To some, he's a pot-smoking comedian. To others, he's Don Johnson's partner on Nash Bridges. And to yet another group, he's a reigning champion on Celebrity Jeopardy, toppled only recently by Michael McKean, who played Lenny from Laverne & Shirley.

But to the art world, Cheech Marin is known as a saavy collector with an eye for fresh talent and deep knowledge of the Chicano art movement that began to coalesce in southern California during the 1960s.

In town for the Houston Fine Art Fair (HFAF) — where he has curated a booth of contemporary Texas-based artists for Los Angeles' Thomas Paul Fine Art — the comedy legend joined CultureMap for lunch to discuss the longstanding and increasing role of Chicano creatives in American art.

"When I started collecting Chicano art in the late 1970s and early 1980s," Marin says, "these artists were almost completely denied access to galleries and museums, which considered their work to be agitprop folk art rather than fine art."

Marin explains, however, that most of the artists in the Chicano movement, particularly early leaders like Carlos Almaraz and Gilbert Luján from the Los Four group, were university-trained and very much attuned to global contemporary art strains.

"As people belonging to two distinct cultures, these artists incorporate elements of American culture with Mexican artistic traditions," he says. "Then, on top of that, there are references to art from around the world. These are very cool, very complex pieces, rendered in what looks like a naive manner.

"It's a sophisticated dichotomy. They're showing two cultures simultaneously and reporting on each."

Marin turned to Texas artist Benito Huerta and his new piece So What, a large canvas that filters Picasso's cubist masterwork Les Demoiselles d'Avignon through a distinctly Chicano lens that adds a layer of American pop and subtle Mexican symbolism. The work is on view in the Thomas Paul booth at the HFAF.

In 2001, Marin mounted Chicano Visions: American Painters on the Verge — an exhibition drawn primarily from this own 500-piece collection to highlight the importance of the Chicano art movement in the United States.

After breaking a number of attendance records as it traveled to museums like San Francisco's De Young and the Smithsonian in Washington, DC, the exhibit was revamped for a 2008 show of Marin's collection at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, a major turning point for Chicano art. The collector-comedian recently has organized another traveling show titled Chicanitas that highlights small paintings by Mexican-American artists.

After lunch, it was onto the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston for a tour with curator Mari Carmen Ramirez of her new show Constructed Dialogues, an exploration of postwar geometric and kinetic art from Latin America. A must for any mid-century design fan, the exhibit opens Saturday for Museum District Day for those who'd like to enjoy the free admission.

Marin will tend his booth at the Reliant Center through Sunday. On Saturday at 3:15 p.m., he will take to the HFAF stage for a broader discussion about Chicano art, its cultural significance and its growth in the collectors' market.