Oceanic art silhouetted against the window wall of the new wing of the Crocker Art Museum, overlooking the original Gilded Age mansion.
The Crocker Art Museum was founded in 1885 to house the collection of Judge E.B. Crocker (brother of the “Big Four” railroad tycoon, Charles Crockett) and his wife, Margaret. Today the museum houses, according to Wikipedia, “one of the state’s premier collections of Californian art dating from the Gold Rush to the present day, a world-renowned collection of master drawings, European paintings, one of the largest and most comprehensive international ceramics collections in the U.S. and collections of Asian, African, and Oceanic art.” The original 1868 Italianate home and adjoining gallery, which once included a bowling alley, skating rink and billiards room, was expanded in 2010 with a contemporary wing, the Teel Family Pavilion, more than tripling the museum’s exhibition space.
Several special exhibitions were on view when I visited, on April 14: retrospectives of the Western landscapist Edgar Payne and the multimedia feminist artist Judy Chicago; a show of contemporary glass from the museum’s collection; a selection of fishing-themed prints from the collection of Gary Widman; and an impressive 200-figure sculptural installation by Gong Yuebin invoking the terra cotta army of China’s First Emperor, but with additional contemporary elements. Photography was not permitted in these shows, so my photographs focus on the architecture, both old and new, and the permanent collection, only a tiny part of which caught my hurried eye. Don't try running around like this at home! www.crockerartmuseum.org
Art by Frank Lobdell, Robert Hudson, and Unknown Artist (sorry).
Video installation by Jennifer Steinkamp, "Rapunzel," 2005.
