Gilberto Cárdenas, a highly respected sociologist who many considered a great advocate for advancing Latino and Chicano identity through academia and art, has diedGilberto Cárdenas, revered for his advocacy for Chicanos and Latino art, dies at 79Gilberto Cárdenas, a highly respected sociologist who many considered a great advocate for advancing Latino and Chicano identity through academia and art, has died. In the meantime he and his wife, Dolores Carrillo García, had amassed a collection of nearly 20,000 pieces of Latino art. Other items in their collection went to the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C., the National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago and the Snite Museum of Art at the University of Notre Dame. In 2008, Bush also named him to another commission to explore a potential National Museum of the American Latino. Cárdenas was also on the board of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund from 1993 to 2012.