Arts @ Delicious at The Dunbar
The Medium of Memory: The Art of Kenneth Gatewood
August 08 – September 30, 2026 · Arts @ Delicious at The Dunbar
2026 · Los Angeles, CA
Kenneth Gatewood paints in watercolor, a medium that doesn't forgive mistakes and doesn't let you cover anything up. He's spent decades using it to hold onto what a neighborhood refuses to forget. This show brings together three sides of his work: portraits of jazz and soul legends who once filled the rooms of this very hotel, tender everyday scenes of neighborhood children, and a smaller set of deeper pieces on civil rights and endurance. Together they read like the movements of a song, each one distinct, all of them part of the same story.
The show runs through the season of the 31st Annual Central Avenue Jazz Festival, where Gatewood appears as the featured artist at the Arts Pavilion on September 19. Every Sunday during the run, The Dunbar's live jazz showcase (2:30–4:30 PM) brings the room to life the way it once did decades ago, with a fresh voice on the mic each week. No formal opening, no single big night — just a show that unfolds one Sunday at a time, in the building where so much of this history actually happened.
The Artist
Kenneth Gatewood
Kenneth Gatewood is a watercolor artist from South Central Los Angeles. His work has been collected by Michael Jackson, Queen Latifah, Tyler Perry, Magic Johnson, Jack Nicklaus, Dan Marino, Michael Jordan, and Muhammad Ali, who signed several of the paintings Gatewood made of him.
In 1995 he became the first African American artist to hold licensing agreements with the NBA, NFL, MLB, NHL, and MLS at the same time. He has spent decades in LAUSD classrooms and now runs an art mentorship program for children at the Richardson Foundation in Inglewood.
Watercolor is unforgiving. You can't paint over a mistake and you can't take a stroke back. Gatewood has used that constraint for most of his working life to hold onto what a neighborhood refuses to forget.
Muddy Waters
Stevie Wonder
Otis Redding
Purdy Girl 2
The Awakening
Vision Unlimited
MLK
The Dunbar
The Structure
The Show, in Three Movements
The exhibition is built like a jazz suite. Three groups of work, each with its own character, all part of the same story.
Movement I
The Music
Portraits of the jazz, blues, and soul figures who filled rooms like this one. Some of them played the Dunbar. Some of them defined the sound that came out of Central Avenue and traveled everywhere else. Gatewood paints them the way a listener remembers them, not the way a camera saw them.
Movement II
The Children
Neighborhood scenes. Kids on porches, kids at play, ordinary afternoons nobody thought to photograph. This is the work Gatewood is best known for and the thread running through everything else he does, including the mentorship program he teaches in Inglewood.
Movement III
The Legacy
A smaller, quieter group on civil rights and endurance. Fewer pieces, more weight. This is where the show stops swinging and sits still for a minute.
Plan Your Visit
Getting Here
Driving
Central Avenue at 42nd Street, about fifteen minutes south of downtown Los Angeles. There's a lot behind the restaurant, but it's small, so give yourself a few extra minutes on Sundays when the jazz showcase runs.
Metro Bus
Lines 53 and 105 stop at Central and 42nd, a minute's walk from the door. LADOT DASH also serves the corner.
Metro Rail
The A Line runs a few blocks east on Long Beach Avenue. Vernon Station is closest, about a fifteen-minute walk.
The Building
Look for the Dunbar Hotel, a Spanish Revival landmark built in 1928. It's the most recognizable building on the block.
Delicious at The Dunbar
4229 S. Central Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90011
(323) 918-2087
The Dunbar Hotel
Why This Building
The Dunbar opened in 1928 as the Hotel Somerville, built by John Alexander Somerville, a dentist who put it up because Black travelers couldn't get a decent room anywhere else in Los Angeles. It became the center of Central Avenue almost immediately. Businesses followed it south. The neighborhood organized itself around it.
Through the 1930s and 40s it was where the musicians stayed and where they played after their own gigs ended. Roy Wilkins wrote in the New York Amsterdam News that everything about the place ran opposite to what Black guests had come to expect from a hotel.
It has been Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument No. 131 since 1974 and on the National Register of Historic Places since 1976.
Which is the reason to see this work here. Gatewood's portraits of jazz and soul musicians are hanging inside the building where some of those musicians actually slept. That isn't available in a gallery.
Featured Artist
Artwork for Sale
“Got My Mojo Working”, Muddy Waters
Artist: Kenneth Gatewood
Original mixed media watercolor with 22 karat gold leaf and 7” vinyl record – 16” X 20” in Framed
$1,800
@KennethGatewood
“Superstition · Stevie Wonder”
Artist: Kenneth Gatewood
Original watercolor mixed media with 7” vinyl record – 14” X 14” in FRAMED
$1,500
@KennethGatewood
“Otis Redding”
Artist: Kenneth Gatewood
Original with 7” vinyl record Mixed media watercolor
12” X 22” Framed
$1,500
@KennethGatewood
“Purdy Gurl 2”
Artist: Kenneth Gatewood
Original watercolor
15” X 22” Framed
@KennethGatewood
“The Awakening”
Artist: Kenneth Gatewood
Mixed media watercolor with 22 karat gold leaf. limited edition Giclee print
12″ X 22″ Framed
$950
@KennethGatewood
“Vision Unlimited”
Artist: Kenneth Gatewood
Giclee limited edition print printers proof with Jet Magazine of Diahann Carroll
10″x12″ in Framed
$650
@KennethGatewood
“MLK”
Artist: Kenneth Gatewood
Original watercolor mixed media with 22 karat gold leaf
10” X 14” in Framed
$950
@KennethGatewood
“The Dunbar”
Artist: Kenneth Gatewood
Original Watercolor
@KennethGatewood
The Venue
The Venue
Delicious at The Dunbar
Delicious at The Dunbar serves bold Mexican and soul fusion cooking inside the Dunbar Hotel, a cornerstone of African American Los Angeles and the anchor of Central Avenue’s jazz era.
Through Arts @ Delicious at The Dunbar, the restaurant hosts rotating exhibitions curated by La Mancha Gallery. Each show runs for a season rather than a night, so the work lives in the room and changes how the room feels. Come for a meal, see the art, and be part of the reason this landmark is still doing what it was built to do.
Every Week
Live Jazz Every Sunday
2:30 – 4:30 PM · Inside Delicious at The Dunbar
A different musician every week. We don't announce who's playing ahead of time, and that's on purpose. Some Sundays you get a name you know. Some Sundays you get somebody you'll be telling people about in five years.
Soul and Mexican fusion cooking, live music, and the current exhibition on the walls, in a room on Central Avenue that has been doing exactly this since 1928.
Come early for a table. Stay for the set.
Newsletter
Stay Connected With Arts @ Delicious at The Dunbar
You're standing inside a living cultural space on historic Central Avenue. Artists, musicians, and community voices meet here every week.
- Early notice about new exhibitions
- Invitations to artist talks and special events
- Updates about Sunday jazz performances
- First look at new artwork before public release
- Stories about the artists and the history behind the work
Questions?
Call (323) 918-2087 or send us a note.
The Program
Arts @ Delicious at The Dunbar
Since 2006, La Mancha Gallery has presented exhibitions in alternative venues along Central Avenue. Arts @ Delicious is the current chapter, produced in partnership with Adriana Cortes at Delicious at The Dunbar.
Aug 8 – Sep 30, 2026
The Medium of Memory: The Art of Kenneth GatewoodOn View
Watercolors in three movements. Jazz and soul portraits, neighborhood children, and a smaller group on civil rights and endurance.
May – Jul 2026
Women of Central Avenue: Keepers of the Flame
Nine artists across three generations. Buena Johnson, Diana Shannon Young, Gail Oliver, Skira Martinez, Adrienne DeVine, Riea Owens, Lyric Cross, Christen Austin, and X. Darvi.
Feb – Apr 2026
Legacy on Central
Legacy on Central brought together eleven artists working in photography, painting, and mixed media at Delicious at the Dunbar, inside the historic Dunbar Hotel on Central Avenue, on view throughout February.
Sep 2025 – Jan 2026
The Eye Behind the Shutter: Jimmy Velarde
Archival pigment prints of Buddy Guy, Junior Wells, Koko Taylor, Joe Houston, Big Jay McNeely, Stevie Wonder, and John Belushi, shot 1981–82. Also shown at the Arts Pavilion of the 30th Central Avenue Jazz Festival.
Open Hours
Mon, Wed & Thurs: 10am – 9pm
Tuesday: Closed
Friday & Saturday: 10am – 10pm
Sundays: 10am – 7pm
LIVE JAZZ EVERY SUNDAY