Cheech museum to open in a year
Planning for Center for Chicano Art & Culture debut underway
The Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture of the Riverside Art Museum expects to open in spring of 2022, according to a news release from the museum.
Planning has begun for grand opening celebrations and the first exhibitions, according to Drew Oberjuerge, executive director of Riverside Art Museum.
The exhibitions will include highlights from Cheech Marin’s art collection gifted to the museum and works by brothers Einar and Jamex de la Torre, she said in a phone interview.
The Cheech will be housed in a renovated midcentury modern building from the 1960s that is next to the Mission Inn Hotel & Spa. Until recently it was Riverside’s main library.
Marin, an actor and comedian best known as part of comedy duo Cheech and Chong, visited Riverside on Wednesday for a ceremony to mark the start of renovation of the building.
A video posted on the Cheech’s Facebook page shows Marin batting a piñata at the entrance.
It was Marin’s first visit to Riverside in several months amid the coronavirus pandemic and his work schedule, Oberjuerge said.
“If it weren’t for the pandemic, would have done large, wonderful, public groundbreaking,” she said.
The opening of the Cheech has been pushed back several times. It once was projected to open in April 2020, and then March 2021.
In January, the Riverside City Council voted 4-0 to hire Hamel Contracting of Murrieta to do the $10.7 million renovation. It also approved a subsidy of about $1 million a year to help cover operating costs for the Cheech and to enter intro a contract with the Riverside Art Museum to run the Cheech for 25 years.
Marin was approached by city officials about bringing his art to downtown Riverside when the Riverside Art Museum presented an exhibition from his collection in 2017.
When finished, the Cheech will have gallery space, meeting space, a shop and a cafe.
“It was meant to be here in Riverside, and the Inland Empire,” Marin said while touring the gutted interior of the former library building in the video. “It is beyond my wildest dreams what we can do with this building. And we hope we can bring honor and glory to a long tradition of historic buildings here in Riverside.”
In addition to the Mission Inn, historical buildings near the Cheech include the Riverside Municipal Auditorium, the Riverside Art Museum and the Fox Performing Arts Center.
The main library is moving in a new four-story, $43 million building west of Market Street on Mission Inn Avenue. The building is nearly completed, and opening plans will be announced in a few weeks, Library Director Erin Christmas said in an email.