Vincent Price Art Museum

The Vincent Price Art Museum (VPAM), in Monterey Park, Los Angeles County, is a visual arts institution and artist laboratory located on the campus of East Los Angeles College (ELAC). Named for actor and art collector Vincent Price, the museum was created to serve ELAC students and the surrounding Eastside and San Gabriel Valley communities, and is one of the few museums in the United States that belongs to a community college and maintains a permanent collection of fine art. Evolving from an on-campus gallery founded in 1950, VPAM today functions as an important cultural resource for a historically underserved part of Greater Los Angeles, combining exhibitions, collection displays, and education programmes.

The museum grew out of Price’s recognition that students at ELAC had limited access to original works of art. Beginning in the 1950s, Vincent Price and his wife, costume designer Mary Grant, donated works from their personal collection, establishing what became known as the Vincent and Mary Grant Price Art Gallery and the first ‘teaching art collection’ owned by a community college. Over more than six decades, the museum’s collection and galleries have expanded significantly, positioning VPAM as an art destination where local audiences encounter contemporary practices within a public education context.

Art and Exhibitions

VPAM’s collection has grown to more than 7,000 objects, reflecting the Prices’ broad interest in world art and encompassing works from many periods and regions. The holdings include African, Mesoamerican, Native American, and European art, as well as objects from the Ancient Americas and other global traditions, which are regularly presented in collection-based shows and teaching installations. Alongside this historical material, VPAM organises exhibitions of emerging, established, and legacy artists, often foregrounding Los Angeles–based and Latinx, Chicanx, and diasporic communities connected to the college—for example Round Trip: Eight East Los Angeles College Alumni Artists (2011), which inaugurated the current building with work by Gronk, Judithe Hernández, Kent Twitchell, Diane Gamboa, Patssi Valdez, and others; Sonic Terrains in Latinx Art (2022), a major survey of Latinx sound practices; and the travelling exhibition Del Alma: Latina Portraits from the Vincent Price Art Museum (2024–26), featuring intergenerational portraits by Los Angeles–based Latina artists.

The museum’s current facility houses seven galleries that accommodate temporary exhibitions, student shows, permanent collection displays, and artist or community projects, supported by a purpose-built collection vault and a multimedia lecture hall for art history teaching. Over the years, VPAM has mounted hundreds of exhibitions and programmes, maintaining a strong emphasis on underrepresented voices and on its role as a bridge between higher education, local communities, and the wider contemporary art world.

Visiting Information

The Vincent Price Art Museum is located at East Los Angeles College, 1301 Avenida Cesar Chavez, Monterey Park, California. Admission to exhibitions is free; visitors do not need a ticket, although events may require advance sign-up via the museum’s website. All visitors are asked to check in at the front desk, and school groups are encouraged to arrange visits in advance with the museum’s education staff. Updated information on opening hours, current exhibitions, and public programmes is available on VPAM’s official channels.

Vincent Price Art Museum FAQs