Chicano Dream: Cheech Marin Collection, 1980-2010

About This Project

As part of the 50th anniversary of the Sister City partnership between Bordeaux, France and Los Angeles, California, a selection of artworks from the Cheech Marin Collection by 30 Mexican-American artists were curated as an exhibition on display at the Musée d’Aquitaine as a testimony to the vitality of movements yet to be discovered in France, and even in the U.S. In reaction to their elders who harbored illusions of integration, Chicano writers and artists in the 1970s responded with a renewed awareness of their roots and the acknowledgement of their history, language, strong multi-ethnicity and multiple inputs: Spanish, Native American, American. The exhibition explored these legacies, while also providing an introduction to younger, more distinctive artists. Concurrently with the exhibition, the Amis du Musée d’Aquitaine Association welcomed American artist John Valadez, a pioneer of Chicano mural painting, for a residency during which he created a 20′ x 14.8′ mural on the façade of the museum