Carlos Villa (1936–2013) was a pioneering Filipino American artist, educator and curator who challenged the exclusion of artists of color from American art history. As a student at the California School of Fine Arts, Villa asked an instructor about Filipino art history and was told there was none. That absence became a catalyst for a cross-cultural practice drawing upon Indigenous, Oceanic, African and Asian traditions. Incorporating feathers, bones, shells, textiles and body imagery, his paintings and mixed-media works explored identity, colonialism and cultural memory. Villa earned his B.F.A. from the California School of Fine Arts in 1961 and M.F.A. from Mills College in 1963. He taught at the San Francisco Art Institute for more than four decades, while curating exhibitions and organizing programs that amplified artists of color. In 1985, UC Davis’ C.N. Gorman Museum and Memorial Union Art Gallery presented Carlos Villa: 1961–1984, a major retrospective.