March 24–May 27, 2012
MMA La Mirada
The Monterey Museum of Art is proud to present California Impressionism: Selections from the Irvine Museum. This exhibition of works by California’s most renowned impressionist artists will be on view March 24 through May 27, 2012 at the Monterey Museum of Art-La Mirada.
Beginning in the mid-nineteenth century through the late 1930s, California became a top destination for artists from all over the world. Although these artists came from a variety of backgrounds and created artworks in many styles they shared an intense love affair with the awe-inspiring, sublime landscapes of California. Spanning over eighty years of artistic accomplishment, this exhibition consists of approximately sixty paintings and watercolors by California’s most renowned artists, including: Franz Bischoff, Jessie Botke, Paul Dougherty, Edgar Payne, Granville Redmond, Armin Hansen, William Ritschel and Henrietta Shore. The diversity of landscapes and settings that inspired these artists stretches from Laguna to the High Sierras. This stunning exhibition has been selected from the extensive holdings of the Irvine Museum—one of the preeminent collections of early California art. The exhibition will be accompanied by fully-illustrated book and a range of educational programs for adults and families.
Image: Franz Bischoff, Roses (in a tall glass vase), 1912, oil on canvas, Courtesy of Mrs. Madeline Martin Swinden
March 24–July 22, 2012
MMA La Mirada
San Diego artist Arline Fisch is a multimedia artist and innovator in adapting techniques in fiber and metal. Designated a “Living Treasure of California” by the California legislature for her work as an artist, educator, author and contributor to the field of American crafts, Arline has a distinguished career as a maker of jewelry and body adornment. She is professor of art (emerita) at San Diego State University where she founded its program in jewelry and metalsmithing in 1961 and was awarded a gold metal of the American Craft Council in 2002.
Monterey Museum of Art presents Arline Fisch: Sea Jellies, a multimedia installation of 100 life-sized jellyfish species crocheted from color-coated stainless steel, nickel, copper wire and fiber. Suspended in space amidst an illuminated sea-blue wall tone, visitors will have the opportunity to feel as if they have been transported into the world of sea jellies and interact with these wondrous creatures through the eye of an artist. A recorded video projection of the Aquarium’s jellyfish will add a ‘live’ backdrop, enhancing the installation space with a multi- sensorial experience.
This installation compliments the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s upcoming exhibition, The Jellies Experience, due to open at the end of March 2012. Arline Fisch: Sea Jellies will open at the MMA La Mirada location March 23rd in the Klemme Gallery, in conjunction with California Impressionism: Selections from the Irvine Museum.
April 5 - TBD
MMA Pacific Street
This exhibition includes a variety of the watercolor works from the Museum’s permanent collection. The works span the 20th century and feature nationally known artists such as Millard Sheets and Milford Zornes, as well as local favorites William Ritschel and Armin Hansen. Also included are two contemporary works, from local artist Marie Brumund and from Boston artist and photographer Christopher James.
Image: Percy Gray, Untitled, 1923, watercolor on paper, gift of the Robin and Thomas Hood Families in memory of Nancy Hood
April 5, 2012-January 6, 2013
MMA Pacific Street
Urban Life: Photography in the City features a selection of black and white photographs from the Museum’s extensive permanent collection of photography. Focusing on the varied experience of life in urban surroundings, the American and European street and documentary photographers represented in this exhibition made a significant impact on photography from the 1950s through the 1980s. They recorded humanity at work and at play, along with the fashion, architecture, transportation, and memorable political and historic events. Urban Life: Photography in the City includes iconic photographs by Garry Winogrand, Henri Cartier-Bresson and Michael Kenna, as well as Pirkle Jones, Max Yavno and Ira Latour.
Image: William Heick, Hats, 1951, gelatin silver print, gift of the artist © William Heick
April 6–June 17, 2012
MMA Pacific Street
Modernism was introduced to the American public in 1913 when the International Exposition of Modern Art (commonly known as the Armory Show) offered the first wide exposure to avant-garde European art. As a result, many American artists began to turn away from the light-infused style of Impressionism to the use of vibrant, even violent color and simplified form. Regional artists in Monterey such as Francis McComas and Gottardo Piazzoni were influenced by the atmospheric beauty of California’s untapped environment and their startling simplification of form and muted pallet, heralded abstraction and modernist concepts. The lack of detail, and later with the combination of expressive brushstrokes, gave way to progressive compositional structures where broad patches of color and simpler lines became the dominant subjects. Artists such as Armin Hansen, sisters, Margaret, Esther and Helen Bruton, John O’ Shea, Henrietta Shore, Emmy Lou Packard, and Pedro de Lemos continued to forge a distinctive, regional California Modernism and helped establish the Monterey Peninsula as an important American art center.
April 6–June 17, 2012
MMA Pacific Street
November 17, 2011–June 17, 2012
MMA Pacific Street
Monterey NOW is an exhibition series presenting Monterey Bay area artists who have made significant contributions to the visual arts. Santa Cruz artist Paul Roehl is a prolific painter, printmaker and longtime teacher of art. This exhibition will feature his most recent body of work in which he explores the aesthetic experience through his investigations of the beauty and mystery inherent in the natural world. His works are inspired by early 20th century California landscapes paintings.
Supported in part by Barbara and William Hyland.
Image: Paul Roehl, Antonelli’s Pond, Clearing Storm, 2010, oil on canvas, collection of the Museum of Art and History at the McPherson Center, gift of the estate of Betty Heil
April 27, 2011 - December 2012
MMA La Mirada
Gottardo Piazzoni (1872-1945) moved from Switzerland to his family’s ranch in Carmel Valley in 1887. Subsequent study in Paris and San Francisco exposed the young Piazzoni to the revolutionary artistic developments of modernism and the muted symbolic pallet of tonalism which infuses his paintings of the California landscape. Piazzoni’s most ambitious project was a series of fourteen monumental murals commissioned for the San Francisco public library—now the Asian Art Museum. The murals were removed and conserved when the building was renovated in 1999. Ten murals are on permanent display at the de Young Museum in San Francisco. The final four—entitled Dawn, The Forest, The Mountain and Night—were completed the year of the artist’s death in 1945. These magnificent murals have been generously lent from the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco to the Monterey Museum of Art.
Behind the Scenes
Sponsored by Peppy Garner and Darnell Whitt, Carver + Schicketanz Architects, The S. D. Bechtel Jr. Foundation, Dr. and Mrs. Eric J. Del Piero, Mr. and Mrs. Mark Osterkamp, Mr. and Mrs. John Wilkinson, Janelle and Johnny Apodaca, Sherrie and Tom McCullough, Alyce Nunes, Tom and Margo Nunes and Dee Sala.
View the Behind the Scenes video
Image: Gottardo Piazzoni, The Forest from the Mural Suite, 1945, oil on canvas mounted to aluminum honeycomb panel, collection of Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Transfer from the San Francisco Arts Commission and the Asian Art Museum through the joint Committee to Site the Piazzoni Murals