Rancho Los Cerritos to unveil new exhibit exploring the true history of the American cowboy – Press Telegram

Rancho Los Cerritos during sunset hours. (Courtesy of Rancho Los Cerritos)

The Rancho Los Cerritos Museum and Historic Site is opening a brand new exhibit sure to delight local history buffs next weekend.

The exhibit, “Untold Legacies: Rethinking the American Cowboy,” highlighting the rich history of Black, Mexican, and Indigenous cowboys, will open on Sunday, July 14.

Rancho Los Cerritos, a nearly five acre historic landmark which includes a museum, a nearly two century old adobe home, a historic garden, and myriad research collections, seeks to highlight the legacies of communities that have been largely left out of history.

These “Untold Legacies” will get star treatment in this exhibition that explores how Black, Mexican, and Indigenous cowboys have been defined — and how a fresh look at their legacy can help redefine common perceptions of the American cowboy.

This thoughtful exhibition is part of a larger movement toward a rediscovery of alternative histories of cowboys, according to a recent press release.

“As the history of cowboys is being revisited, largely due to the efforts of BIPOC artists in film, music, and fine arts, a more accurate portrayal of who and what a cowboy is, is now emerging,” guest curator Martin Etem said in the press release, “I am excited to present [this exhibition that] explores and reveals the true American Cowboy,”

The exhibit will feature works by five local artists — Lorenzo Baker, Hely Omar Gonzalez, Nia Lane, Daniel Tyree Gaitor-Lomack, and Brooklyn Sabino Smith — who are recontextualizing and reimagining the American cowboy through their art.

Rancho Los Cerritos also hopes the exhibition will help spotlight urban equestrian groups educating youth in their communities and continuing the cowboy tradition, the news release said.

The Rancho will host an open day event for the exhibit on Sunday, July 14 at 1 p.m., which will include various activities, tours of the historic adobe home, and more. The event will be free and open to the public.

For more information about the exhibit visit, rancholoscerritos.org.

Long Beach Shakespeare Company

“I to the world am like a drop of waterThat in the ocean seeks another drop.”

In playwright William Shakespeare’s “The Comedy of Errors,” Antipholus of Syracuse, lost in a strange city, feels as though he has lost himself in the ocean of the world.

Most of all, though, he desires home — a word used over 40 times in this play, more than in any other Shakespeare work.

One of Shakespeare’s earliest — and most underrated —pieces of theater, “The Comedy of Errors” will arrive in Long Beach starting Friday, July 12, courtesy of the Long Beach Shakespeare Company.

Following the adventures and misadventures of two pairs of twins who are separated at birth and unexpectedly find themselves in the same city years later, “The Comedy of Errors” is a gem of a show.

When Antipholus searches for his long-lost brother — and his servant, Dromio, also searches for his twin — the resulting situations are the stuff of classic sitcoms.

Add a jealous wife and her lovesick sister into the mix —plus the incredibly high stakes of a possible beheading right at the start of the show — and you’ve got a fast-paced concoction of misunderstandings and identity confusions that ranks as one of Shakespeare’s very best early plays.

The play is part of the Long Beach Shakespeare Company season’s newest theme, which explores the complexities of identity and the bonds that connect us.

Through the lens of comedy (with a dash of drama), “The Comedy of Errors” invites audiences to reflect on the ways in which we see ourselves and others, how easily the familiar can transform into the strange, and how we can ever truly find our way home.

Tickets for this production are available online or at the door. Shows will run through Saturday, Aug. 3. Visit lbshakespeare.org for more info.