Patricia Cariño Valdez is an independent curator and art consultant based in California. Her goal is to inspire curiosity and To create belonging through exhibitions, programs, and art collecting.
Valdez is the Founder and CEO of PCV Art Consulting, a consulting firm that distinguishes itself by serving collectors and artists. Valdez advises mid-career and established artists to build and professionalize their studio practice. Informed by her professional relationships with artists and years of working in galleries, curating, and public programming, Valdez specializes in building meaningful collections of cherished artworks that nurture and reflect the client's distinct values.
Most recently, Valdez was a Programming Director at Various Small Fires (VSF) in Los Angeles, where she supported and nurtured the VSF programming and roster of artists and helped build public and private collections. Before that role, she worked as an Artist Liaison at Shulamit Nazarian, aiding artists with off-site and traveling exhibitions and private and public projects. She developed and strategized program development through exhibition and fair proposals, including representation of Maria A. Guzmán Capron, a solo show of Miguel Arzabe, and curated Midnight Murmurs. This group show featured new relationships with Asian/Asian-American artists Nicole Coson, Mikey Yates, and Masako Miki.
Before her roles in Los Angeles galleries, Valdez lived in Oakland/Bay Area for over a decade, working at cultural institutions and curating independent projects.
From 2018-2021, Valdez worked at the Oakland Museum of California (OMCA), developing public programs that amplified special exhibitions, such as The World of Charles and Ray Eames, Queer California: Untold Stories, Pushing West: The Photography of Andrew J. Russell, and Dorothea Lange: Photography as Activism. She also curated OMCA's 50th Anniversary program series entitled Community Conversations. This day-long symposium, Exploring Public Art Practices, was generously sponsored by the Kenneth Rainin Foundation. It gathered hundreds of artists, philanthropists, collectors, and activists together. It featured the following creatives and artists: Mike Blockstein and Reanne Estrada, co-founders of a creative studio for civic engagement, Public Matters (Los Angeles), designer and spatial justice activist Liz Ogbu (Bay Area), Rafa Esparza (Los Angeles), Medea Project (San Francisco), Rachel McCrafty (San Francisco), Sergio De La Torre and Chris Treggiari (Oakland/San Francisco), De Nichols (St. Louis, MO), Szu-Han Ho (Albuquerque, NM), and a commissioned site-specific dance performance by Kristin Damrow & Company (San Francisco).
From 2016-2018, Valdez served as the Curator and Director of Public Programs at the San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA). While there, she developed public engagement initiatives, including ICA Live!, a performance art program, and Talking Art, a series of panel discussions and artist lectures, portfolio reviews, and workshops. She instituted the first national call for site-specific installations and implemented a pipeline for future art commissions. Before the ICA, Valdez created innovative public programs at the intersection of arts and sciences at the Exploratorium in San Francisco.
Valdez's most recent independent project was Suspended Matter, a group exhibition at the Berkeley Art Center that featured Julia Goodman (Oakland), Asma Kazmi (Berkeley), Laura Arminda Kingsley (Dübendorf, Switzerland), and Jenifer K. Wofford (San Francisco). In 2019, Valdez curated DIALECTS, a performance by Szu-Han Ho that premiered at the Contemporary Jewish Museum as part of the Soundwave 9 sound and music biennial. Other independent projects include an exhibition that explored the commonplace objects and food within Filipino cooking entitled Super Sarap at Erica Broussard Gallery (Formerly Gallery 6/6/7) in Santa Ana, CA. This project expanded and traveled to the Asia Society in Texas and was the first Filipino-American exhibition held in that space. Valdez is ½ of Casa de Palomitas, a collaborative research and writing project with her husband, Cesar Valdez.
Valdez has participated as a speaker and panelist at the Asian Art Museum (San Francisco, CA), Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive, Living Room Light Exchange (San Francisco, CA), Stanford University (Palo Alto, CA), University of San Francisco Thacher Gallery, Cal State East Bay, Central Features Contemporary (Albuquerque, NM), and Arizona State University. She served on the Public Art Advisory Committee for the City of Oakland from 2017-2020. 2016, Valdez participated in the Independent Curators International Curatorial Intensive in Manila, Philippines.
Valdez was born in Manila and grew up along the West Coast of the U.S. She earned a B.A. in History of Art from the University of California, Berkeley, and an M.A. in Curatorial Practice from the California College of the Arts.