El Museo del Barrio presents Teddy Sandoval and the Butch Gardens School of Art, a major exhibition examining the life and work of Teddy Sandoval (1949–1995), an innovative yet historically underrecognized artist whose practice explored gender, sexuality, identity, and belonging with humor and political urgency. Rooted in Los Angeles’s queer and Chicane artistic communities, Sandoval’s work engaged the social and cultural movements shaping the United States and Latin America from the 1970s through the 1990s.
Curated by C. Ondine Chavoya and David Evans Frantz, the exhibition takes its title from Butch Gardens, a gay bar in Los Angeles frequented by Sandoval and fellow Chicane patrons in the early 1970s. Sandoval adopted the bar’s name for the fictional “Butch Gardens School of Art,” a conceptual framework through which he fostered collaboration, experimentation, and creative community while challenging traditional art world structures.
Expanding beyond a conventional retrospective, the exhibition places Sandoval’s work in dialogue with a multigenerational group of queer, Latine, and Latin American artists whose practices share related visual languages and political concerns. Spanning photography, painting, drawing, collage, conceptual art, and performance, the exhibition foregrounds interconnected histories of queer and diasporic artistic production across the Americas.
The exhibition features artworks from across Teddy Sandoval’s career, alongside those by Yolanda Andrade, Félix Ángel, Myrna Báez, Ester Hernández, Hudinilson Jr., Marisol, Marta Minujín, Joey Terrill, Martin Wong, Felipe Baeza, Ana Segovia, and others.
El Museo del Barrio is the only New York City venue to host the traveling retrospective, organized by Independent Curators International (ICI) and developed in partnership with Williams College Museum of Art and Vincent Price Art Museum. El Museo’s presentation is overseen by Lee Sessions, El Museo del Barrio’s Permanent Collections Associate Curator.
SPONSORS:
Teddy Sandoval and the Butch Gardens School of Art is a traveling exhibition curated by C. Ondine Chavoya and David Evans Frantz. It is produced by Independent Curators International (ICI), New York, in collaboration with the Vincent Price Art Museum at East Los Angeles College and the Williams College Museum of Art. Leadership support for the exhibition is provided by the Getty Foundation through The Paper Project initiative, the Terra Foundation for American Art, Mellon Foundation, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts Curatorial Research Fellowship program, the AltaMed Art Collection, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Generous funding is provided by Estrellita B. Brodsky, and the Pasadena Art Alliance. Crozier Fine Arts is the Preferred Art Logistics Partner. ICI’s exhibitions program is made possible with additional support from ICI’s Board of Trustees, The ICI Curatorial Fund for Latin America and the Caribbean, and the members of ICI’s International Forum.
Teddy Sandoval and the Butch Gardens School of Art and other programs at El Museo del Barrio are supported by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and the New York State Council on the Aarts with support from the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.
