Downtown Riverside is the cultural, entertainment and retail center of Inland Southern California, featuring a legendary collection of cultural landmarks, including Main Street’s pedestrian mall’s statues of great leaders. Downtown’s buildings are attractions in and of themselves, with even more inspiration waiting inside at spots like the Fox Performing Arts Center and the Riverside Municipal Auditorium and Events Center; the Riverside Art Museum; the National Historic Landmark Mission Inn Hotel & Spa, the Mission Inn Museum, Riverside Metropolitan Museum, and the most beautiful courthouse in America, the famed Riverside County Courthouse.
Downtown Riverside is a walking museum filled with statues of great leaders, including Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi, Dosan Ahn Chang Ho, Eliza Tibbets, who planted and bred America’s first naval orange tree; and Ysmael Villegas, Riverside’s first recipient of the Medal of Honor. To see all the statues, start on the Main Street pedestrian mall outside of the Mission Inn and walk west to the historic Riverside County Courthouse.
Phone: 951-788-9556
Website: http://missioninnmuseum.org/
Location: 3696 Main Street, Riverside, CA 92501
The Mission Inn Foundation offers a 75 minute walking tour led by trained docents on the art, architecture and history of the Mission Inn. This is your opportunity to see parts of the Inn that are inaccessible to the general public based on hotel availability. Reservations are highly recommended as we only take a limited number of guests per tour. Tours are $13 for adults and senior citizens, children under twelve are free with an adult. During Festival of Lights, starting the Friday after Thanksgiving, and running through the first weekend after New Year’s Day, tours are $17 per person. Payment is requested at the time of reservation and is nonrefundable.
Group & Student Tours are also available. Reduced rates are available for groups of 25 or more and for school groups.
Phone: 951- 222-8846
Website: https://socialjustice.rccd.edu/
Location: 3855 Market St. Riverside, CA 92501
A native of Riverside, Mine Okubu was incarcerated in two internment camps during World War II. Entering a magazine contest with a drawing of a camp guard, she was discovered Fortune Magazine and offered a job in New York, leading to her release from camp. She lived in NY for 50 years, creating artwork that was exhibited around the world. The Mine Okubu Collection is the largest and most compete body of materials illustrating mid-century Japanese American history spanning the pre-war, wartime, and post war periods. As a social activist, writer and artist, her depiction of life in American internment camps gave voice to more than 120,000 Japanese American internees.
Phone: 951-827-4787
Website: https://ucrarts.ucr.edu/
Location: 3824 Main St, Riverside, CA 92501
UCR ARTS opened to the public in 2010, bringing together the California Museum of Photography (founded in 1973), the Jack and Marilyn Sweeney Art Gallery (1963), and the Barbara and Art Culver Center of the Arts (2010). Located three miles from UCR’s main campus, UCR ARTS is located on a single block in adjacent historical buildings along the pedestrian mall in downtown Riverside. Housed in two renovated department stores from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, UCR ARTS’ adaptive reuse enlivens the city’s downtown core.
By merging the already established photographic museum and university art gallery with the new, multi-disciplinary Culver Center, UCR ARTS serves as a cultural anchor for both the University and the broader Inland Empire communities. UCR ARTS organizes provocative and timely art exhibitions, performances, screenings, and other programs with the aim of invigorating the cultural life of artists and residents of Southern California, nurturing creative and critical thinking on campus and in the community, and promoting the importance of the arts for a healthy society. UCR ARTS offers innovative programs that engage diverse audiences, nourish the imagination, and challenge assumptions.
The extensive art, photography, and research collections of the CMP and Sweeney Art Gallery make UCR ARTS an important destination for audiences as well as researchers working in a wide range of fields.
UCR ARTS’ activities embody UCR’s commitment to broadly-based public education and cutting-edge research. As a university museum and art gallery, UCR ARTS is committed to offering students opportunities for professional museum work. Students from UCR and elsewhere are involved under the aegis of independent course status, internships, work-study, and as volunteers.
Phone: (951) 684-7111
Website: http://www.riversideartmuseum.org/
Location: 3425 Mission Inn Avenue Riverside, California 92501
The RAM displays a mix of solo, group, and permanent collection exhibits featuring traditional and contemporary/modern art, regularly displaying the work of some of the best artists in the world, including Marc Chagall, Robert Williams, Takashi Murakami, and Millard Sheets, and other notable artists.
Phone: (951) 826-5273
Website: http://www.riversideca.gov/museum
Location: 3580 Mission Inn Avenue
Riverside, California 92501
A history, anthropological, and natural science museum located on Mission Inn Avenue, The Riverside Metropolitan Museum boasts a prized collection Native American artifacts donated by Cornelius Rumsey of Nabisco.
Phone: (951) 826-5201
Website: https://riversideca.gov/library/new-main-library.asp
Location: 3900 Mission Inn Ave., Riverside, CA 92501
The new main Riverside Library offers three different tours, including a standard tour, an art tour and a behind-the-scenes tour. Their Innovation Center houses an Oculus Rift Virtual Reality station, two 3D printers, asound recording booth, three iMac desktop computers, and our Young Adult collection.
Website: https://riversideartmuseum.org/visit/the-cheech-marin-center-for-chicano-art-culture/
Location: 3851 Mission Inn Ave., Riverside, CA, 92501
The Cheech will be the “center of Chicano art, not only for painting, but for sculpture, photography, and video arts.” The 61,420-square-foot center will house hundreds of paintings, drawings, photographs, and sculptures by artists including Patssi Valdez, Sandy Rodriguez, Carlos Almaraz, Frank Romero, Judithe Hernández, and Gilbert “Magú” Luján.
