ramos Martínez befriended in Paris.

“Ramos Martínez es de los que pintan poesías ... no copia, sino interpreta. Él expresará la tristeza de los pescadores, la melancolía de las aldeas, los hombres inclinados por el peso del trabajo,” Darío wrote.

Those words are imprinted on a gallery wall: “Ramos Martínez is one of those who paints poetry ... he does not copy, but instead interprets. He will express the sorrow of the fisherman, the melancholy of the villages, the men bent under the weight of the work.”

Where else to visit after the gallery

Just a short walk from the gallery, visitors can continue learning about Ramos Martínez.

About 80 years ago, Scripps College commissioned the artist to paint a mural in the Margaret Fowler Memorial Garden.

The garden is housed in a tranquil courtyard, centered around a small fountain. Draped in wisteria, the garden walls are now home to a Ramos Martínez fresco. Here, students stop to leisurely read a book or catch up with friends. As a student at the women’s college, Dubin spent many afternoons there.

Making a fresco can be tough — it involves painting with water-based pigment directly onto wet plaster, so that the image becomes part of the wall.

Ramos Martínez died in 1946, before he could complete “Vendedoras de Flores (The Flower Vendors).” And because fresco work must be done in stages, viewers can see the progress of his work, how the mural was coming together.

“Las Vendedoras de Flores (The Flower Vendors)" at the Margaret Fowler Garden.

(

Julia Barajas

/

LAist

)

When Ramos Martínez painted the fresco, he was housed in Dorsey Hall, the same dorm where Dubin lived decades later.

(

Julia Barajas

/

LAist

)

One of the walls features a Zapotec woman, wearing the same type of headdress worn by women in Yalálag, a village in the Mexican state of Oaxaca.

During her lecture, Dubin reflected on the significance of her presence: “The elevation of this Zapotec woman, as an iconic and powerful figure, is a significant statement on the walls of an institution that in the 1940s admitted very few, if any, students or faculty of color,” she said.

It is also significant that Ramos Martínez painted this image at a school that was “constructed on Tongva land, using Spanish mission revival style architecture,” Dubin added.

In her view, the fresco was and remains an act of defiance.

“She represents a reclamation of Indigenous humanity,” said Dubin, “in a time and place that sought to dehumanize people like her.”

Plan your visit

“Pintor de Poemas: Unseen Works by Alfredo Ramos Martínez” will launch with a free opening reception Saturday from 7-9 p.m. The exhibition ends Dec. 14.

Ruth Chandler Williamson Gallery: 251 E. 11th St., Claremont

Time: Wednesday to Sunday, noon to 4 p.m.

Margaret Fowler Garden: 1001 Amherst Ave, Claremont

Cost: Both spaces are free.

Where to park: Free street parking is available around the gallery.

In September, Gov. Gavin Newsom unveiled what is likely one of the last large climate announcements of his tenure: California will move forward with linking its decade-old carbon market with a newly formed market in Washington state, aiming to merge it with the market California already shares with Quebec.

Newsom said California was “choosing certainty, partnership, and clean energy” amid a stream of federal climate policy rollbacks.

But the announcement didn’t distract environmental advocates from the sting of a challenging year back home for the so-called “cap-and-invest” program. As Newsom leaves his post, many policy and climate experts say the adjustments to the program put California’s climate goals further out of reach. The program provides billions of dollars in funding for climate and other programs.

Yet with little talk of climate policy in the governor's race, Californians are largely left guessing about how Steve Hilton or Xavier Becerra would handle the program or California’s broader climate ambitions. The Becerra campaign did not respond to multiple emailed requests for comment. Hilton told CalMatters he would move to suspend the carbon market — which he called “a disaster of a program” — entirely.

Twenty years ago, lawmakers made California the first state to mandate broad cuts in greenhouse gas emissions with AB 32, the landmark carbon emissions reduction law, which authorized the subsequent creation of a market. The law requires the program to be as cost-effective as possible while maximizing benefits to the state’s economy.

Whoever wins in November can appoint a handful of new members to the California Air Resources Board, which has to finish writing the linkage rules and will propose the budget that leans on carbon market revenue. The next governor will also help decide how aggressively California leads on climate, after a year of mixed signals about where the program is headed.

“It's really set up the politics of these issues to get worse and not better over time, and that is the problem that is being tossed like a live grenade into the lap of the next governor,” said Danny Cullenward, an economist who sits on an advisory committee focused on the carbon market.

A question of climate leadership

In May, a process to reauthorize the keystone climate program ended with a controversial agreement that the Legislative Analyst’s Office projects will roughly halve annual auction revenue, offering about $2 billion less in funding for priority environmental programs while opening a separate pool of free permits for polluters that pledge to invest in decarbonization, valued at as much as $4 billion.

Oil companies fought the initial cap-and-invest reauthorization proposal, arguing it would encourage companies to leave the state or further increase fuel prices. The California Air Resources Board, which manages the program, said the increased allowances it eventually approved were meant to balance affordability and economic uncertainty alongside emissions targets. In an email, a board spokesperson said the new incentives would not have any impact on the market’s auction revenue. (The Western States Petroleum Association, which represents refiners in the state, declined an interview for this story.)

The concern comes as California prepares to elect its next governor and nears its own 2030 target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 40% below 1990 levels, on its way to zeroing out emissions by 2045.

“This is not a question anymore of whether or not we'll reach the target. This is a guarantee that we won't,” said Katie Valenzuela, a consultant for Communities for a Better Environment who previously co-chaired an environmental justice committee that advised regulators on the state’s program.

State officials have long framed cap-and-invest as a backstop, keeping the state on track for its climate targets by ratcheting down the emissions limit even if other programs fall short. Advocates worry the changes will have a chilling effect rather than signal the market’s long-term strength, just as California loses ground to federal rollbacks.

“It is going to become very difficult for us to say we are a climate leader when we are visibly missing our targets,” Cullenward said.

Others remain more optimistic. Cap-and-invest is one tool in California’s toolbox, even if this year dulled it. Meredith Fowlie, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley, said the program is not optimal but has done the basics of its job: sending a price signal to drive down emissions while raising revenues for important programs.

Linking with Washington’s market will strengthen California’s program overall, air board Chair Lauren Sanchez wrote to Newsom in September. In addition to creating a larger market with more credits available to industries in both states, the link is expected to raise carbon credit prices in California, where recent auctions have yielded prices at state minimums. A connected market could also lower prices in Washington, making the state’s more stringent program less lucrative. Low prices reduce the program’s revenues and starve polluting industries’ incentive to invest in lowering emissions.

Regulators have not yet established a rulemaking timeline for the linkage process, a spokesperson for the board told CalMatters, but the board expects the joint market to begin operating next year.

Chloe Ames, policy adviser at NextGen Policy, an organization founded by former gubernatorial candidate Tom Steyer, called linkage a strong step forward. The group is disappointed by the other changes made to cap-and-invest this year, she said, and will keep urging the legislature to adjust the industry incentives and California’s next governor to take climate seriously.

“It's been more challenging for us to say that we're a climate leader, and that's why we need to step up,” Ames said. “In this work, what are you going to do other than to be hopeful?”

Kicking the can

Since the market began, revenue has funded a wide range of priorities, including job training, clean energy and affordable housing. Managing those investments, alongside costs to Californians and emissions cuts, has been a balancing act — one the next governor will inherit, Fowlie said. “Some of those objectives are potentially in tension,” she said. “A sole focus on designing the program to meet our greenhouse gas reductions misses this really important larger picture that this program is about more than that.”

The legislature approved the program’s reauthorization and the state’s air regulators lay out its rules, but a governor has influence over how that process plays out and can exert his own priorities, Cullenward said.

Beyond the carbon market, governors have wider latitude: Newsom has used his executive authority on wildfires, water shortages and clean energy.

In the governor’s race, neither candidate has centered climate in his campaign. In their one debate, both candidates steered a question about climate change’s impacts toward affordability concerns, offering little detail on the actual climate policies they favor.

“I think it's fair to say that climate probably isn't the top priority of either one,” said Barry Vesser, the chief operating officer at the Climate Center, a California environmental group that opposed this year’s changes to the carbon market.

Becerra’s campaign website emphasizes affordability in climate policy. He has faced criticism for defending Chevron and for accepting large oil and gas donations. As attorney general, though, he defended the state’s carbon program in court, arguing that “carbon pollution knows no borders” and promising that California would fight the first Trump administration’s rollbacks.

Hilton has rallied against California’s Democratic establishment, and he told CalMatters he would aim to de-bloat the bureaucracy guiding the state’s climate policies. He likened the market’s recent programmatic changes to “rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.” Hilton, who considers himself an environmentalist, has argued for redirecting resources from current climate programs and wildfire mitigation toward management of the state’s natural lands. He also wants to rework renewable incentives to create “a level playing field” for technologies like rooftop solar, hydropower and geothermal energy. His strategy, he claims, will reduce economic burdens for Californians while exceeding the state’s climate targets.

The relative lack of attention to climate policy is a missed opportunity, according to Valenzuela and Vesser. They see a chance for the next governor to more directly and publicly connect climate programs to affordability, a key concern for likely voters and an issue on which Becerra and Hilton agree.

Ultimately, the race’s rhetoric has advocates like Valenzuela “freaked out.” She points to a “huge chasm” between present reality and the policies that would put California on the right track. The state has little time left for the aggressive action its climate ambitions require, she and other advocates say, and it’s time to start dealing in reality.

“There's not many more governors left we can kick the can to before that bill comes due,” Cullenward said.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.