Vincent Valdez, “Hello America,” 2025, intaglio gravure with embossed titling, hand-colored in pencil, 22 x 26 in. Courtesy of the artist and Cheech Marin.
At The Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture in Riverside, California, a new exhibition reframes Chicano art not as a parallel narrative to American art history, but as one of its defining forces. We the People: Chicano Art in the U.S.A. gathers 126 works by 61 artists in a sweeping presentation that explores migration, labor, cultural memory, identity, and everyday life through generations of Chicano artistic practice.
Organized by artist and curator Benito Huerta, the exhibition draws from the collection of Cheech Marin, along with the museum’s permanent holdings, recent acquisitions, and artist loans. It positions Chicano art as inseparable from the broader story of the United States.
The exhibition takes its title from the opening words of the United States Constitution, transforming a familiar phrase into a declaration of cultural presence and belonging. Huerta describes the show as an assertion that Chicanos are part of the people of the United States and integral to the country’s culture, politics, economy, and artistic legacy. Rather than presenting Chicano art as peripheral or regional, the exhibition insists upon its centrality to American visual culture.
Moving across painting, sculpture, installation, printmaking, and mixed media, We the People brings together historic figures associated with the Chicano art movement alongside younger contemporary artists expanding its visual language today. Members of influential collectives such as Los Four and Con Safo appear alongside artists working in portraiture, abstraction, muralism, surrealism, and conceptual practices.
Throughout the exhibition, themes of migration, labor, and cultural memory quietly surface through everyday imagery and familiar objects. An abandoned paleta cart, scattered belongings, backyard birthday parties, shared meals, and family gatherings become reflections on belonging, resilience, and community. Elsewhere, references to farmworker activism and Chicano mural traditions connect contemporary works to longer histories of political organizing and cultural self-representation.
At the same time, the exhibition resists defining Chicano art through politics alone. Humor, spirituality, nostalgia, domestic life, and regional identity all appear throughout the galleries, revealing the movement’s stylistic and emotional range. The result is a portrait of Chicano art as expansive and continually evolving, shaped as much by ordinary moments as by collective struggle.
We the People: Chicano Art in the U.S.A. opens May 30, 2026, and will remain on view through May 23, 2027.
We the People: Chicano Art in the U.S.A. brings together 126 works by 61 artists, tracing the evolution of Chicano art across generations and mediums.
Jorge R. Gutierrez, “Border Banged,” 2018, acrylic on canvas, 48 x 36 in. Gift of Jorge A. Gutierrez for The Cheech Center Collection of the Riverside Art Museum. Courtesy of the artist.
Benjamin Muñoz, “A Miracle of the Masses,” 2023, acrylic on carved panel with relief printmaking collage, 35 x 23 in. Gift of Jorge A. Lopez, MD and Samantha Lopez for The Cheech Center Collection of the Riverside Art Museum. Courtesy of the artist.
Through paintings, sculptures, installations, and prints, the exhibition explores migration, labor, family life, and cultural identity through both political and deeply personal perspectives.
Alejandro Macias, “Distress Signal,” 2020, graphite on paper, 20 x 20 in. Courtesy of the artist.
Alejandro Macias, “Distress Signal,” 2020, graphite on paper, 20 x 20 in. Courtesy of the artist.
Spanning historic figures and contemporary voices alike, the exhibition positions Chicano art as an essential part of American art history rather than a movement existing outside of it.
Sonia Romero, “Wings of the Dead,” 2015, laser-cut plexiglass on laser-etched wood, hand painted by the artist, 12 x 12 in. Gift of Cheech Marin. Courtesy of the artist.
José Lozano, “Some of the Guests Have Left,” 2024 acrylic on canvas, 12 x 9 1/2 in. Courtesy of Cheech Marin.
