Chicano art exhibit on view at the Old Orange County Courthouse

The Old Orange County Courthouse is the site of the Orange County History Center and government offices, as well as, for a limited time, a Chicano art exhibit.

The Chicano Collection/La Colección Chicana art exhibit is comprised of 26 limited-edition digital reproductions, also known as giclées, from noted Chicano artists depicting urban life for the Chicano community from 1969 to 2001.

“It is important to tell the story of Orange County’s role in the Chicano movement, ” said county Supervisor Vicente Sarmiento.

Sarmiento was instrumental in bringing the exhibit to Orange County along with OC Parks, which gives free tours of the historic courthouse.

The artworks come from the private collection of Cheech Marin, who has become an art impresario. The actor and comedian best known for buddy comedy act Cheech & Chong has championed Chicano art since the 1980s. The Riverside Art Museum opened the Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture in 2022, partly to share Marin’s personal collection.

The prints on display at the courthouse are selected from that collection and created in partnership with a national art project led by Marin, the late Richard S. Duardo of Modern Multiples Fine Art Editions and Melissa Richardson Banks of CauseConnect.

Visitors can view works like “Little Girl in the Yellow Dress,” by Patssi Valdez, inspired by an old photograph Valdez’s uncle took of the artist as young girl. The subject wears a prim yellow dress, complemented by brown skin and a radiating aura, while the concrete sidewalk ripples with cracks beneath her. Or Jesse Treviño’s “Los Piscadores,” which depicts two Chicanos working a field of cotton. The painting was commissioned by Texas federal judge Juan Vasquez and inspired by his memories of fetching water for his grandfather as he labored in such fields.

“I like to do paintings that touch everybody, especially those about subjects rarely painted. As Latinos, it is important to remember where we came from,” Treviño’s artist statement reads.

Supervisor Vicente Sarmiento is joined by members of Santa Ana Youth at the opening of the Chicano Collection art exhibit.

(Courtesy of OC Parks )

Sarmiento believes the community can learn a lot from this special collection.

“Orange County isn’t normally seen as a place where the Chicano movement has a legacy, but it really does,” he said.

The Old Orange County Courthouse is where the 1943 Doss vs. Bernal trial challenged the residential segregation of Mexican Americans and became one of the cases the Supreme Court used to outlaw racial covenants.

“This was a case that proceeded Mendez v. Westminster, which was one of the important landmark cases that assisted with the Brown v. Board of Education desegregation case that we are all familiar with,” said Sarmiento.

Other defining events of the early Chicano movement have strong connections to Orange County. El Salvador Park, on the northwest side of Santa Ana, for example, hosted a memorial march in September 1970 for Ruben Salazar, a Los Angles Times journalist and activist who was killed a month before at a peaceful protest for the National Chicano Moratorium Against the Vietnam War in East L.A.

Orange County has also been home to important Chicano artists like the late Emigdio Vasquez, often regarded as the “Godfather of Hispanic artists” and Marina Aguilera, whose murals have graced O.C. parks, community centers and handball courts since the 1970s. A mural by Aguilera of a single red rose was unveiled last summer at El Salvador Park in Santa Ana at a Chicano Heritage Festival.

Sarmiento said making art exhibits like the Chicano Collection accessible and organizing community events like the Chicano Heritage Festival ensure the younger members of Orange County’s Latino community are made aware of their history, culture and local roots.

“Here, young Chicanos who aren’t as familiar with the history, the movement, the legacy, they may not be able to get out to Riverside but can see this in their hometown,” Sarmiento said.

Dedicated in 1901, the Old Orange County Courthouse is Southern California’s oldest court building, and the granite and sandstone structure has been restored to accurately resemble the way it appeared at the turn of the last century. The building also houses the Orange County Clerk-Recorder office, where today county residents come for passports, marriage licenses and other records.

OC Parks offers free tours of the Old Orange County Courthouse by appointment only on weekdays from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. The Chicano Collection/La Colección Chicana art exhibit is free to view at the Old Orange County Courthouse gallery through the end of the year, Monday through Friday, from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.