Patrick Martinez works acquired by the Smithsonian National Museum of American History (NMAH)

Charlie James Gallery is pleased to announce that works by artist Patrick Martinez have been added to the Archives Center collections of the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. Martinez donated Rodney/UCLA from his ongoing Pee Chee Folder Series to the museum in 2021. The Pee Chee Folder Series memorializes victims of police violence and promotes social justice. In addition to the donated piece, the museum purchased six prints from the Pee Chee Series. The materials in this acquisition collectively speak to the histories of violence and racial injustices communities of color have faced in the United States, and serve to remember people such as Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Laquan McDonald, Jonathan Santellana, and others. Supporters and social justice leaders such as Colin Kaepernick, Billie Jean King, John Carlos, Tommie Smith, and Peter Norman, are also depicted in Martinez’s Activist Athletes print.

Martinez’s Pee Chee Folder Series is inspired by the Pee-Chee folders commonly used by students in the United States to hold their schoolwork. Originally, the folders featured illustrations of “All-American” student athletes. The name Pee-Chee originated because of the peach-colored card stock used to manufacture the folders. The Archives Center at the National Museum of American History holds more than 1,500 collections documenting the history of technology, invention, innovation, business and consumer culture, American music and popular culture as well as many other topics. It is currently closed to researchers. For updated information, please refer to: https://americanhistory.si.edu/archives

Patrick Martinez (b. 1980 Pasadena, CA) earned his BFA with honors from Art Center College of Design in 2005. His work has been exhibited domestically and internationally in Los Angeles, Mexico City, San Francisco, Minneapolis, Miami, New York, Seoul, and the Netherlands, at venues including the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, the Tucson Museum of Art, the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, the Cornell Fine Arts Museum, the Vincent Price Art Museum, the Museum of Latin American Art, LA Louver, Galerie Lelong & Co., MACLA, the Chinese American Museum and the Euphrat Museum of Art, among others. Patrick’s work resides in the permanent collections of LACMA, the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, the Crocker Art Museum, the Cornell Fine Art Museum, the Pizzuti Collection of the Columbus Museum of Art, and the Museum of Latin American Art, among others. Patrick was awarded a Rauschenberg Residency on Captiva Island, FL, to be completed in 2021. Also in the fall of 2021 Patrick will be the subject of a solo museum exhibition, Look What You Created at the Tucson Museum of Art. Patrick lives and works in Los Angeles, CA and is represented by Charlie James Gallery, Los Angeles.