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CONTACT
Kelly Koski, 510-318-8453, [email protected]
Claudia Leung, 510-318-8459, [email protected]
2015–2016 EXHIBITION SCHEDULE
UPCOMING EXHIBITIONS
Who is Oakland?
April 11–July 12, 2015
For this experimental exhibition, lead artist Chris Johnson and nine Oakland-based artists have
created vibrant works featuring the celebratory, inspirational, and challenging aspects of what is
happening within Oakland today. The artists, in addition to Johnson, represent the diversity of
Oakland communities and a range of socially-minded art practices, from multimedia installations
to painting, sculpture, video, and photography. Artists include Kim Anno, Jesse Crimes, Susan
Felter, Jose Garcia, Chris Johnson, John McCoy, Adia Millet, Favianna Rodriguez, Chris
Treggiari, and Tommy Wong. Addressing a range of topics including the city’s natural beauty,
food culture, gentrification, and the history of activism and social justice movements, the
exhibition includes video works that reveal the changing face of the city, including Oakland
citizens speaking about what it means to be from Oakland. Presented as a dynamic and
participatory experience, visitors are invited to add their own stories to the artists’ installations
and online throughout the run of the exhibition.
Who is Oakland? is supported by a grant from The James Irvine Foundation.
Michelle Dizon: Drifting Islands
April 11–November 8, 2015
In three video installations on view at the Oakland Museum of California, artist Michelle Dizon
examines the ways in which displacement, globalization, and dispossession leave indelible
marks that transcend generations. The video Civil Society (2008) connects the civil unrest in
Los Angeles in 1992 and on the outskirts of Paris in 2005, examining the hypervisibility of
events that supposedly trigger unrest in stark contrast to the invisibility of marginalized subjects
and members of many postcolonial diasporas around the world. Perpetual Peace (2012)
presents footage collected in the Philippines over the course of four years, reflecting the legacy
of colonialism. The new work Ex Utero (2015) depicts the physical scars borne by several
generations of women from Dizon’s family as a result of their experience as survivors of breast
cancer, referring to the body as a postcolonial landscape.
Pacific Worlds
May 30, 2015–January 3, 2016
Pacific Worlds, a new major exhibition at the Oakland Museum of California, explores
California's historical and contemporary place in the Pacific region, through rarely-seen objects
from the Pacific Islands. One hundred years after the 1915 Panama-Pacific International
Oakland Museum of California • 1000 Oak Street • Oakland, CA 94607 • 510-318-8453
Exposition (PPIE), the exhibition re-envisions California as “the East Coast of the Pacific,” taking
over OMCA’s Great Hall with interactive, multi-faceted experiences. Pacific Worlds turns the
familiar idea of California as the western frontier on its head, examining the deep and rich
history of this region’s interactions with the Pacific, and exploring the on-going connections and
intersecting experiences of Pacific Islanders and Native Hawaiians, along with Filipinos, Native
Californians, and American collectors, colonists, and audiences. Weaving together pieces from
the Museum’s collections with interactive media, visitor contributions, and contemporary
California Pacific Islander artwork and community voices, Pacific Worlds presents Californian
identity as tied to and shaped by the histories, peoples, and geography of the Pacific Islands.
ON VIEW EXHIBITIONS
Fertile Ground: Art and Community in California
Through April 12, 2015
Fertile Ground: Art and Community in California illuminates local histories and social forces that
changed the face of art in-and beyond-the Golden State. Weaving together art and ephemera
from the collections of the Oakland Museum of California and SFMOMA, the exhibition tells the
stories of four creative communities at decisive moments in the history of California art: the
circle of artists who worked with, influenced, and were influenced by Diego Rivera and Frida
Kahlo in San Francisco in the 1930s; the legendary painters and photographers associated with
the California School of Fine Arts in the 1940s and 1950s, including Mark Rothko, Clyfford Still,
Richard Diebenkorn, David Park, Minor White, and Imogen Cunningham; the free-spirited
faculty and students at UC Davis in the 1960s and 1970s, such as Robert Arneson, Wayne
Thiebaud, William T. Wiley, and Bruce Nauman; and the streetwise, uncompromisingly idealistic
artists at the center of a vibrant new Mission scene that took root in the 1990s through the
present, including Barry McGee, Chris Johanson, Margaret Kilgallen, Amy Franceschini, Ruby
Neri, Alicia McCarthy, and Rigo 23, along with many others. Focusing equally on the artworks
and the contexts that fostered their creation, Fertile Ground presents an intimate and textured
history of personal relationships, artistic breakthroughs, and transformative social change.
Fertile Ground: Art and Community in California is jointly organized by the Oakland Museum of
California and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
WHAT’S HAPPENING, CALIFORNIA?
Sunshine and Superheroes: San Diego Comic-Con
Through May 31, 2015
Examining the role of gender in comics, San Diego's tourism industry, and the social and
political ramifications of comics, Sunshine and Superheroes: San Diego Comic-Con is surprising
investigation into the nation’s largest comics convention. Visitors will examine artifacts such as
vintage comic books, Comic-Con paraphernalia, and superhero outfits, along with original
student-produced videos and an interactive photo booth complete with costumes for visitors to
try on. The exhibition is the third in the series titled What’s Happening, California? a partnership
between OMCA and California State University in which professors and students co-create
exhibitions on topics affecting communities throughout the state, following collaborations with
CSU Sacramento and CSU Fullerton.
Oakland Museum of California • 1000 Oak Street • Oakland, CA 94607 • 510-318-8453
CALIFORNIA PHOTOGRAPHY
Marion Gray: Within the Light
Through June 21 2015
The Oakland Museum of California presents 23 works by San Francisco-based photographer
Marion Gray. Gray has spent four decades capturing performances, dance, and installations by
some of the most significant artists in the Bay Area and beyond. The creative networks
portrayed in the exhibition have fueled Gray’s life work as a photographer and, in turn, Gray’s
images have contributed to the vitality of the scene. Including never-before-seen photographs,
the exhibition covers the 1970s to the present, showcasing the work of artists including Barbara
Hammer, The Harrisons, Sara Shelton Mann, Eiko + Koma, Joan Jonas, Guillermo GómezPeña, Ann Hamilton, Marina Abramović, and more. The exhibition is the fourth in a series
exploring California topics through photography.
Bees: Tiny Insect, Big Impact
Through September 20, 2015
This new exhibition in the Gallery of California Natural Sciences takes a look at the wildly
diverse and intricate world of one of the most important creatures to human agriculture and the
natural environment. Through family-friendly experiences, hands-on activities, and media, Bees:
Tiny Insect, Big Impact touches on topics of honeybees and Bay Area beekeeping, the diversity
of California native bee species, citizen science projects, and the similarities between bees and
humans. Visitors will discover real bee specimens under a microscope, crawl through a humansized beehive, and try on a beekeeper suit. The exhibition continues outside of the Gallery, with
resident citizen science organizations, bee hotels installed in the OMCA gardens, and guides on
planting a bee-friendly garden and building bee hotels to take home. In an immersive gallery
environment, visitors can explore the causes of bee population decline, learn about the
significance of bees to California's economy and ecosystems, and discover how simple but
powerful actions by Californians can help bees to survive in a changing world.
ABOUT THE OAKLAND MUSEUM OF CALIFORNIA
The Oakland Museum of California (OMCA) brings together collections of art, history, and
natural science under one roof to tell the extraordinary stories of California and its people.
OMCA's groundbreaking exhibits tell the many stories that comprise California with many
voices, often drawing on first-person accounts by people who have shaped California's cultural
heritage. Visitors are invited to actively participate in the Museum as they learn about the
natural, artistic, and social forces that affect the state and investigate their own role in both its
history and its future. With more than 1.9 million objects, OMCA is a leading cultural institution
of the Bay Area and a resource for the research and understanding of California's dynamic
cultural and environmental heritage.
VISITOR INFORMATION
The Oakland Museum of California (OMCA) is at 1000 Oak Street, at 10th Street, in Oakland.
Museum admission is $15 general; $10 seniors and students with valid ID, $6 youth ages 9 to
17, and free for Members and children 8 and under. OMCA offers onsite underground parking
and is conveniently located one block from the Lake Merritt BART station, on the corner of 10th
Street and Oak Street. The accessibility ramp is located at the 1000 Oak Street main entrance
to the Museum. museumca.org
Oakland Museum of California • 1000 Oak Street • Oakland, CA 94607 • 510-318-8453