Vincent Price Left an Impression at East L.A. College

The actor donated 2,000 pieces from his fine art collection to the campus for more than 50 years. These are among 8,000 items that will be exhibited at a new gallery named in his honor.

By all appearances, East Los Angeles College's 1951 graduation day was like any other: students in caps and gowns with beaming parents seated nearby.

But that year's keynote speaker was actor Vincent Price, and the visit by him and his wife, Mary Grant, sparked a relationship with the college that stretched more than half a century.

Price’s passion for his profession was matched by a devotion to his fine art collection from around the world.

Enamored by the East Los Angeles campus and aware of the lack of an institutional art museum in the area, Price began donating pieces from his personal collection to the college.

Over the years, the collection grew to more than 8,000 pieces, including 2,000 from Price alone. Valued in the millions, it includes pre-Columbian, native American, African and European art.

Where to house all this? In 1957, the Vincent and Mary Grant Price Gallery was founded to exhibit the first teaching art collection owned by a community college.

“This is one of the best kept secrets in Los Angeles,” said Richard Anderson, assistant to East Los Angeles College president Ernest H. Moreno. “If we were located in Omaha or Cincinnati, this would be one of the major attractions of that city. But, with all the art galleries that we have in Los Angeles, frequently, we are overlooked.”

Never by Price. He continued to contribute art work until his death in 1993. A memorial ceremony was held for him in the gallery.

The art collection has moved, from a tiny bungalow to the art department building to a section of the library.

In the spring, the collection will make a giant leap into the three-story, 40,000-square-foot Vincent Price Art Museum now under construction.

The museum will be the centerpiece of the college’s $89 million Performing and Fine Arts Center. Two other structures, a recital hall and a theater building, will complete the 160,000-square-foot complex.

The art building will include workshops, seven gallery spaces, a 120-seat lecture hall for art history classes and a spacious basement.

The facility will have a special heating, ventilation and air-conditioning system designed to protect stored pieces.

“The space we will have seems almost limitless,” said Karen Rapp, the museum director. “In the basement, we will have the ability to house the collection as well as retaining one area in which students by appointment, or instructors or community people can come in and interact with the collection, have that kind of first-hand experience which, in many museums, the public never gets to enjoy.

“Since we are a college, I think this is a really important function. We want people to see and appreciate the art.”

Rapp is planning various programs from videos to poetry readings.

“You can't just rest on your laurels and say this is what we have and you can come in here for your own edification,” Rapp said. “The trend now in museums is to include a lot of audience development.”

Even with all the space there won't be room to show the entire Price collection. So, the pieces will be rotated, Rapp said, with perhaps showcase exhibitions of individual artists, ideally some who are Los Angeles-based but haven't had a lot of museum exposure.

“Vincent Price planted the seeds when he came here in 1951,” Rapp said. “Without him, who would have come forward to say this is important, this is necessary. And then, keep supporting it.

“Other colleges haven't had a guardian angel like Vincent Price.”