The Artist and the Book | Celia Álvarez Muñoz in Conversation with Roberto Tejada
Celia Álvarez Muñoz
Photograph courtesy of the artist
Roberto Tejada
Photograph by Paola Valenzuela
Celia Álvarez Muñoz, Which Came First? Enlightenment #4, 1982.
Celia Álvarez Muñoz: Breaking the Binding, 2023, Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Photograph: courtesy of Radius Books
Celia Álvarez Muñoz: Breaking the Binding, 2023, Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Photograph: courtesy of Radius Books
April 10, 2025
Artists have long used books as tools for education and inspiration. Increasingly, contemporary artists make books and research central to their artistic practice, examining the past and often creating new narratives.
In this conversation, artist Celia Álvarez Muñoz and professor Roberto Tejada explore the roles that books and research play for contemporary artists and creators.
Muñoz is a leading Latina conceptual artist whose multi-media work frequently addresses the linguistic, cultural, and political worlds of the U.S.–Mexico borderlands, where she grew up. Tejada is a poet, critic, translator, and University of Houston professor whose research involves the linguistic and image worlds of Latin America and U.S. Latinx cultural production.
A book signing follows the conversation.
Plan Your Visit
- Admission is free.
- This event takes place in the Hirsch Library Reading Room, located on the lower level of the Beck Building.
- Parking Information | Museum Hours | MFAH Campus Map
About the Speakers
Celia Álvarez Muñoz has received two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship Awards, the College Art Association’s Committee on Women in the Arts Recognition Award, and Art League Houston’s Lifetime Achievement in the Visual Arts Award. Her work has been exhibited in major exhibitions such as the Whitney Biennial, Radical Women: Latin American Art 1960–1985, and Celia Álvarez Muñoz: Breaking the Binding at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego. The Hirsch Library has acquired two of her seminal artists’ books: Which Came First? and Double Bubble and WWII.
Roberto Tejada is the Hugh Roy and Lillie Cranz Cullen Distinguished Professor of creative writing and art history at the University of Houston. He has published more than a dozen books of historical focus and his own poetry, including National Camera: Photography and Mexico’s Image Environment. He was also the author of the first major treatment of Muñoz’s work for UCLA’s A Ver: Revisioning Art History series, and he contributed an essay to the exhibition catalogue for her most recent survey exhibition. Tejada is a longtime member of the MFAH Libraries and Archives Committee.
General admission to the MFAH is free on Thursdays, courtesy of Shell USA, Inc.
The Hirsch Library’s “The Artist and the Book” lecture series receives generous funding from Judy and Scott Nyquist.
All Learning and Interpretation programs at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, receive generous support from H-E-B; Institute of Museum and Library Services; Sempra Foundation; the Brown Foundation, Inc.; the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo; the John M. O'Quinn Foundation; the Joe Barnhart Foundation; the Cockrell Family Fund; the CFP Foundation; Macey and Harry Reasoner; the Texas Commission on the Arts; and the Junior League of Houston, Inc.
Endowment funds are provided by the Louise Jarrett Moran Bequest; Caroline Wiess Law; Windgate Foundation; the William Randolph Hearst Foundation; Cyvia and Melvyn Wolff; the National Endowment for the Humanities; the Fondren Foundation; BMC Software, Inc.; the Wallace Foundation; the Neal Myers and Ken Black Children’s Art Fund; the Eleanor and Frank Freed Foundation; Medha and Shashank Karve; Virginia and Ira Jackson; Jesse H. Jones II; the CFP Foundation; the Favrot Fund; gifts in memory of John Wynne; Neiman Marcus Youth Arts Education; gifts in memory of Peter Lotz; and gifts in honor of Beth Schneider.
The Freed Lecture Series is made possible by endowment income from the Eleanor and Frank Freed Foundation.