It’s not just Kendrick and Dr. Dre — the Compton Art and History Museum’s new expansion will highlight much more

Compton is most definitely a brand, not only linked to the athletic accomplishments of Venus and Serena Williams, but the urban violence that’s made it into hip hop lyrics, from N.W.A. to Kendrick Lamar.

“Compton is known globally. It's not always about the greatest things, positive things,” said Abigail Lopez-Byrd, executive director of the Compton Art and History Museum.

Abigail Lopez-Byrd, left, and Marquell Byrd co-founded the Compton Museum of Art and History in 2023.

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Ángel J. Hernández

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Compton Art & History Museum

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For two years the museum has organized art exhibits and offered arts workshops for teens and the general public to give people a more complete picture of the city’s Black, Latino, Asian, and Indigenous residents over time.

The museum’s done so out of a 900-square-foot space. But its leaders announced on Tuesday that come early next year it’ll be doing so out of a space five times as large, created by one of the region’s most innovative designers. And that will allow the organization to do much more to enrich the Compton brand.

Innovative design

The design of the museum’s new home will be led by Kevin Sherrod, whose previous projects in Southern California for Gensler, a global architecture and design company, include the Debbie Allen Dance Academy, and the Black owned and operated Gallery 90220.

The larger space will allow the museum to have two permanent exhibits focusing on three famous figures with roots in Compton — music mogul Dr. Dre, as well as Venus and Serena Williams, who practiced their future world-beating tennis strategies on Compton public courts. Both will include elements that the public can put their hands on.

An artist's rendering of the future home of the Compton Museum of Art and History.

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Compton Museum of Art and History

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“You can pick up a tennis racket and be Venus and Serena [Williams] or you go inside of a small little recording booth and now you’re Dr. Dre,” said the museum’s co-founder Marquell Byrd.

Having objects people can see, and in some cases touch, is an important part of the museum’s approach to teaching Compton history. A recent exhibit on the history of Compton hip hop included several gold and platinum records, including one awarded to Eazy-E, another famous Compton resident.

Complicating the Compton narratives

Museum leaders say existing historical collections about Compton — housed at California State University, Dominguez Hills and California State University, Los Angeles — fall short for contemporary audiences because they center Compton’s 20th century history.

The new space will do more to highlight the contributions by the city’s Black, Indigenous, Latino, Asian and Pacific Islander residents over time, and will include a room to see historical documents and objects the organization has been collecting, said Abigail Lopez-Byrd, the museum’s other co-founder and its executive director.

“A lot of the archives that exist around Compton are only from that time period… I think people get stuck institutionally on the white side of Compton,” she said.