Published
5 years agoon
LOS ANGELES — Months after California legalized recreational marijuana the state is giving stoner comedian Cheech Marin’s Chicano art museum $9.7 million.
It must be fate. The money was tucked away in the $139 billion California budget Gov. Jerry Brown signed Wednesday.
The Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art, Culture and Industry is scheduled to open in 2020 in Riverside, east of Los Angeles.
It will include approximately 700 paintings, drawings, sculptures and other works from Marin’s personal collection.
Represented are such seminal Chicano artists as Gilbert “Magú” Lujan, Frank Romero and Carlos Almaraz.
Marin, a lifelong art lover, has been collecting since soon after he and cannabis comedy partner Tommy Chong became famous in the 1970s as Cheech and Chong.
Plans for the center were unveiled last year.
Bill McEwen is news director and columnist for GV Wire. He joined GV Wire in August 2017 after 37 years at The Fresno Bee. With The Bee, he served as Opinion Editor, City Hall reporter, Metro columnist, sports columnist and sports editor through the years. His work has been frequently honored by the California Newspapers Publishers Association, including authoring first-place editorials in 2015 and 2016. Bill and his wife, Karen, are proud parents of two adult sons, and they have two grandsons. You can contact Bill at 559-492-4031 or at Send an Email
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