Los Angeles Times
LOS ANGELES — Actor and comedian Cheech Marin, a noted collector of Chicano art, is teaming up with the city of Riverside and the Riverside Art Museum to create a Chicano art center.
The proposed museum, tentatively titled the Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art, Culture and Industry, would be housed in a roughly 60,000-square-foot building now occupied by the main branch of the Riverside Public Library, which will be moving to a new structure.
The goal of Marin’s center would be to provide a permanent home for more than 700 works from his collection, which includes painting, sculpture and photography by Chicano artists from throughout the United States.
“It’ll be the one place worldwide that everybody can go to for all things Chicano art,” says Marin. “And it will not just be display, but it will have an academic feature so Chicano art can be seen and can be studied. There are five universities in the area.”
The museum would be a partnership between Marin (who would supply his art), the city of Riverside (which owns the building) and the art museum (which would manage the new center). On May 16, the three parties will present a memorandum of understanding to the Riverside City Council, which has to approve any formal negotiations for the use of the building.
If the memorandum is approved, Marin, the Riverside Art Museum and the city will have from nine months to a year to work out the particulars: finalizing cost estimates for the renovation of the library building, determining the operating expenses and structure of the new institution and arranging an agreement with Marin for how his collection would be presented.
That agreement could include the eventual donation of works.
If the agreements are ironed out, the City Council will vote again to finalize the deal.
Though the institution has a tentative name, Marin says he’s already come up with a nickname.
“The intimates call it ‘The Cheech,’” he jokes. “I’ll meet you at 3 o’clock at the Cheech!”
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