Lucia Mathews, Seated Girl on Sand Dunes, 1897. Pastel on paper. Gift of Mr. Harold Wagner.

The Oakland Museum of California is undergoing a major transformation project. To learn more, start here: www.museumca-campaign.org

The Art and History Galleries are currently under renovation, and will reopen in 2009. Please visit our special exhibitions, Natural Sciences Gallery. or join us for special events.

We apologize for any inconvenience. Thank you for your understanding during this very busy time.

Visitors to the Gallery of California Art will experience the story of art in the Golden State from the mid-1800s to today.

The earliest watercolors, prints and drawings are by artists employed to document early explorations to the West. The excitement of the Gold Rush and the opening of the West attracted large numbers of artists. Photographers using daguerreotypes recorded the people and the environment. Visitors will enjoy works such as

Charles Christian Nahl's portraits and anecdotal paintings, which helped create the image, both myth and reality, of the gold miner. Photographers Carleton Watkins and Eadweard Muybridge, and painters Thomas Hill, William Keith and Albert Bierstadt, among others, were inspired by California's spectacular scenery to portray nature as an unspoiled wilderness of epic scale.

Imogen Cunningham, The Unmade Bed, 1957. Gelatin silver print. Gift of the Art Guild, Oakland Museum Association.

After the 1915 Panama Pacific Exhibition, California artists explored the emerging modernist styles. Inspired by the impressionists, Oakland's Society of Six painted brilliant plein air (outdoors) landscapes using effects of light and color. Stanton Macdonald-Wright, Helen Lundeberg, Lucien Labaudt and Maynard Dixon were among the artists influenced by abstraction, cubism, surrealism and social realism. Photographs by Anne Brigman, Dorothea Lange, Edward Weston, Imogen Cunningham, Ansel Adams, Richard Misrach and others illustrate the expressive developments in the 20th century in photography.

Following World War II a West Coast brand of Abstract Expressionism flourished, led by artists Richard Diebenkorn, Sam Francis, Frank Lobdell and Deborah Remington. Diebenkorn, David Park , Elmer Bischoff and Joan Brown later applied this style to representational painting, developing the Bay Area Figurative style. This period of California art history is well illustrated in the gallery.

Mathews Furniture Shop, Franc Pierce Hammon Memorial Windows, 1925. Leaded stained glass. Gift of Mr. & Mrs. James Moore, Mr. Ronald S. Moore and Miss Jane T. Moore.

The museum's display of California crafts is notable for art pottery, ceramics and glass; metalwork including outstanding works by Dirk Van Erp; jewelry highlighted by the Margaret De Patta Collection; and custom furniture with contemporary work by Garry Knox Bennett and John Cederquist. Peter Voulkos and Robert Arneson are among the artists who redefined the boundaries between craft and art.

Bay Area funk, minimalism, photorealism, installation and conceptual art found in the gallery bays dedicated to contemporary art reflect the vital art environment of experimentation and expression that continues in California.