Harry Gamboa Jr.

Patrick Charpenel selected Asco: Elite of the Obscure as Mexico City’s Best, 2013, Art in America, (December 2013)

Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, Washington D.C.(2019); Tirafkan Cultural Foundation, Tehran (2019); Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (2019); Davis Museum at Wellesley College (2019); Marjorie Barrick Museum of Art UNLV, Las Vegas (2019); Vincent Price Art Museum ELAC, Monterey Park (2019); Museo de Arte Carrillo Gill, Mexico City (2018, 1978); Autry Museum of the American West (2018); Foto Forum Santa Fe (2018); Museo de la Solidaridad Salvador Allende, Santiago, Chile (2018); Marlborough Contemporary, New York (2017); MOCA Pacific Design Center (2017); Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2016, 2015 and 1995 Biennial); Delaware Art Museum (2016); Utah Museum of Fine Arts (2015); Princeton University Art Museum (2015); Centre d'Arts Plastiques Contemporain, Bordeaux, France (2014); De Appel, Amsterdam, Netherlands (2014); Lentos Kunstmuseum Linz, Linz, Austria (2013); Nottingham Contemporary, Nottingham, England (2013); Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington D.C. (2013); Le Musée d’Art Contemporain, Marseille, France (2017, 2013); Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo (UNAM), Mexico City (2013); Tate Liverpool, Liverpook, England (2013); Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes, Mexico City (2011, 1981); Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2011, 2010); Musée de l'Élysée, Lausanne, Switzerland (2009); Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach, CA (2011); Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester, England (2009); Museo de Arte Zapopan, Guadalajara, Mexico (2009); Los Angeles County Museum of Art (2011, 2008, 2001); Fowler Museum, UC Los Angeles (2011); Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporaneo, Mexico City (2008); Japanese American National Museum, Los Angeles (2008); El Museo del Barrio, New York (2008, 2010); The Huntington Library, San Marino, California (2008); Museo José Luis Cuevas, Mexico City (2006); Centre Pompidou, Paris, France (2006); Museo Nacional de la Estampa, Mexico City (2005); International Center of Photography, New York (2003); MIT List Visual Arts Center (2000); Queens Museum of Art (1999); Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C. (1997); Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen, Denmark (1996); Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY (1994); Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (1994); LAX/CSU Los Angeles (1994); Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes, Mexico City (1981); Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (1979); Museo de Arte Moderno, Mexico City (1978); Tucson Museum of Art, Tucson, AZ (1977).

He served as a juror [6] for Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, Outwin Boochever Competition 2019

In Spring 2018, From ‘No Movie’ to ‘Fake Buzzers’ and The Sixth Expanse, Harry Gamboa Jr. in conversation with Hugo Hopping [7], SixtyEight Art Institute, Copenhagen, Denmark.

Hilda Solis, Los Angeles County Supervisor, First District presented Harry Gamboa Jr. with a County of Los Angeles Commendation, August 1, 2017: [1]

In Fall 2017, he delivered keynote, Summer School #2 MAKING PUBLIC DOMAIN, Middelheim Museum, Antwerpen, organized by Nico Dockx (Koninklijke Academie voor Schone Kunsten) and Pascal Gielen (ARIA).

Harry Gamboa Jr., See What You Mean, 2016/17 Getty Artist Program invitee, The J.Paul Getty Museum

From this point, his career as an artist—both solo and with Gronk, Valdez, and Herrón in the art collective ASCO (Spanish for nausea) —"took off". Among other "urban interventions," Asco sprayed their names on the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Elite of the Obscure, Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, MA, February 4 - July 29, 2012.

In Fall 2012, Universitair Centrum Sint Ignatius Antwerpen - UCSIA sponsored Gamboa to present, La La Land: Deflections and Recollections, an artist talk at Universiteit Antwerpen. He also worked with students and faculty of Koninklijke Academie voor Schone Kunsten Antwerpen (Royal Academy of Fine Arts) along with Belgian artists Ria Pacquée and Nico Dockx to produce "actions" in Antwerpen and Brugge.

The Getty Research Institute Pacific Standard Time initiative that focused on postwar art in Los Angeles featured the major exhibition, Asco: Elite of the Obscure, a retrospective, 1972-1987, at Los Angeles County Museum of Art, September 4 - December 4, 2011.

Michael Ned Holte selected, Asco: Elite of the Obscure, as his #1 pick for Best of 2011 in Artforum (December, 2011).

Christopher Knight selected, Asco: Elite of the Obscure, 2011 year in review: Best in Art, 2011 Los Angeles Times.

2010 Latino Heritage Month was inaugurated in a ceremony attended by a wide spectrum of supporters in Council Chambers at the famed Los Angeles City Hall, where Los Angeles Mayor Antonio R. Villaraigosa presented the Latino Heritage Awards: Spirit of Los Angeles Willie Herrón III, Patssi Valdez, and Harry Gamboa Jr. accepted the award on behalf of Asco), Dream of Los Angeles Tony Plana, Hope of Los Angeles Plácido Domingo.

Gamboa founded/directed Virtual Vérité (2005-2017), an international ensemble performance troupe.

He has received numerous awards from institutions including the Rockefeller Foundation (2004), the Durfee Foundation Artist Award (2001), the Flintridge Foundation Visual Artist Award (2000), the Gluck Foundation (1998–1999), the J. Paul Getty Trust Fund for the Visual Arts (1990), the California Arts Council (1996), Art Matters, Inc. (1996), and National Endowment for the Arts (1978 and 1980).

His oral history is included in Smithsonian Archives of American Art (1999). His oral history is also included in Alternative Projections, Experimental Film in Los Angeles 1945-1980, a project of Los Angeles Filmforum (2011).

In 1993 Gamboa married his second wife, Chicana muralist Barbara Carrasco, after seven years of romantic and professional involvement.

Gamboa's photograph, Decoy Gang War Victim, 1974, was featured on the cover of Artforum (October, 2011).

The first of five children born to a working-class Mexican American couple, Gamboa grew up in East Los Angeles, California, "an urban area tormented by poverty, violence, and racial conflict". Despite the "inadequacy of the East L.A. public schools", Gamboa was encouraged to value education and did fairly well in school, and he was active in community organizations and politics as a teenager. As a high-school student (graduated 1969), Gamboa was active in student government and an organizer of various student-initiated reforms, most significantly the 1968 "East L.A. Blowouts"—a series of protests against the inferior conditions of public schools in poor, non-white areas.

Harry Gamboa Jr. (born 1951) is a Chicano essayist, photographer, director and performance artist. He was a founding member of the influential Chicano performance art collective ASCO.