Photo by William Camargo
Joseph Valencia is a curator, educator, and writer engaging with both contemporary art and historical narratives in art, design, and visual culture. He is Curator of Exhibitions at the Vincent Price Art Museum at East Los Angeles College, where since 2016 he has developed projects on American, Latin American, and modern and contemporary art.
A scholar of Latinx art, and with a research background in the art and history of California and the hemispheric Americas, he has curated exhibitions such as We Place Life at the Center / Situamos la vida en el centro (2024-2025), Sonic Terrains in Latinx Art (2022), and Liberate the Bar! Queer Nightlife, Activism, and Spacemaking (2019). He also served on the curatorial teams for Laura Aguilar: Show and Tell (2017-2021) and the related series Cuerpos Unidos: Performances in Dialogue with Laura Aguilar (2018). Additional projects include solo shows by premier Los Angeles artists, including Phung Huynh, Patrick Martinez, noé olivas, Guadalupe Rosales, Gabriela Ruiz, and Kang Seung Lee.
He has taught courses at East Los Angeles College, USC, and Whittier College, and has contributed to Aperture, ARTFORUM, Contemporary Art Review Los Angeles, KCET Artbound, and several exhibition catalogues.
Valencia was born in Orange County, California and raised in a Mexican and Chicano household. His family history in Orange and the El Modena barrio dates back to the early 1900s and continues to inspire his passion for uplifting underrepresented histories and communities in Southern California and beyond.
He holds a Master’s degree from USC and a Bachelor’s degree from California State University, Fullerton.