To see some great Chicano art, head over to this Orange County…courthouse

Picture this: It’s a Monday morning, and you head over to the courthouse during your lunchtime. You push open the big wooden door and walk into the building where untold numbers of people have waited for their marriage licenses or to see their fates decided.

Then you keep going until you arrive at your final destination: a room full of paintings from some of the most prominent Chicano artists.

That’s “The Chicano Collection/La Colección Chicana,” an art exhibit at the Old Santa Ana Courthouse drawn from the personal collection of comedian and Chicano art collector Cheech Marin.

“It's not the typical place you would have art pieces shown,” said Orange County Supervisor Vicente Sarmiento, who helped coordinate the exhibit.

A historic location

While it may seem like an odd place to go to appreciate art, Sarmiento told LAist the Old Orange County Courthouse wasn’t chosen at random.

“I grew up here in Santa Ana, and I can tell you, I used to cross in front of it, by it, on my way to junior high, on my way to friends’ houses, but I never stepped in the courtroom until I was an adult,” Sarmiento said. “And I know that's the experience for many youths. This is a way to invite them into a courthouse, into a historic site that is in their backyard.”

That history Sarmiento is referring to is Doss v. Bernal, which successfully challenged the residential segregation of Mexican Americans. The seminal case was heard just across the hall from the room where the art is being displayed.

Those legal proceedings helped to establish precedents that future desegregation court cases drew from, eventually culminating with the Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education.

Reclaiming a courthouse’s meaning

While Sarmiento sees that courtroom as a place of history and empowerment, he said courthouses in general have developed a different connotation for many.

“Look, my mother, anytime she steps into a courtroom, she becomes ill because it's one of those things where it's almost a punitive setting,” Sarmiento said. “Many in the Latino community and many in the Chicano community feel sometimes that when you step into a courtroom, it isn't for a positive experience, right?”

Sarmiento hopes that bringing people into the courtroom to see their culture and history on display can open up new possibilities, especially for young people.

“I think that you can now break down some of these barriers that people may have, seeing courtrooms as a place where you learn rather than being prosecuted or being held and arrested and detained,” Sarmiento said. “It takes on a different meaning and I think it takes some of the fear away and some ownership in saying, you know, this is part of my history as well.”

The artwork

The exhibit showcases a spectrum of Chicano artists, including some major figures.

Frank Romero, one of the pioneers of the Chicano art movement, is on display with his painting “Wedding Photos-Hollenbeck Park.” Major collectives are also represented, including the work of three members of the muralist group East Los Streetscapers, as well as Patssi Valdez, a core member of the Asco collective, whose “Little Girl in the Yellow Dress” is on view.

Those are just a few of 26 different artists drawn from Cheech’s collection that are on display. In all, it’s a sampling of the comedian’s lifelong collection, which you could see by going to Riverside’s Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture (a.k.a. the Cheech).

“Hopefully this will encourage people who see this exhibition to go to the larger museum in Riverside, visit there and really have a moment to see a more expanded view,” Sarmiento said.

This room in the Old Orange County Courthouse will be a pop-up art exhibit until the end of 2024.

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Courtesy OC Parks

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The artworks showcased in the courtroom span from 1969 to 2001, representing different generations of Chicano artists with different approaches and outlooks.

“These pieces of art go a long way in showing that there was and there continues to be some incredible successes for the community, but incredible pain and struggle that these communities had to go through in order to get where we are,” Sarmiento said.

Details

“The Chicano Collection/La Colección Chicana” will be on display at the Old Orange County Courthouse 8:30 a.m. until 4:30 p.m., Mondays through Fridays, until the end of 2024.