The late Los Angeles-based photographer and artist Ricardo Valverde (1946-1998) is featured in a career retrospective at VPAM. The exhibition is guest-curated by Cecilia Fajardo-Hill and highlights more than one hundred artworks spanning a twenty-five-year period of production.Ricardo Valverde: Experimental Sights, 1971-1996, includes works in a wide range of media, from black-and-white and color photographs, to solarized and intervened gelatin silver prints, to painterly collages that incorporate photographs and are mounted on canvas.The exhibition includes several videos; slide projections from Valverde’s photographs of lowriders, Day of the Dead celebrations, commercial signage; a light box with experimental slides treated as sculptural objects; and ceramic sculptures that resonate with his photography.

VPAM’s exhibition is the first survey of Valverde’s extensive body of work, and it is undertaken in partnership with the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center (CSRC), which recently published Ricardo Valverde, a new monograph in its award-winning A Ver: Revisioning Art History series. “With Ricardo Valverde: Experimental Sights, 1971-1996, we are working together in order to develop and present a comprehensive exhibition on a major L.A. artist who has been overlooked for too long,” explains CSRC director Chon A. Noriega. “Valverde was highly influenced by the New York School of street photographers and yet his photographs were never simply documents. They are works of art, visual artifacts of urban modern life in East L.A. during his lifetime, and a very personal expression unlike that of any other celebrated art photographer from Los Angeles.”

Valverde’s artwork is included in collections in the U.S., Mexico, and Cuba, and his photographs were exhibited most recently in the Getty Foundation’s 2011-12 initiative, Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A., 1945-1980, with multiple works in two exhibitions: Asco: Elite of the Obscure at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and MEX/LA: Mexican Modernism(s) in Los Angeles,1930-1985, at the Museum of Latin American Art.
Public Programming: Panel Discussion Saturday, June 14, 2:00 – 4:00 p.m. Join Chon A. Noriega in conversation with the exhibition’s curator Cecilia Fajardo-Hill, author Ramón García, and artist Rubén Ortiz Torres.

Curator’s Walk Through Saturday, June 21, 2:00 p.m. Walk through of the exhibition with guest curator Cecilia Fajardo-Hill.All events and programs are free and open to the public.About the Curator: Cecilia Fajardo-Hill is an independent curator specializing in modern and contemporary Latin American art. She has served as chief curator at the Museum of Latin American Art in Long Beach, California, and as director and chief curator for the Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation and the Ella Fontanals-Cisneros Collection. She is currently a visiting scholar at the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center.
Vincent Price Art Museum (VPAM) on the campus of East Los Angeles College (ELAC) has been open in its brand new facility since May 2011. At 40,000 square feet, it is the largest museum serving the San Gabriel Valley. And, as part the Performing & Fine Arts Center on campus, VPAM is dedicated to the presentation of significant and wide-ranging exhibitions that directly benefit ELAC and all of our surrounding communities.

For complete exhibition descriptions, related free programs, public hours, parking, and other information:http://vincentpriceartmuseum.org