Riverside, Calif – September 23, 2024 – Riverside Art Museum (RAM) announces its latest round of community-driven acquisitions accepted into The Cheech Center Collection, which showcase a national breadth of talent and a deep commitment to preserving and celebrating Chicana/o/x art. Works by Israel Alejandro García García of Kansas City, Missouri; Delilah Montoya of Albuquerque, New Mexico; Danie Cansino of Los Angeles, California; and Jimmy Peña of Corpus Christi, Texas add continuing perspectives on the ever-evolving narrative of Latinx art in America.
Israel Alejandro García García’s Mojado No. 1 mixed-media installation plays on the complexities of border politics and ‘documentation.’ García García’s work explores the immigrant experience, drawing from his practice of collecting images, objects and stories from underrepresented diasporic communities. His art bridges the personal and political, spotlighting the inevitable painful ties to the world’s borderlands of today.
Delilah Montoya’s Casta #3 from her Contemporary Casta Portraiture: Nuestra Calidad series reinterprets Spanish colonial casta paintings, critiquing their racial hierarchies. Montoya’s minimalist, light-filled photograph emphasizes the natural connections of a modern mixed-race family, inviting reflection on identity, race, and heritage. Her work offers a powerful reclaiming of cultural narratives, blending realism with symbolism to challenge historical constraints.
Danie Cansino’s Narciso reimagines Caravaggio’s Narcissus with a Chicano twist. The large painting shows a young man gazing at his reflection, adorned with tattoos. Cansino, an artist rooted in tattoo culture, uses Baroque techniques to elevate BIPOC bodies in grand, allegorical compositions, offering new subjects and narratives that challenge art historical norms and center Brown, tattooed figures.
Jimmy Peña’s large-scale charcoal drawings on wood—Communion, The Committee, and Fragmented State of Being—are known for their hyper-realistic style tinged with surrealism. Peña’s intricate works seem to bring figures to life from the wood’s grain, addressing contemporary social and political issues with detailed precision.
Since its opening in June 2022, through the generosity of donors, including a $100,000 matching grant from the Wingate Foundation, The Cheech has added nearly 100 works by about 40 artists to the Riverside Art Museum’s permanent collections. Spanning from 1920 to 2024, these works enhance the museum’s joint holdings and reflect RAM’s commitment to diversifying acquisitions equitably. The additions encompass a range of mediums, including sculpture, works on paper, paintings, and photographs while offering new regional perspectives and a focus on Chicana artists.
Notable women artists now represented include Barbara Carrasco, Yreina D. Cervántez, Ester Hernández, Judithe Hernández, Yolanda López, Delilah Montoya, and Patricia Rodriguez. Newly added works also feature artists Danie Cansino, Eduardo Carrillo, Rosy Cortez, Israel Alejandro García García, Rupert García, Stephanie García, Luis C. Garza, Ed Gómez, Jaime Guerrero, Gerardo Monterrubio, Jimmy Peña, Jesse E. Rodriguez, F. John Sierra, Denise Silva, Paul Valadez, and Perry Vásquez.
ABOUT RIVERSIDE ART MUSEUM + THE CHEECH: 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.
Open since June 17, 2022, The Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture aka “The Cheech” (3581 Mission Inn Ave., Riverside, CA 92501) resides in a renovated mid-century building that originally opened as the City of Riverside, California’s public library in 1964. Dedicated to showcasing Chicana/o/x art, honoring and exploring its continued social, cultural, and political impact, it’s the first cultural center of its kind. The Cheech is home to the unparalleled Cheech Marin Collection of Chicano art. It is a space for continued exhibition, scholarship, and dialogue of Chicano art’s deep roots in the Chicano Movement of the 1960s and 1970s to its contemporary and evolving response to current social conditions and global artistic movements.
ABOUT THE WINGATE FOUNDATION: The Wingate Foundation, established in 1998 by John H. Wingate, Jr., is a private foundation based in Riverside, California, dedicated to supporting arts and community initiatives in the Inland Empire. After John’s passing in 2012, his son Todd Wingate took over operations. The foundation’s recent grant recipients include The Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture, UC Riverside, Big Brothers Big Sisters of the Inland Empire, and Feeding America Riverside | San Bernardino Counties. The foundation’s $100,000 matching grant for artwork acquisitions at The Cheech aims to expand and diversify the collection.
