Vincent Valdez, Dugan Aguilar

Episode No. 685 features artist Vincent Valdez and curators Theresa Harlan and Drew Johnson.

The Contemporary Arts Museum Houston is presenting "Vincent Valdez: Just a Dream..." the first major survey of Valdez's career. The exhibition, which features Valdez's work across media, reveals Valdez's construction of US national memory. It was co-curated by Patricia Restrepo and Denise Markonish. It's on view at CAMH through March 23, 2025, when it will travel to the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art. A catalogue is forthcoming.

Also, Valdez is included in "Ordinary People: Photorealism and the Work of Art since 1968" at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. The exhibition surveys post-war photorealism up to the present. It was curated by Anna Katz with Paula Kroll and is on view through May 4, 2025. MOCA and DelMonico Books published an excellent catalogue. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for $65.

Harlan and Johnson are the curators of "Born of the Bear Dance: Dugan Aguilar's Photographs of Native California" at the Oakland Museum of California. It's on view through June 22, 2025. The exhibition surveys Aguilar's presentation of Native life and land, mostly between 1982 and 2018. The exhibition is OMCA's first presentation of Aguilar's work after the Aguilar's family gift of his archive to the museum in 2022. The show does not have a catalogue, but many of the works in the show are featured within Harlan's 2015 Aguilar monograph for Heyday Books, "She Sang Me a Good Luck Song."