MARCH 23, 2021 — As the UTSA Institute of Texan Cultures prepares to serve the next generation of Texans, the museum has named Nansy Lizbeth “Liz” López-Gutiérrez as curator of education. Her work will align museum resources with classroom curricula.
The institute houses a vast collection of research, oral histories and artifacts that bring to life books and lectures and encourage engagement. López-Gutiérrez’s work will focus on digitizing the institute’s educational resources to make them more accessible to broader audiences, and building an environment that transforms learning into immersive encounters.
“We need tactile experience and connection,” she said. “We need something multi-dimensional that will bring together all the senses to experience more than the book, the lecture or the picture. Objects and artworks have witnessed history and can tell stories about how they got here.”
As a high school student, López-Gutiérrez embraced sculpture as her preferred medium. The interest led her to museum programs and mentors who opened the doors to the museum field as a career.
López-Gutiérrez joins the ITC after completing a graduate program in Art History and Museum Education from the University of North Texas and a graduate certificate in Art Museum Education. She also held numerous arts community positions in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, including professional studio work, museums and art exhibitions. Her background includes programs, exhibitions and research in Mexico and South Africa.
“My work seeks to uncover ways in which human identity is interconnected through universal themes,” she said. “My work has focused around and within Latin American, Native American and African art.”
López-Gutiérrez will spend the next month familiarizing herself with the institute, its resources and past exhibitions, and with the UTSA Art Collection, which resides at the museum. She looks forward to embracing San Antonio and the ITC as her new home.
“As a bilingual, first-generation Mexican-American woman, I am committed to promoting diversity, education, accessibility, and multiculturalism in art and museums,” she said. “I am honored to be part of an institution that also seeks to further diversify the art world and to work at a museum that values and promotes diversity within education.”