Latina will lead the Price museum
In a big move for a small institution, the Vincent Price Art Museum at East Los Angeles College has appointed Pilar Tompkins Rivas as its new director. Tompkins Rivas, previously the coordinator of curatorial initiatives at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, becomes the first Latina to oversee the museum since its 1957 founding.
“She has incredible respect from the community and the museum world,” says board Chairman Pete Galindo. “It’s important for us to have someone who not only has a deep knowledge of the artists who have developed in East Los Angeles but someone who has a connection to the contemporary art world — someone who serves as a bridge.”
Tompkins Rivas, Mexican American, was born in Dallas and moved to Los Angeles about 15 years ago. At LACMA, she helped establish important university-museum partnerships. She’s also served as an independent curator.
The Vincent Price Art Museum was established in the mid-1950s when actor Vincent Price (who had a degree in art history) gave part of his collection to the college. Over its lifetime, the museum has been an important space for underrepresented artists, providing key exhibitions to emerging and midcareer painters, sculptors and photographers, including painters Roberto Chavez and John Valadez, photographer Ricardo Valverde, muralist Judithe Hernandez and various members of the influential art collective Asco.
“This museum is embedded in an interesting nexus of dynamic communities,” says Tompkins Rivas. “You have East L.A., Montebello, Monterey Park, El Monte — the San Gabriel Valley. Los Angeles is a polycentric city, and this is one of those very important centers.”
Now that the center of the city’s cultural heart is migrating from west to east, she adds, the museum is within the orbit of the city’s important institutions. “As the center has shifted to downtown,” she explains, “we are no longer off the art geographical radar.”
Galindo says that the museum is perfectly positioned to make a real difference in the community — by showing area artists but also by bringing in artists from outside.
“That’s what inspires,” he says. “This place is a gateway to East Los Angeles. And it’s a gateway out of East Los Angeles. Pilar can really curate that.”