Museum
Collections
Works by Mel Casas are held in the permanent collections of seven major American art museums. Together, these holdings span the Humanscape series and affirm Casas's place in the history of American art. The selections below identify the works and the institutional contexts in which they are preserved.
Museum of Modern Art, New York
**Humanscape 68 (Kitchen Spanish)**
1973 | Acrylic on canvas | 72 × 96 in.
Humanscape 68 (Kitchen Spanish) belongs to the most politically focused phase of the Humanscape series, in which Casas turned his attention to how language itself becomes a tool of marginalization. The title extends the term "kitchen Spanish" — the simplified, pidgin usage associated with domestic workers — into a broader indictment of how dominant culture reduced an entire population to a caricature as standardized and interchangeable as any consumer product. Employing the series' characteristic structure of a large screen image, foreground figures, and stenciled subtitle, Casas renders mass media and advertising as co-authors of that erasure. The Museum of Modern Art purchased the painting for its permanent collection in 2026, an acquisition announced in October 2026 and led by Dr. Beverly Adams, the Estrellita Brodsky Curator of Latin American Art. Coming the same year as the Whitney's acquisition of Humanscape 56, the purchase places one of the Humanscape series' most direct political statements in the institution most identified with the history of modern art.
Mel Casas, Humanscape 68 (Kitchen Spanish), 1973, acrylic on canvas, 72 × 96 in. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Acquired 2026. © Heir of Mel Casas.
Whitney Museum,
New York
**Humanscape 56 (San Antonio Circus)**
1969 | Acrylic on canvas | 72 × 96 in.
San Antonio Circus presents Fiesta — San Antonio's annual celebration of heritage and civic identity — as hollow pageant. A looming tiger, more vivid and animated than any human figure in the composition, shares the canvas with a pyramid of crowned queens rendered in flat, vacant patches of color, their empty eye sockets replaced by the trappings of wealth and inherited privilege. Casas, who viewed his adopted city through the lens of a sharp cultural outsider, used the painting to expose the racialized elitism underlying spectacle-as-civic-pride. The work was exhibited in "Sixties Surreal" at the Whitney (September 2025–January 2026) and subsequently acquired under accession number 2026.34 through the Katherine Schmidt Shubert Purchase Fund — the first Humanscape to enter the Whitney's permanent collection since Casas participated in the 1975 Whitney Biennial.
Mel Casas, Humanscape 56 (San Antonio Circus), 1969, acrylic on canvas, 72 × 96 in. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Purchase, Katherine Schmidt Shubert Purchase Fund, 2026.34 © Heir of Mel Casas..
Smithsonian
American Art Museum,
Washington, D.C.
**Humanscape 62 (Brownies of the Southwest)**
1970 | Acrylic on canvas | 72 × 96 in.
**Humanscape 141 (Barrio Dog)**
1987 | Acrylic on canvas | 72 × 96 in.
Together, these two works frame nearly two decades of the Humanscape series' engagement with the visual politics of Mexican American identity in the Southwest. Humanscape 62 (Brownies of the Southwest) places the Frito Bandito — a then-ubiquitous advertising mascot that the National Mexican-American Anti-Defamation Committee successfully campaigned to retire in 1971 — alongside a brown-skinned Girl Scout and other charged imagery, documenting how advertising substituted caricature for genuine cultural representation during that era. Acquired in 2012 through the Luisita L. and Franz H. Denghausen Endowment, it was featured in the Smithsonian's touring exhibition Our America: The Latino Presence in American Art. Humanscape 141 (Barrio Dog), acquired in 1998 through the same endowment, belongs to the final decade of the series: a solitary dog in a barren landscape, the painting examines not what the Southwest's self-image celebrates but what it systematically leaves out.
Mel Casas, Humanscape 62 (Brownies of the Southwest), 1970, acrylic on canvas, 72 × 96 in. Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C. Museum purchase through the Luisita L. and Franz H. Denghausen Endowment. © Heir of Mel Casas.
Mel Casas, Humanscape 141 (Barrio Dog), 1987, acrylic on canvas, 72 × 96 in. Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C. Museum purchase through the Luisita L. and Franz H. Denghausen Endowment. © Heir of Mel Casas.
Crystal Bridges Museum,
Bentonville, AR
**Humanscape 70 (Comic Whitewash)**
1973 | Acrylic on canvas | 72 × 96 in.
Humanscape 70 (Comic Whitewash) places a young boy — painted with specificity and weight — before a tilted screen populated entirely by white male superheroes from Marvel and DC Comics: Captain America, Superman, Thor, Hawkman, Spider-Man, Batman. Casas draws the contradiction plainly: the heroes who occupy every inch of the cultural imagination offer this child no reflection of himself. A broad gestural brushstroke across the center of the canvas quotes the formal language of Roy Lichtenstein and Abstract Expressionism, implicating the art world's own hierarchies in the same whitewash his title names. Featured in Crystal Bridges' exhibition Men of Steel, Women of Wonder (February–April 2019), which examined artistic responses to the Superman and Wonder Woman archetypes, the work was subsequently acquired for the permanent collection in 2022 (accession no. 2022.32).
Mel Casas, Humanscape 70 (Comic Whitewash), 1973, acrylic on canvas, 72 × 96 in. Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas. © Heir of Mel Casas.
Museum Fine
Arts Houston,
Houston, TX
**Humanscape 51 (Auto-Erotic '69)**
1969 | Acrylic on canvas | 72 × 96 in.
Humanscape 51 (Auto-Erotic '69) belongs to the mid-period of the series in which Casas trained his attention on the language and visual grammar of American consumer culture. The title fuses the rhetoric of automotive advertising — model-year designations, the eroticization of the car as object of desire — into a single compound pun that exposes the mechanisms by which mass media conflates product and body, commerce and sexuality. Like much of Casas's work from this period, it operates through wit rather than polemic, implicating the viewer in the logic it critiques. The painting is part of the permanent collection of the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, which holds one of the earliest institutional commitments to Casas's work in Texas.
Mel Casas, Humanscape 51 (Auto-Erotic '69), 1969, acrylic on canvas. Museum of Fine Arts Houston. © Heir of Mel Casas
San Antonio
Museum of Art,
SA, TX
**Humanscape 31**
1967 | Acrylic on canvas | 50 × 70 in.
**Humanscape 57 (Texana)**
1969 | Acrylic on canvas | 72 × 96 in.
The San Antonio Museum of Art holds two works from the early-to-mid Humanscape period that together illustrate the range of Casas's concerns during those years. Humanscape 31 carries no title — consistent with his practice of identifying a number of early works by number alone, a deliberate neutrality that places the image ahead of interpretation. Humanscape 57 (Texana) takes on the iconography of Texas regional identity directly: a scientifically precise rendering of the bluebonnet, the state flower, that reads as both homage and taxonomic dissection of the myths embedded in Texas landscape painting. Both works entered a collection rooted in the city where Casas taught and worked for nearly three decades.
Mel Casas, Humanscape 31, acrylic on canvas. San Antonio Museum of Art. / Mel Casas, Humanscape 57 (Texana), 1969, acrylic on canvas. San Antonio Museum of Art. © Heir of Mel Casas.
McNay Art Museum, SA, TX
**Humanscape 38**
1967 | Acrylic on canvas | 72 × 96 in.
Humanscape 38 is identified by number only, in keeping with Casas's practice of leaving certain early works without a verbal subtitle — a choice that shifts interpretive responsibility to the image itself, without the punning, stenciled captions that would come to define the series' mature voice. The McNay has maintained an ongoing engagement with Casas's work: the museum presented Mel Casas: Human in 2018, a focused exhibition of six large-scale Humanscapes organized by curator Bianca Alvarez, and earlier hosted Humanscape 70 (Comic Whitewash) in a 2003 Pop Installation. The presence of Humanscape 38 in the McNay's permanent collection anchors that institutional relationship in a work from the formative years of the series.
Mel Casas, Humanscape 38, acrylic on canvas. McNay Art Museum, San Antonio Texas. © Heir of Mel Casas.
Fair Use Disclosures
Mel Casas, HUMANSCAPE 68 (KITCHEN SPANISH), 1973. Acrylic on canvas, 72 × 96 in. Collection: The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Acquired 2026.
© 1973 Heir of Mel Casas. All rights reserved.
Under the four statutory factors of 17 U.S.C. § 107, this image is reproduced for purposes of criticism, commentary, and educational documentation on an official biographical website of the artist; its purpose and character are nonprofit and educational. The work is a published artwork of established cultural and historical significance that has been widely reproduced in scholarly and institutional contexts, and the single complete work is shown only for identification and critical discussion, with no portion isolated from its scholarly context. This use does not substitute for or compete with any commercial market for the original or licensed reproductions and instead supplements scholarly understanding; it is a fair use under 17 U.S.C. § 107.
Mel Casas, HUMANSCAPE 62 (BROWNIES OF THE SOUTHWEST), 1970. Acrylic on canvas, 72 × 96 in. Collection: Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C. Acquired 2012, Luisita L. and Franz H. Denghausen Endowment.
© 1970 Heir of Mel Casas. All rights reserved.
Under the four statutory factors of 17 U.S.C. § 107, this image is reproduced for purposes of criticism, commentary, and educational documentation on an official biographical website of the artist; its purpose and character are nonprofit and educational. The work is a published artwork of established cultural and historical significance that has been widely reproduced in scholarly and institutional contexts, and the single complete work is shown only for identification and critical discussion, with no portion isolated from its scholarly context. This use does not substitute for or compete with any commercial market for the original or licensed reproductions and instead supplements scholarly understanding; it is a fair use under 17 U.S.C. § 107.
Mel Casas, HUMANSCAPE 51 (AUTO-EROTIC '69), 1969. Acrylic on canvas. Collection: Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.
© 1969 Heir of Mel Casas. All rights reserved.
Under the four statutory factors of 17 U.S.C. § 107, this image is reproduced for purposes of criticism, commentary, and educational documentation on an official biographical website of the artist; its purpose and character are nonprofit and educational. The work is a published artwork of established cultural and historical significance that has been widely reproduced in scholarly and institutional contexts, and the single complete work is shown only for identification and critical discussion, with no portion isolated from its scholarly context. This use does not substitute for or compete with any commercial market for the original or licensed reproductions and instead supplements scholarly understanding; it is a fair use under 17 U.S.C. § 107.
Mel Casas, HUMANSCAPE 70 (COMIC WHITEWASH), 1973. Acrylic on canvas, 72 × 96 in. Collection: Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas. Acquired 2022, accession no. 2022.32.
© 1973 Heir of Mel Casas. All rights reserved.
Under the four statutory factors of 17 U.S.C. § 107, this image is reproduced for purposes of criticism, commentary, and educational documentation on an official biographical website of the artist; its purpose and character are nonprofit and educational. The work is a published artwork of established cultural and historical significance that has been widely reproduced in scholarly and institutional contexts, and the single complete work is shown only for identification and critical discussion, with no portion isolated from its scholarly context. This use does not substitute for or compete with any commercial market for the original or licensed reproductions and instead supplements scholarly understanding; it is a fair use under 17 U.S.C. § 107.
Site-wide fair use notice
Copyright in each of the four works reproduced on this Museum Collections page is held by the individual heir of Mel Casas to whom that work was distributed; this site claims no copyright ownership in those works. Under 17 U.S.C. § 107, the images are reproduced solely for nonprofit criticism, commentary, and educational documentation on an official biographical website of the artist. Each published work is presented in its entirety only for identification and critical discussion in scholarly context, and the use does not substitute for or compete with any commercial market for the original or licensed reproductions; it supplements scholarly understanding.