Opening Montebello Cultural Space
Los Angeles gains a major Chicano cultural center on Sunday as the Alta opens in Montebello to house the nation’s largest corporate collection of Chicano, Latino, and Mexican art, [nytimes.com] reported.
The 3,200-square-foot gallery sits in a squat warehouse next to a Tesla dealership 10 miles east of downtown, [nytimes.com] reported. It contains a pair of artist residency spaces, a visible storage room, and rotating exhibitions, according to [nytimes.com].
The space holds work from the AltaMed Health Services collection, [nytimes.com] reported. Visitors have viewed the art by appointment since a soft opening in May, [nytimes.com] noted.
“When I was in East L.A. and Montebello, we would always head west,” Patssi Valdez told nytimes.com. “There wasn’t anything here. So, this is a big deal.”
The AltaMed collection connects to Chicano civil rights
The AltaMed collection connects to the Chicano civil rights movement of the 1960s and 1970s. The company began as the East L.A. Free Clinic in 1969, founded by the Brown Berets to provide free health care to uninsured residents.
“The collection here is also in service to the patient community,” Pilar Tompkins Rivas told nytimes.com. “So, how can we develop exhibitions and programs so that it’s not just about art for art’s sake, but about care and compassion for the community?”
Inaugural artists in residence Rubén Esparza and Felicia Montes explore health topics in their work, newsbeep.com reported. Esparza creates multimedia pieces around H.I.V./AIDS, and Montes directs Mujeres de Maiz, an art and wellness organization rooted in Indigenous knowledge.
Other health organizations steward notable art collections, newsbeep.com reported. The Cleveland Clinic maintains more than 7,000 works, and Cedars-Sinai on the west side of Los Angeles holds over 4,000 pieces.
What is on view at the Alta
What is currently on view at the Alta?
The inaugural exhibition is titled “LA LA,” which centers on the photography of Patssi Valdez, a co-founder of the art collective Asco, nytimes.com reported.
How far is the Alta from downtown Los Angeles?
The new center is located 10 miles east of downtown in Montebello, an independent city contiguous to East Los Angeles, according to nytimes.com.
When did similar regional centers open?
The Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture debuted in Riverside in 2022, located more than an hour away from Los Angeles, nytimes.com reported.
Worth a look