The partnership aims to foster youth development and strengthen mentor/mentee bonds through interactive no-cost workshops
Riverside, Calif. – April 8, 2024 – Big Brothers Big Sisters of the Inland Empire (BBBS) today announced a new partnership with the Riverside Art Museum (RAM) aimed at fostering creativity and cultural enrichment for young minds through mentorship. From now through May, RAM will host monthly art workshops exclusively for BBBS mentors and mentees, creating a unique opportunity for bonding and exploration of the arts in the historic art museum.
The monthly art workshops are designed not only to unleash the creative potential of the BBBS mentees, but also to strengthen the bond between mentors and mentees. RAM, known for its commitment to community engagement and artistic expression, will generously open its doors to BBBS matches, offering a series of interactive workshops at no cost to help eliminate any financial barriers to quality time and further solidify mentor/mentee relationships.
“The arts nurture a sense of craftsmanship, bolster self-confidence, and cultivate the capacity to envision innovative solutions. Engaging in the arts empowers children, making them more open to embracing new challenges and opportunities as adults. Our partnership with Big Brothers Big Sisters exemplifies the transformative impact of art on our community, and we are immensely proud to be part of this journey,” says Caryn Marsella, Director of Art Education and Community Engagement at the Riverside Art Museum.
The partnership between BBBS and RAM seeks to expose children involved in BBBS’ programs to the rich world of arts and culture in an effort to boost development and confidence, promote self-expression and foster a sense of community. According to a meta-analysis done by the Arts Education Partnership, students who study music have increased achievement and proficiency in math. This same study also found that the visual arts have a positive impact on students’ ability to organize their writing and comprehend complex texts, such as those found in science courses.
“Big Brothers Big Sisters is thrilled to partner with the Riverside Art Museum to provide our mentors and mentees with an enriching cultural experience,” said Sloane Keane, CEO of Big Brothers Big Sisters of Orange County and the Inland Empire. “We believe that exposure to the arts can be transformative, and through this partnership, we aim to create lasting memories and inspire creativity in the lives of the children and young people we serve.”
The collaboration between BBBS and RAM reflects a shared commitment to empowering the next generation through mentorship and cultural experiences. By combining the impactful mentoring relationships of BBBS with the artistic resources of RAM, this partnership aspires to make a lasting difference in the lives of children in the Riverside community.
For more information about BBBS’s community mentoring program and the Riverside Art Museum, please visit BBBS’s Community Mentoring page and www.riversideartmuseum.org.
About Big Brothers Big Sisters of Orange County and the Inland Empire
Big Brothers Big Sisters of Orange County and the Inland Empire creates and supports one-to-one mentoring relationships that ignite the power and promise of youth. Our mentoring model was created on the premise of youth equity and empowerment, designed to meet kids where they are and empower them with the skills to transform their lives and their communities. Since 1958, we have provided local youth facing adversity with strong and enduring, professionally supported mentoring connections that provide a direct and measurable impact on their lives. With a mentor, youth are able to build emotional intelligence and social capital necessary to achieve educational milestones, set postsecondary plans and achieve a living wage job. Through mentoring, our aim is to reduce the number of disconnected youth in Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties and build a self-sufficient workforce with the potential to change the world. To learn more about the organization, visit their Orange County office’s website or their Inland Empire office’s website.
About Riverside Art Museum
Since 1967, the Riverside Art Museum (3425 Mission Inn Ave., Riverside, CA 92501) has been housed in a 1929 building designed by Hearst Castle and AIA Gold Medal-winning architect Julia Morgan, registered on the National Register of Historic Places, and designated a Historic Landmark by the City of Riverside. Riverside Art Museum integrates art into the lives of people in a way that engages, inspires, and builds community by providing regionally focused exhibitions, programming, events, and arts education that instill a lifelong love of the arts.
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Standing at the corner of Mission Inn Avenue and Market Street in downtown Riverside on a sunny afternoon, the realization was so abrupt that I couldn’t help asking the question out loud: “Wait … is my hometown low-key charming?” Growing up, I’d always resented Riverside — often for qualities that might appeal to prospective residents. The community is tight-knit. My maternal grandparents and many of their siblings moved there from Mississippi in the 1950s and ’60s, which means that to this day I can hardly go anywhere without running into a relative or someone I went to high school with. (Once, I forgot my wallet in the Galleria at Tyler mall and by the time I got home, it was found by one of my grandmother’s friends who recognized my school picture tucked inside it.) Riverside is also quiet — I’ve commiserated more than once with UCR alumni about the city’s perceived lack of after-dark options. One of my main gripes there was, as I’d often bemoan to my mother, there’s nothing to do. Still, it’s hard not to look back at those memories through rose-colored glasses and appreciate how, even when I wasn’t paying attention, Riverside always had my back. In grade school, I’d run through my neighbors’ yards with as much abandon as my own, tumbling through sprinklers and swaying on the tire swings they’d hung years ago for their children, who’d since grown. I think back to dusky evenings when we’d walk our dog through orange groves. Somehow, the picture doesn’t feel so distant from the way East Coast friends describe their own idyllic woodsy childhoods.
The San Bernardino and Riverside counties boast the densest concentration of warehouses globally, largely due to the demand for rapid delivery services. However, this has led to severe pollution levels in the region, adversely affecting the predominantly Latino communities residing nearby and contributing significantly to global warming. This development can be traced back to the region’s commercial history, including the displacement of Indigenous communities for the citrus industry and the military’s role in establishing infrastructure for the logistics sector’s growth. Throughout this history, there have been persistent instances of promises of well-paying jobs at the cost of public health and the environment. Despite this, local community members have consistently rallied to advocate for a more sustainable and equitable approach.
That’s the story that a two-week pop-up art exhibit at the Riverside Art Museum, and online, aims to highlight.
“There isn’t an inevitability of where we got to today — decisions were made at each step along the way,” said Cathy Gudis, professor of history at UC Riverside and a co-curator of the project with her students and two environmental justice groups in L.A. and San Bernardino: East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice and the People’s Collective for Environmental Justice.
Read the entire article at the LAist by Erin Stone
A dialogue with environmental justice organizers from the Inland Empire. Spanish/English translation available. Includes same-day museum admission at Riverside Art Museum.
RSVP: ramcheech.ticketapp.org/portal/product/130
Thursday, Nov. 2: 6 p.m. at Riverside Art Museum (Julia Morgan Building) Environmental Justice in the IE: Community-based Practices in Art and Activism
How apt that the new Cheech Marin Museum for Chicano Art and Culture in Riverside, California should open in a repurposed public library. Libraries are historically accessible spaces for learning and intellectual research. Museums, on the other hand, still struggle to make themselves approachable—not to mention equitable. Not so with The Cheech, as it’s affectionately known.
Explore the transformative space where local masterpieces meet influential national narratives.
Riverside is the City of Arts and Innovation. As a city, we have three major art centers and a multitude of smaller organizations. The Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art and Culture is the newest among them. Readers of the Raincross Gazette certainly have heard about its opening on Mission Inn Avenue in what used to be the library’s main branch. It is a fantastic use of the building and has quickly become a space to engage with the arts and the Riverside community.
Read the entire article at The Raincross Gazette by Timothy LeBlanc
This June as the Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture in Riverside, California celebrates its first anniversary with a new exhibit of “Cheech Collects,” Rio Grande Valley artists continue to claim their place at the table.
The museum, also known as “The Cheech,” opened in June 2022 as part of a partnership between actor and avid Chicano art collector Cheech Marin, Riverside Art Museum and the city of Riverside to highlight and promote better understanding and appreciation for Chicano art. The initial collection of more than 500 works for the museum was gifted by Marin.
El Cheech Marin Center es uno de los primeros espacios permanentes de Estados Unidos dedicados al arte chicano. En su primer aniversario, muestra una variedad de exposiciones que realzan la cultura y la identidad chicana y latina.
If first birthdays are a time to celebrate new beginnings, the Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture has plenty to toast. This weekend, a two-day extravaganza featuring live performances, multiple exhibitions, and a family-friendly outdoor festival honors the Center’s one-year anniversary with a selection of Chicano arts, crafts, and food.
Readers recommended street art in Eureka, a new Chicano art museum in Riverside and more across the state.
It’s starting to feel like summer.
Whether you’re looking for a new family-friendly experience or a highly air-conditioned spot to escape the heat, today we’re sharing your choices for the best museums and places to enjoy art in California.
Read the entire article at The New York Times by Soumya Karlamangla
Collidoscope: de la Torre Brothers Retro-Perspective, the first temporary exhibition at The Cheech, is such a dazzling and astonishing show that it will not be easy for the museum to surpass it. Einar (b. 1963) and Jamex (b. 1960) de la Torre, sculptors born and raised in Guadalajara, moved with their family to California in 1972. Currently, they migrate between studios they maintain in San Diego and Enseñada, Baja California, Mexico, so they experience both cultures from the inside and from the outside on a continuous basis. The brothers also travel around the world, where they sometimes work at glass studios. They produce works steeped in their particular cultural experiences that humorously and critically comment on art, history, religion, politics, consumerism, and various aspects of material culture, including Mexican and U.S. popular traditions and pre-Columbian monuments.
This show explores and challenges conceptions of Mexican, Mexican-American, Xicanx, and Latinx bodies in art over the past sixty years. Organized by The American Federation of Arts (AFA), it features roughly 70 artists and collectives who are committed to reclaiming and reframing their own representations. It defines Xicanisma as a movement that grew out of the Chicano Movement in the 1990s, echoing its calls for civil rights and recognition with an increased focus on feminism, intersectionality, and indigeneity. Participating artists include Laura Aguilar, Mario Ayala, ASCO, Judith F. Baca, Alice Bag, Nao Bustamante, Enrique Chagoya, Vaginal Davis, Sandra de la Loza, rafa esparza, Jay Lynn Gomez, James Luna, Patrick Martínez, Shizu Saldamando, Patssi Valdez, and many others.
The renowned Riverside Art Museum and Cheech Marin Center feature some of the best art created through Southern California’s unique culture.
Found within the heart of downtown Riverside, the Riverside Art Museum (RAM) and the Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture are exquisite treasures offering a unique exploration of art and culture. From contemporary ceramics to vibrant abstract paintings, these locations deliver an unmatched experience for art enthusiasts, residents, and visitors alike.
The Institute of Museum and Library Services bestowed its top honours for 2023 on museums in Florida, Ohio, Wyoming and California
The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) gave its top annual award, the National Medal for Museum and Library Service, to eight institutions today (23 May), including four libraries and four museums. The museums honoured by the federally funded agency include art, science and historical institutions located in four states, from Florida’s Atlantic coast to Southern California: the Center of Science and Industry in Columbus, Ohio; the Jim Gatchell Memorial Museum in Buffalo, Wyoming; the Museum of Discovery and Science in Fort Lauderdale, Florida; and the Riverside Art Museum in the Los Angeles suburb of Riverside.
Read the entire article at The Art Newspaper by Benjamin Sutton
May 18, 2023 Riverside, California offers so much eye-popping architecture — from Mission Revival to Mid-Century Modernism — all within just a couple of blocks. Here are the city’s downtown highlights, ranging from The Mission Inn and a Julia Morgan YMCA to The Cheech art museum. Want to learn more?
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Chelle Barbour blends Afro-surrealism and afro-futurism to elevate the agency of the Black female character in her collages. Her series of collage portraits is on view at the Riverside Art Museum as part of “Colliding Visions: Contemporary California Collage” from May 18 to October 15, 2023. Learn more about Barbour’s process and how she reconstructs the “Black female character.
Want to learn more? Find more SoCal arts and culture at https://bit.ly/3AKKAbV
Rodolfo “Corky” Gonzales, Chicano Movement Leader, founder of the Crusade for Justice, and Poet once wrote: I am the masses of my people and I refuse to be absorbed. I am Joaquín. The odds are great, But my spirit is strong, My faith unbreakable, My blood is pure. These words are ever present in the Cheech and MexiCali Biennial, “Land of Milk & Honey.” With works by over 40 artists, the exhibition, organized by Ed Gómez, Luis G. Hernández, Rosalía Romero, and April Lillard-Gómez, deconstructs perceptions of California being that place of opportunity where one can have a better way of life. These artists, wounded with the blessing to create, access their inner most visceral aesthetic language and speak to themes of agriculture in California and Mexico in a vein similar to John Steinbeck’s interpretation of the region as amoral and untrustworthy. The folk included in the exhibition are unafraid to choose from the menu of creative expressionistic modes and interrogate unapologetically, while also inviting dialogue about injustice.
Read the entire article at Artillery by Richard Allen May III
Riverside — Gerald Clarke’s sculpture “Continuum Basket” lines up 668 crushed beer and soda cans in a spiral pattern, affixed to the shallow bowl of a TV satellite dish hanging at eye level on a wall. The low spiral creates a traditional Indigenous basketry form — Clarke, born in Hemet, is an enrolled member of the Cahuilla Band of Mission Indians — embedded into a high-tech parabolic antenna designed to transmit or receive information between near and far.
Read the entire article at The LA Times by Christopher Knight
13 unmissable arts events we’re looking forward to this summer
Scorching temperatures are expected this summer. Luckily, L.A. has no shortage of cool, air-conditioned museums, music halls and theaters.
There’s a veritable slew of exciting cultural happenings on the horizon this summer. See pop artist Keith Haring’s first-ever museum survey in L.A. at the Broad museum, catch indie theater across Los Angeles at the 13th Hollywood Fringe festival, take in painting, photography, sculpture and more by a multigenerational group of Chicanx artists at the Cheech and enjoy a “Ghost Opera” at the Ojai Music Festival. And nothing says summer like a Stephen Sondheim tribute at the Hollywood Bowl.
The Times’ arts team waded through the city’s sea of cultural happenings to distill the highlights for you. Sunscreen not required.
‘Xican-a.o.x. Body’
To put your body on the line is to assume risk for an action. This touring exhibition, which travels to four other venues after debuting at the Cheech on June 17, will look at the ways in which a multigenerational group of Chicanx artists has placed the brown body at the center of its work — not only as a symbol of resistance but also as a way of asserting presence. It will include a wild range of objects: pottery, painting, photography, sculpture, film and even lowriders by about 70 artists and collectives, including Laura Aguilar, Nao Bustamante, Jay Lynn Gomez and rafa esparza. —Carolina A. Miranda
Posted in Arts and Entertainment at Los Angeles Times
“[The] Japanese Mexican experience…there is very little documentation, there is very little record, and it’s not part of the national history so it’s hard for us to engage with these kinds of histories.”
The black and white photograph of a community posing in front of a parade float in Tijuana in the early twentieth century tells a story of migration largely forgotten to history, an image that inspired artist Shinpei Takeda’s virtual reality sculptural installation, Float for Reclamation: Limit of Your Safe Space Iteration II, 2023, now showing at the MexiCali Biennial Land of Milk and Honey exhibit at the Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art and Culture of the Riverside Art Museum. Taken by Kingo Nonaka, the first documentary photographer of Tijuana, it captures the Japanese community in the years prior to World War II (fig. 1). As Takeda shares with me, many of these individuals were migrant workers, “coming from countryside of Japan, initially to Chiapas. The idea was to work in café [coffee] plantations, and send money back, like an immigrant, like braceros.” When opportunities disappeared there – and in Oaxaca’s coffee plantations as well – many of these migrants would eventually move north to Tijuana. With the advent of World War II, this growing community in the U.S-Mexico borderlands would be forcefully uprooted from their homes, like their Japanese American counterparts in the U.S. It is a history that remains largely unknown, a glaring erasure in both U.S, U.S-Mexico borderlands history, and Mexican national history.
Read the entire article at East Wind Ezine by Celia Viramontes
The “Land of Milk & Honey” art exhibit curated by the MexiCali Biennial has arrived in Riverside’s crown jewel, The Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art, Culture & Industry. The show features an array of mixed media with eye-catching paintings to obscure sculptures. The Biennial chose each project because of its significant meaning toward the prospects of the exhibit.
The MexiCali Biennial was kickstarted by artists Ed Gomez & Luis G. Hernandez. Biennials reside in the art world as an expansive collection of works that pops up every two years. However, Gomez and Hernandez’s Biennial does not stay restricted to its two-year rule. The Mexicali Biennial has put on multiple exhibitions throughout back-to-back years, with “Land of Milk & Honey” marking the fifth iteration of the Biennial.
Read the entire article at UC Riverside’s Highlander News by Maxen Olvera
In Conversation: Cheech Marin features actor and comedian Cheech Marin discussing Chicano art and the community collaboration that launched the national Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture of Riverside Art Museum (aka “The Cheech”) with journalist Daniel Cassady from ARTnews.
Renown photojournalist and curator Luis C. Garza joins Dan Guerrero on the next Happy Hour of streamed conversations. Garza has a distinguished career dating back to the early days of the Chicano movement in Los Angeles documenting that tumultuous time for “La Raza” magazine. He later captured Mexican muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros in an iconic photograph during an historic meeting in Budapest during a World Peace Conference, a meeting that proved transformational for the Bronx-born Chicano. This plática is not to be missed. https://causeconnect.net/portfolio_pa…
Cheech Marin was born in South Los Angeles to a tight-knit family of cops and priests. What mattered to him was going to school and getting right with God.
By the time he was in middle school, his plan was to become a priest — just like his cousins. But, that was before he tried smoking weed. When Cheech went to college, it was a new world. He was away from home and living with friends, so he decided to venture off the straight and narrow.
One night someone passed him a joint. It was the ’60s, so naturally he got put on. It wasn’t just to smoking pot though. Eventually, it was to the peace movement and to the Chicano civil rights movement. The priesthood was not really on Cheech’s agenda after that.
As you enter the new Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art and Culture—be prepared. The two story glass sculpture by the de la Torre brothers will take your breath away. The glass and plastic installation, homage to an Aztec deity Coatlicue, silently greets visitors. San Diego/Tijuana artists Einar and Jamex de la Torre, known as the de la Torre Brothers, succeed in making the lenticular images of a woman, a superhero who protects the earth, relevant to modern-day society fighting for a greener existence. The glass and plastic beauty is spectacular. Beyond this symbolic figure of mother earth follows a feast of Chicano art, a transformative artistic enlightenment.
Read the entire article at Latinos in America by RICARDO ROMO, PH.D
Trustee Cathy Paredes shows Sheba Turk around The Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art and Culture of the Riverside Art Museum, otherwise known as “The Cheech,” which features famous work and includes new and local artists.
Source: CBS News
Trustee Cathy Paredes shows Sheba Turk around The Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art and Culture of the Riverside Art Museum, otherwise known as “The Cheech,” which features famous work and includes new and local artists.
https://www.cbsnews.com/losangeles/video/socal-spotlight-the-cheech-art-museum-in-riverside/
Luis C. Garza – Photojournalist and Curator known for his work recording tumultuous social events of the 1960s and 1970s in Los Angeles and NYC.
https://www.hellomynameisdana.com/1967255/12408875
Photographer Luis C. Garza images have rarely been exhibited to the public. His works documented his East Los Angeles community during the early 1970s, his South Bronx neighborhood during the 1960s, and his 1971 travels to Budapest, Hungary for the World Peace Conference where he met Mexican muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros.
Luis Garza was a dedicated artist and visionary who helped advance Chicano culture and activism in the 1960s and 70s through his compassionate photos. Born in 1943 in the South Bronx, he moved to Los Angeles in 1965, searching for a lifestyle more amenable to his Mexican-American heritage.
I’ve been planning this visit for a few months now, but one thing or another always came up and forced me to postpone the trip to the following weekend. And then the following one. As they say better late than never. Finally, this past weekend I had the opportunity to spend a couple hours at both the Riverside Art Museum and the nearby The Cheech (more formal name: The Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art, Culture & Industry).
Judging by the foot traffic, I noticed The Cheech gets a lot more love than the RAM, but still, I can’t tell you how lucky I felt to have randomly enjoyed Beliz Iristay’s Tracing Acculturations exhibit (runs through April 30, 2023). The works of art showcased are the result of an ultra-unique combination you wouldn’t think of in a million years: Mexican x Turkish.
A new exhibit Life Logistics, featuring the work of dozens of Inland Empire (IE) artists and curators, is available for viewing at the The Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art in downtown Riverside.
Museum goers are treated to detailed illustrations, photographs and woodworks that serve as visual testaments to themes related to worker exploitation, food security, environmental racism, economic inclusion and community organizing.
It would be easy to say that the opening of the Cheech would give me all the comfort anybody could ever want, and you would be right. But my most comforting moment was watching a 4-year-old girl dancing in front of a huge lenticular piece at the museum. She was dancing a duet with her own reflection. Completely transported, she almost seemed to disappear into the artwork, to become one with it. I thought at that moment that there is hope for humanity and that art has accomplished its purpose.
— Cheech Marin is an actor, writer and art collector. He is the founding donor of the Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture of the Riverside Art Museum.
As part of the iconic duo, “Cheech and Chong,” Cheech Marin helped define an era with their stoner comedy. He parlayed his financial success into collecting Chicano art, and now Marin gives Anthony Mason a tour of the museum that bears his name and displays his art.
Visitors to the recently opened Cheech Marin Center at the Riverside Art Museum are often astonished by the extensive collection of colorful, narrative art there by Carlos Almaraz, Judithe Hernández, Gilbert “Magú” Luján, Frank Romero, Patssi Valdez and other pioneering Chicano artists: work that has been gifted by Cheech Marin, actor of the Cheech and Chong movies, and avid collector of Chicano art.
June Edmonds is a recipient of the prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship in Fine Arts…June is a Los Angeles based artist whose works have been describe as Vibrant, Energetic and highlights the untold experience of Black Americans.
Did you know Cheech Marin has his own museum just outside of Los Angeles? The Cheech Center recently opened in Riverside, and it’s not a little kiosk in a mall. It’s 61,420 [Ed: LOL] square feet and houses his incredible collection of Chicano art, which he’s been collecting for over 40 years. This is an institution of importance and inspiration. I am lucky enough to have gotten to know Cheech over the last dozen or so years and while he is one of the funniest people I have ever met, his passion to champion and educate others about Chicano art is undefeated, amongst his many talents. Plus our managing
editor, Luis Ruano, got to ask him the origins of a phrase he’s been using since middle school.
Cheech Marin talks presenting at the 2022 MTV Video Music Awards and opening an art museum
Much has been and will continue to be written about the latest gem in Southern California. The Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture, or ‘The Cheech,’ opened its doors to the public on June 18th. The renovated building, once a public library, showcases Marin’s flourishing art collection. Nearly 500 paintings, sculptures and installations profess a story of Marin’s forty-plus year history as a collector while highlighting Chicano landmarks.
Cómo el actor Cheech Marín puso el arte chicano en lo más alto
El actor y comediante Cheech Marín habla sobre su nuevo museo dedicado exclusivamente al arte chicano. Explica por qué es tan importante reconocer el arte y la cultura chicana.
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Emerging in the 1960s after decades of social and economic discrimination, the Chicano Movement sought to bring equality and ethnic empowerment and pride to the Mexican-Americans, helping to construct new transnational identities and fueling a renaissance in politically charged arts. Used as a vehicle for achieving new and more credible human values, Chicano art brought new iconography and symbolic languages that articulated the ideology of the movement and established a unique artistic identity in the US, while reaffirming the Chicano community’s spiritual as well as political sensibilities. Known as the art of struggle, protest, and identity, Chicano art became a forum where creativity and activism converge into something combustible, inspiring, and breathtakingly bold.
As the Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art and Culture debuts, its founder hopes to inspire a renaissance in a region of California lacking public arts funding.
RIVERSIDE, Calif. — As a child, Cheech Marin loved collecting objects — baseball cards, stamps, marbles — and then organizing them obsessively.
“I had a mania for codifying them and putting them in some kind of collection or whole set,” said Marin, 75, who is best known as the mustachioed, Chicano half of the classic stoner-comedy duo, Cheech & Chong.
In the 1980s, buoyed by steady film and TV work, Marin’s natural inclination toward collecting found its fullest expression when he fell in love with the works of Los Angeles-based Chicano artists like John Valadez, George Yepes and Patssi Valdez.
After just five years, the Cheech officially opens to the public. Here’s what to expect.
The Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture of the Riverside Art Museum, known simply as the Cheech, opens this weekend in downtown Riverside. In just five years, this new 61,420-square foot space has transformed from a public library into a world-class museum that aims to show how Chicano art continues to affect our social, cultural and political landscapes.
Not every collector wants to share their art with the world. Thankfully, Cheech Marin—yes, that Cheech Marin—isn’t one of them. On June 18, 2022, the longtime actor and comedian presents Cheech Collects, the inaugural exhibition at The Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture of the Riverside Art Museum—affectionately dubbed “The Cheech.”
RIVERSIDE, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–It is time to welcome a glimmering jewel in the world of Chicano art.
That was the message from those who gathered for a Grand Opening dedication ceremony of The Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture of the Riverside Art Museum in downtown Riverside, California which will house, by all estimates, the finest collection of Chicano art anywhere in the world.
Comedian, actor and art collector Cheech Marin said the center, affectionately known as The Cheech, represents a major step forward in his decades-long mission to bring Chicano art to the forefront of the art world.
Cheech Collects
(Photo: Margaret Garcia, Down Figueroa St., Part of the Cheech Marin Collection)
One of the nation’s first permanent spaces dedicated to showcasing Chicano art and culture opens this June, with visitors treated to the centre’s first exhibition which weaves a story of Cheech Marin’s 40-year journey as an art collector. The exhibition features works by some of the most respected Chicana/o artists in the world, many of whom are considered pioneers, trailblazers, and even rule-breakers. It includes beautiful and complex works – some on view for the first time – designed to raise visibility for social justice issues, and help shape our popular, political, and cultural consciousness.
The Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture of the Riverside Art Museum, Riverside / 18 June 2022 – 18 June 2023
Cheech Marin is more than just a comedian and actor. He’s an art collector and he has his own museum opening soon right here in southern California. We talk to him about it.
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The Riverside Art Museum and San Diego’s Museum of Contemporary Art are both expanding to feature more Chicano and Latin American works.
Cheech Marin can’t help but crack wise about his decades-old habit of acquiring art. “Unfortunately, it’s a mania,” he says. “It’s an addiction: My name is Cheech, and I’m an art collector.”
Improbable as it may sound, Marin, half of the iconic duo Cheech & Chong, who spun stoner shtick into comedy gold in the 1970s and ’80s, is widely considered the world’s preeminent collector of Chicano art. Thanks to his gift of roughly 500 pieces from this trove, the Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture—or “the Cheech”—will open its doors in Riverside, Calif., in June.
Recently, museums have pledged to diversify their holdings and programming. The Riverside Art Museum’s offer to devote an entire new branch to Marin’s cache arrived at just the right time. “I had come to the point where I started to say, ‘What am I going to do with this collection?’ ” he recalls. “There’s no more room under the bed, and the garage is full. Then this thing dropped out of the sky.”
Renowned Chicano rock group Los Lobos will headline a May 7 benefit concert for the new Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture of the Riverside Art Museum, known as “The Cheech.”
Delayed because of the coronavirus pandemic, the Chicano art museum’s grand opening in downtown Riverside is now set for June 18, officials said. It was originally to open May 8 in the renovated former library build.
Pioneering female architect Julia Morgan, best known for Hearst Castle, was born 150 years ago this month. She designed more than 700 buildings in California but just one in the Inland Empire: Riverside’s grand YWCA.
Thankfully, the 1929 building is still around, home to the Riverside Art Museum. In fact, it’s been in the hands of RAM and its predecessor, the Riverside Art Center, far longer than i …
What does Rembrandt’s Night Watch have to do with Chicanx art? For actor and comedian Cheech Marin, it was the inspiration for building a collection that could one day be the basis for a museum. In the 1980s, at the height of his Cheech & Chong days, Marin had started collecting Chicanx art. He visited the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam and spent nearly an hour gazing at Rembrandt’s 14-foot-wide masterpiece—“looking at the painting and taking in every aspect of it,” he said—and it was then that he knew he wanted to build a museum-quality collection of his own.
“I’d seen it all my life growing up, in reproductions in books, but when I got there—it was a huge, huge painting, like a mural,” Marin said in an interview from his Pacific Palisades home. “When I saw it, I thought, Wow, I get it now. It made such an impression on me. I thought to myself, That’s what I have to do.”
The Riverside Art Museum will present an exhibit of 27 paintings and 18 drawings to help lead to the 2022 opening of The Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Arts & Culture of Riverside Art Museum.
The exhibition, called “Are You with Me?” by artist Sonya Fe, will be in the Art Alliance Gallery and is part of The Cheech@RAM series of shows leading to the new museum’s May opening.
The Riverside Art Museum has received a $50,000 grant for its Artist-in-Residence Program, a community-revitalization initiative led by artist and Riverside native Juan Navarro.
The museum is among 20 nonprofit groups in the nation to benefit from this year’s U.S. Bank Foundation Market Impact Fund award. The foundation’s contributions totaling $1 million aim to support those creating community.
Through the palette of the “Los Tejanos” art exhibition, “The Cheech” explores Cheech Marin’s lifelong advocacy of the Chicano Art Movement, and his journey to develop the Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art, Culture and Industry.
With original score by Grammy Nominated musician El Dusty, “The Cheech” takes a fascinating look at a national icon’s love affair with art, and his incredible contribution to promote and preserve a vital part of American cultural identity.
The Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture of the Riverside Art Museum has named María Esther Fernández as its artistic director, the center’s top post and the person who will steer the curatorial and programming visions for the project under development in the former Riverside Public Library.
“The Cheech,” as it’s referred to, is scheduled to open May 8. It will feature Marin’s personal collection of about 700 itemsalong with works on loan from artists, collectors and other institutions. It will also present traveling exhibitions.
“Typewriter Muse: Inspiration in Analog” includes machines on display and a special Saturday, July 10, presentation on writing
A new Riverside Art Museum exhibit celebrates the nostalgic clickety-clack of typewriters and their role in writing.
The California city of Riverside has approved plans and funding for the Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art, Culture, and Industry.
Comedian and actor Cheech Marin is a man of many interests—though you wouldn’t know if from his monomaniacal love of weed as one half of the legendary comedy duo Cheech and Chong. He is also an avid trivia player (he won the first Celebrity Jeopardy! tournament) and art collector, having put together a 700-work collection of Chicano art, which is thought to be the largest of its kind in the world.
Now, after years of planning, the long-awaited Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art and Culture of the Riverside Art Museum in Riverside, California, has finally received the green light from the city, and is on track to open this fall.
Read the entire article at artnet.com by Sarah Cascone
The Riverside Art Museum (RAM) is committed to confronting anti-Blackness and systemic racism. As we prepare to reopen the museum, we are taking a deep look at how our mission-driven work can contribute to creating a more just and equitable world; building community through the arts is a pledge we make in our mission statement.
We have heard from community members, artists, trustees, volunteers, and staff about ways we can further this work. We are steadfast to accomplish the following:
- Reconvene our Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Access Task Force comprised of museum trustees, staff, and community members to hear from Black, Latino, People of Color, and other underrepresented artists, community leaders, and organizations we have worked with in the past to ask for and listen to their insights and expertise to help create actionable next steps; in recent years, this task force outlined initiatives such as our Visual Voice exhibition as part of the Association of African American Museums Conference in Riverside;
- Explore with the Civil Rights Institute of Inland Southern California a year-long partnership to elevate the conversation about structural racism through collaborative exhibitions and programs, including working with curator Lisa Henry to bring Sheila Pree Bright’s #1960 Now exhibition to RAM in Fall 2020;
- Dive deep during our board-staff Strategic Planning and Values workshops to discuss changes that need to be made across the organization from staff and board diversity to how exhibitions are conceptualized and scheduled, to how we further equitable art education initiatives, to who we listen to regarding programming so more people in our community have a place to share their stories and experiences; and to
- Expedite the timeline for recruiting a subject-matter expert curator for The Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art and Culture to help guide us in these initiatives.
On Saturday, July 4, 2020, we fully open to the public with free admission thanks to a donation from a local private foundation. This foundation in particular wants the community to see our two current exhibitions, which opened February 1, 2020, but were cut short by our mandated closure:
- Sandra Rowe | Mother Wit: For nearly fifty years, Sandra Rowe’s work has been impossible to categorize. With her unflinching views of relationships, race, and gender, she pokes and prods, asking questions that are difficult to answer and which often go unspoken aloud. Figures are often stripped of gender and race yet, somehow, more deeply embody the core of the human experience. Rowe’s long overdue retrospective, Mother Wit, explores the full range and depth of Rowe’s artistic expression.
- Brenna Youngblood | Lavender Rainbow: Riverside native Brenna Youngblood’s work explores issues of African American identity and representation and often references historically significant moments and organizations in African American history. Youngblood has been the recipient of the 2015 Seattle Art Museum Gwendolyn Knight/Jacob Lawrence Prize, the 2014 The Hermitage Artist Retreat, Englewood, FL, and the 2012 Los Angeles County Museum of Art Young Talent Award/AHAN Award.
The Riverside Art Museum staff and board have an obligation and duty as stewards of a public-serving organization, as well as deep-seated personal reasons, to not only want to tackle anti-Blackness, structural racism, and issues around diversity, inclusion, access, and equity, but are firmly committed to doing the necessary hard, uncomfortable work to see it through.
Michelle Ouellette
RAM Board President
Drew Oberjuerge
RAM Executive Director