Vincent Price Art Museum Presents Act On It! Artists, Community, and the Brockman Gallery in Los Angeles
August 25, 2025
On View: Sept. 27, 2025 – Jan. 18, 2026
Opening Reception: Saturday, Sept. 27, 6 to 8 p.m.
MONTEREY PARK, Calif. – Opening Sept. 27, 2025, the Vincent Price Art Museum (VPAM) at East Los Angeles College (ELAC) proudly presents Act On It! Artists, Community, and the Brockman Gallery in Los Angeles.
Launched by brothers Alonzo Davis and Dale Brockman Davis in the wake of the 1965 Watts Rebellion, the Brockman Gallery in South L.A. was central to the development of the Black Arts Movement in Los Angeles. Organized in collaboration with LACMA and several regional partners, Act on It! brings together works by artists who exhibited at the Brockman Gallery (1967–1990), which served as a critical nexus for emerging artists of color and contributed to a growing network of Black-run spaces and collections. The exhibition represents the aesthetic, political, and social statements encountered by Brockman Gallery visitors and underscores the reach and lasting significance of the Davis brothers’ project.
Through dozens of works from LACMA’s collection, Act On It! also showcases the range of experimental approaches to painting, printmaking, and sculpture featured at Brockman. This presentation of the exhibition will also include a selection of works by Black and Chicano artists from VPAM’s permanent collection, further emphasizing how the Brockman Gallery expanded the reach of artists across the region.
Organized around six key themes—Roots, Material Experimentation, Body & Identity, Common Ground, Civic Engagement, and Uplift—it celebrates the Davis brothers’ courageous endeavor. Featuring work by artists including the Davis brothers, David Hammons, Betye Saar, Charles White, La Monte Westmoreland, and Carrie Mae Weems, and others, Act on It! illuminates the transformative potential of art to expose injustice, raise consciousness, and shape culture.
The exhibition’s opening will be celebrated with a reception on Saturday, Sept. 27, from 6 to 8 p.m. The evening will feature an eclectic all-vinyl set by DJ Clifton Weaver, spotlighting music from the years during which the Brockman Gallery was active, as well as a drop-in writing and public archiving session led by Writ Large Projects and facilitated by writer Ernest Hardy, responding to the exhibition’s core themes. Written reflections will be archived as part of a community-generated record that evolves alongside the duration of the exhibition. Admission is free, no reservations required. In preparation for the reception, the Museum will be closed during the day on Sept. 27.
Public Programs
VPAM is partnering with Writ Large Projects to present a dynamic suite of programming to complement the exhibition, including:
Erasure: Black Arts LA
Thursday, Nov. 13, 2025 at 6 p.m.
VPAM presents an evening exploring Black erasure and creative resistance through language, image, and live presentation, inviting audiences to engage with histories both remembered and obscured.
After a light reception and after-hours gallery access, guests will be invited to participate in a hands-on poetry activity using pages from the Act On It! exhibition catalog, facilitated by poet and artist Rebecca Gonzales. Guided by creative prompts and surrounded by the exhibition’s artwork, participants will create erasure poems, a literary form in which words are selectively removed from an existing text to reveal a new piece of writing. The resulting poems will be digitized and archived as part of VPAM’s evolving record of community reflection and response. Later in the evening, acclaimed cultural critic and writer Ernest Hardy will present a multimedia lecture investigating the many dimensions of Black erasure (collective, historical, structural, and cultural) through an incisive mix of film clips, literature, music, and social media. Rooted in the legacy of the Black Arts West movement and drawing from Hardy’s collaborative archival project The Black Book, the presentation will trace cultural erasure and resilience, while proposing
pathways toward reimagined futures.
Village Voices
Saturday, Dec. 6, 2025 at 2 p.m.
Inspired by the creative legacy of the Brockman Gallery and the vibrant cultural hub of Leimert Park Village, VPAM presents an afternoon of poetry and close engagement with the exhibition.
The program will begin with an ekphrastic poetry workshop, where poet Rebecca Gonzales will guide participants in writing poems inspired by artworks on view. Using observation and creative prompts, participants will explore how color, form, shape, and gesture can be translated into poetic expression. These original writings will become part of the body of community poetry gathered throughout the exhibition and showcased online as a record of public reflection and response.
Afterwards, the gallery will transform into a stage for a live in-gallery poetry reading, inviting participants to shift from creators to listeners as they experience new work by a powerful lineup of Black and Latinx poets, including Tongo Eisen-Martin, Sara Borjas, Joseph Rios, Corey “BessKepp” Cofer, and V. Kali, each presenting original poems developed in response to the exhibition. Their readings will reflect on identity, cultural memory, and the role of art in building shared understanding across communities.
Closing Program: Common Ground
Saturday, Jan. 17, 2025 at 1:00 p.m.
In 1986, the Brockman Gallery presented Common Ground, a landmark exhibition that invited audiences to reflect on the shared struggles, creative expressions, and cultural values of underrepresented artists across communities. Curated by esteemed Chicana artist Linda Vallejo, the show affirmed, “We are all here together, living on common ground.”
While Brockman is best known as a center of the Black Arts Movement in Los Angeles, the Davis brothers were committed to promoting outstanding underrepresented artists more broadly, supporting Asian American, Latinx, and women artists, and fostering meaningful cultural exchange through collaborative exhibitions and curatorial partnerships.
Moderated by acclaimed scholar, curator, and critic Dr. Tiffany E. Barber, the panel will explore Brockman’s inclusive philosophy, its role in community-building, and its enduring impact on Leimert Park and beyond. Participants will include Margaret Garcia, Michael Massenberg, Linda
Vallejo, and others, artists whose work has intersected with the legacy of the Brockman Gallery and who continue to embody the foundational values of Common Ground.
The afternoon will conclude with a live musical benediction by The Voices of Creation, whose rousing performance closes the exhibition with collective joy, reverence, and uplift.
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Act On It! was organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in collaboration with the Vincent Price Art Museum at East Los Angeles College; Riverside Art Museum; Lancaster Museum of Art and History; and California State University, Northridge, Art Galleries.
Local Access is a series of American art exhibitions created through a multi-year, multi-institutional partnership formed by LACMA as part of the Art Bridges Initiative.
All exhibitions at the Vincent Price Art Museum are underwritten by the Vincent Price Art Museum Foundation and East Los Angeles College.
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About Vincent Price Art Museum
The Vincent Price Art Museum (VPAM) at East Los Angeles College serves as a unique educational resource for the diverse audiences of the college and the community through the exhibition, interpretation, collection, and preservation of works in all media of the visual arts. VPAM provides an environment to encounter a range of aesthetic expressions that illuminate the depth and diversity of artwork produced by people of the world, both contemporary and past. By presenting thoughtful, innovative, and culturally diverse exhibitions and by organizing cross-disciplinary programs on issues of historical, social, and cultural relevance, VPAM seeks to promote knowledge, inspire creative thinking, and deepen an understanding of and appreciation for the visual arts. Learn more about VPAM at vincentpriceartmuseum.org.
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About East Los Angeles College
East Los Angeles College (ELAC) is the largest of nine two-year community colleges within the Los Angeles Community College District (LACCD). More information about ELAC is available online at www.elac.edu. Follow ELAC on social media at Facebook @EastLACollege, X/Twitter @EastLACollege, and Instagram @ELACHuskies.
About Writ Large Projects
Writ Large Projects is a Los Angeles and Pittsburgh-based nonprofit literary arts organization dedicated to reshaping how communities experience books, writing, and art. Since its beginnings in 2007 as Writ Large Press, it has grown beyond publishing to include community-engaging literary experiences that focus on identity and personal storytelling while centering Black, Brown, Asian, Indigenous, immigrant, queer, and working-class voices.
Through bold and unconventional projects, Writ Large Projects moves writing beyond traditional institutions and into the streets, galleries, and everyday life. Their initiatives blur the line between artist and audience, inviting community members to become co-conspirators in acts of collective imagination. To learn more, visit writlargeprojects.com.
For VPAM press inquiries, please contact Katie Dunham, Katie Dunham Communications, at katie@katiedunham.net.
Image: Samella Sanders Lewis, Children’s Game, 1968/1982, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, purchased with funds provided by Stephanie Blackmore Vahn, the Robert Gore Rifkind Foundation, Beverly Hills, CA, and the Prints and Drawings Council, © Estate of Samella Sanders Lewis, photo © Museum Associates/LACMA