After a three-year expansion project, the Hilbert Museum of California Art at Chapman University is celebrating the grand opening of the 22,000 square-feet facility with the launch of nine new exhibitions showcasing works by California artists. The spaciously reimagined home of one of the world’s largest collections of California narrative art will officially open to the public on February 23.
The opening shows feature historic artists such as Millard Sheets, Disney’s Mary Blair, Norman Rockwell and acclaimed Chicano artist Emigidio Vasquez, as well as Navajo weavings and examples of California modernism.
Danny Galieote, Beach Bevy, ca. 2020, oil and acrylic on canvas, 42 x 73". The Hilbert Museum of California Art at Chapman University, Gift of the Hilbert Collection.
California Art from the Hilbert Permanent Collection features contemporary California artists alongside their creative forebears. Eight galleries in the north wing will be dedicated to a rotating selection of oil and watercolor paintings, prints and drawings in the Hilbert’s permanent collection from the late 1800s to today. Featured artists in the opening round include David Hockney, Phil Dike, Sueo Serisawa, Vanessa Helder, Rex Brandt, Serena Potter, Francis de Erdely, Frank Romero, Jesse Arms Botke, Edgar Payne, Burr Singer, Wayne Thiebaud and others.
Bradford J. Salamon, Monday at the Crab Cooker, 2016, oil on canvas, 30 x 40”. The Hilbert Collection.
One section of the exhibition provides a cross section of representational art produced since the 1980s featuring interior scenes, figurative works, and scenes of California beach culture. “My goal in selecting the works for this section was to show how current representational artists interpret current culture in a different way than how California artists of previous times viewed and interpreted everyday life during their time,” says curator Gordon McClelland. “Each work was selected on its own merits. Some are by well-known California artists who received national recognition and some that were less known.”
William Wray, South Connector/405 (Blimp and Palm Trees from the Freeway), oil on panel, 22½ x 31". The Hilbert Collection.
Danny Galieote is firmly established in the former set. His work, described as “pop American regionalism,” has been widely exhibited in galleries across the United States and is collected internationally. Based in Burbank and born across the street from Disney Studios, where he later cut his teeth as a traditional animator, Galieote—and his creative output—is steeped in California beach culture, classic Hollywood and its romanticized depictions of the West.
Sandow Birk, Domingo es Mi Barrio, 1994, acrylic on canvas, 25 x 36½". The Hilbert Museum of California Art at Chapman University. Gift of the Hilbert Collection.
Galieote feels a personal connection to many of the artists in the Hilbert’s collection, in particular Sheets, Blair, Dike and Kosa.
“It feels like a huge honor to have my work shown alongside my art heroes in the Hilbert Museum,” says Galieote. “There is a legacy of art that, by my innate passions, I have somehow become a part of in the Hilbert. The work of the 30s, 40s and the Regionalists was made in such a way that uplifted and glorified the everyday man and woman of our local culture. That is what my art tries to do as well, except with our modern day local culture. I am an artist living now and offering my own interpretations of things I have encountered living here in California at this time,” he continues. “One day a future artist will see where I painted and yet again, say it in a new and different way. The timelessness of human nature is what I love...”
Ken Goldman, Double Take, 2018, watercolor, 22 x 22”. The Hilbert Museum of California Art at Chapman University, Gift of the Hilbert Collection.
Bradford Salamon was born in Los Angeles and raised in Huntington Beach, a half mile from the ocean. “My young life was consumed with surfing, skateboarding, rock and roll music and art,” says Salamon, who grew up in a creative household and was exposed to many of the artists in the Hilbert collection at an early age.
His work, which has expanded from portraiture to include abstract and non-objective oil paintings, cityscapes, sardonic puns on wood blocks, and large-scale depictions of vintage objects, was featured in a solo show at the Hilbert but, he says, “being part of this California art history is the greatest honor…I hope to leave my own small mark on the history of California art.”
Scott Moore, 24 Carrots, 2018, oil on linen. The Hilbert Collection.
Laguna Beach painter Scott Moore also feels a connection to many of the California artists that came before him. When he was a young watercolorist—Moore paints in oil now—he entered many competitive exhibitions juried by Sheets and met him a few times. Moore’s father attended Chouinard Art Institute where he was taught watercolor by Rex Brandt, a piece by whom Moore has in his collection.
“Being able to compare styles, techniques and subject matter amongst these great artists is awesome,” says Moore. “When people admire or are entertained by my art, I think of the way I felt, and still feel, when I stand in front of the work of my predecessors.”
Faith Butler, Chameleon Ritual – Measured Worth, oil on board, 29 x 41”
Ken Goldman’s watercolor Double Take is part of a series about our addiction to phone screens. Unlike most of the other works in the series, Double Take addresses the artist’s own usage. As a former president of the National Watercolor Society, founded by a collective of California painters in 1920, Goldman feels part of an ongoing legacy. In viewing the works of some of his favorite historic artists alongside that of his own and his peers, Goldman sees “the timelessness of paintings in terms of the elements and principles of good design, while at the same time seeing a definite contrast to the transitory nature of California’s passing fads and fashions from the early 1900s up until today.” Suong Yangchareon came directly to Los Angeles from Thailand in 1974 and paints predominantly urban landscapes, as in her show piece Crossing Kern County. Yangchareon says, “When I started painting full time in 1989, my intention was to paint places that I feel completely at home, but have not taken for granted—like Los Angeles.”
Suong Yangchareon, Crossing Kern County, 2017, acrylic on canvas. The Hilbert Collection.
Faith Butler lives in Coto de Caza, but grew up in the Pasadena area in close proximity to the Huntington Library, surrounded by classic craftsman style architecture, and an abundance of beautiful places to paint. “I was fortunate to spend most of my life getting away to the beach, mountains and desert areas as well,” says Butler, who is particularly fond of the California plein air painters. “I find it so interesting that those historic artists really wanted to show not only the beauty of the region but what was going on in the streets of Los Angeles, San Francisco and small towns all over California. Each artist carries on the tradition in their own way.” —
California Art from the Hilbert Permanent Collection
The Hilbert Museum of California Art
167 N. Atchison Street
Orange, CA 92866 • (714) 516-5880
www.hilbertmuseum.org
Powered by Froala Editor
