Sad news. Anyone in the Green Party who lives in or around DC will remember the Green candidate fundraisers (at least two for Jill Stein), annual Tres Reyes parties, and other events hosted by Olivia Cadaval and her husband David Bosserman at La Orilla, their house in DC's Mount Pleasant neighborhood.

This week, we lost a longtime colleague at the Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage and a giant in the folklore field: curator emerita Olivia Cadaval. She died at age eighty-two.

As a mentor, scholar, and community activist, Olivia spent more than four decades creating spaces for Latino and other marginalized communities to assert their voices and identities in both the Washington, D.C., area and at the Smithsonian. She championed “community scholars”—those who are not necessarily academics but are experts on their own communities.

In the 1970s and ’80s, when the Latino community in the D.C. area began to assert its presence, Olivia was at the vanguard of documenting its history. She conducted oral history research on El Festival Latino and its role in identity construction, and she directed El Centro de Arte, an arts organization that supported cultural work and art among Latino and Latin American artists.

Olivia began working as a curator at our Center in 1988. She brought a perspective that was grounded in collaboration and community scholarship, and how communities see and represent themselves—a philosophy that she instilled in the next generation of curators, researchers, and event producers here. Since she retired in 2017, and into the future, her ideas and enthusiasm continue to influence our work.

Learn more about Olivia’s life and legacy at the Smithsonian and beyond: https://s.si.edu/3YofTnS

Scott McClarty
April 10,2025