Biography
Peter Rodriguez was raised in both Stockton and Jackson, California. It was there that he first became interested in Art. In 1975, he founded the Mexican Museum as an institution designed to collect, preserve, interpret and present the artistic expression of the Mexican people, regardless of their birth-nation. The unique goal was to establish a museum that showed all five components of Pre-Conquest, Colonial, Popular, Mexican and Chicano Contemporary Art. Rodriguez envisioned a Museum as both a space in which to preserve and present the culture of the Mexican people, and as a vehicle for mexican people themselves to present their own culture. During the Museum's first ten years of operation, Rodriguez devoted his full energy to the daily museum operations. The dual role of director and curator left little time for his own painting. As the Museum grew in size and maturity, it began to attract the attention of a broad scope of individuals and the museum began to form a permanent collection. As the collection grew, so did the number and scope of exhibitions presented by the Museum to the public.
From the guide to the Peter Rodriguez Mexican Museum of San Francisco Papers, 1975 - 2001, (University of California, Los Angeles. Library. Chicano Studies Research Center, UCLA)
