Bakersfield, CA – September 18, 2024: Three new exhibits premiere at the Bakersfield Museum of Art (BMoA) during its opening reception on Thursday, September 26, from 7:00 PM – 9:00 PM. Admission to the opening reception is free for BMoA members, $5 per person for students and seniors, or $10 per person for non-members.
Con Safos, Con Fuerza announces artist Jacqueline Valenzuela’s position among the vanguard of feminist art. 43 paintings and 6 multimedia installations capture the stoicism, grace, and audacity of women who own their own lowriders, carving their own path within a male-dominated subculture. Depicting architectural landmarks and other images from the areas where lowriders cruise, Valenzuela marries traditional fine art techniques with the aesthetics of lowrider culture. Her approach democratizes the art world, elevating the aesthetics of lowriding—an element of street culture typically marginalized by mainstream art institutions—to high art. Jacqueline Valenzuela: Con Safos, Con Fuerza will be on view through January 4, 2025.
Drink Cultura catalogs Porterville native Cesar Martinez's journey of self-discovery, cultural reconnection, and his quest to create a visual language fluent in cultural heritage that speaks to diverse audiences. Fueled by feelings of isolation, due to a lack of Spanish fluency and not feeling part of his Mexican heritage or American culture, Martinez found solace in Jose Antonio Burciaga's book Drink Cultura: Chicanismo. By integrating Aztec and Mayan iconography to explore themes of identity and belonging, Drink Cultura celebrates the richness of the Chicano experience while confronting the complexities of navigating between two cultures. Cesar Martinez: Drink Cultura will be on view through January 4, 2025.
Bakersfield Built: Architecture of the 1950s chronicles the growing city’s development into a Mid- Century Modern Mecca in the wake of the devastating earthquake of 1952. It was in this decade that local architects joined with famed masters Richard Neutra and Frank Lloyd Wright to design residences, schools, stores, civic, and institutional buildings with clean lines, modern materials, and lack of ornament—making Bakersfield one of the most concentrated and cohesive centers of Modern architecture on the West Coast. Bakersfield Built: Architecture of the 1950s will be on view through January 4, 2025
This third installment of the Bakersfield Built exhibition series features an architecture symposium and home tour on Saturday, September 28 from 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM. Event details and tickets are available at bmoa.org/events.
“As these exhibitions developed, I realized they each are a comment on the concept of foundations— underpinnings of structures that keep someone or something balanced and steady,” said BMoA Curator of Exhibitions and Collections Victor Gonzales. “Bakersfield Built is a more literal comment on the term: new foundations poured that proved the basis of Bakersfield’s resurgence as a modern city, embracing a new architectural style that is still popular. In Drink Cultura we find an artist in search of his own foundation and the visual language to express it.” Gonzales went on to note that Jacqueline Valenzuela’s exhibition Con Safos, Con Fuerzas reveals “a foundational yet overlooked truth: women matter. A woman’s energy, work, grace, her very aesthetic all contribute to the culture. And not just in lowrider culture but in broader society, too.”