A list of all the changing and permanent exhibitions at the museum.

Press: please visit our Press Section

Birth of the Cool: California Art, Design, and Culture At Midcentury
May 17–August 17, 2008

Julius Shulman, photograph of Case Study House #21 (Pierre Koenig, architect, Los Angeles, 1958), 1958. © J. Paul Getty Trust.

Birth of the Cool: California Art, Design, and Culture At Midcentury takes a look at the broad cultural zeitgeist of “cool” that influenced the visual, graphic, and decorative arts, furniture, architecture, music, and film produced in California in the 1950s and early 1960s. The exhibition, organized by the Orange County Museum of Art, includes a jazz lounge; a media bar with film, animation, and television programming; a period art gallery of hard-edge abstract paintings; selections of art, architectural, and documentary photography; and an interactive timeline that highlights examples of California, national, and international culture and history in the 1950s. Birth of the Cool examines the dynamic community of artists who overlapped and interacted in Southern California at midcentury-Chet Baker, Gerry Mulligan, Charles and Ray Eames, John Lautner, Richard Neutra, Helen Lundeberg, and others who played a germinal role in the development of this iconic style of high modernism.

Birth of the Cool: California Art, Design and Culture at Mid-Century is organized by the Orange County Museum of Art. This exhibition received significant funding from the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency

Cool Remixed Bay Area Urban Art + Culture Now
May 17–Aug 17, 2008

T.U.R.F. Dancing. Courtesy Youth Uprising. Photo by Yoram Savion.

Presenting a topical spin to the Birth of the Cool exhibition, with graffiti, a scraper bike, DJ station for mixing, lounges, stage, fashion, skate ramp, sculpture, and more. Curated by museum education staff and sponsored by the East Bay Asian Youth Center (EBAYC), Visual Element of East Arts Alliance, Town Park, Youth Radio, Youth Uprising, and Oakland High School’s Visual Arts Academy (VAAMP).

In Our Own Backyard: A Celebration of East Bay Regional Parks
March 15–October 12, 2008

Bob Walker, Dougherty Hills, Contra Costa County, n.d.

More than 40 photographs from the museum’s Bob Walker Archive. Take a virtual tour through the East Bay parks’ varied habitats, following the flow of creeks from snow-capped Mt. Diablo to the protected park lands along the San Francisco Bay shoreline.

The Art and History of Early California
December 1, 2007– Ongoing

Exhibition of the museum's collection explores the story of California from the

Oakland Museum of California

First Peoples through the Gold Rush. Through a display of art and artifacts, experience the rich history, diverse beginnings, and artistic and cultural heritage of early California.

TOLD FROM A TOTEM
Sixty students (grades 9-12) from Oakland High School’s Visual Arts Academy created contemporary totem poles, using recycled materials,

Daisy Velasco (grade 11), “The Real Me,” 2007. Mixed media.

during sessions led by Oakland High teachers and Oakland Museum of Californiastaff. The students personalized their work with symbols, plaster, paint, and ornaments. The totems differ wildly one from another.

The Oakland High School Partnership Program is in its eighth year. The 2007 collaboration between the museum and Oakland High’s Visual Arts Academy was led by Christine Lashaw, artist and museum preparator, and Carol Squicci, assistant project coordinator. Student participants came from Keith (K-Dub) Williams’s and Jack Begrin’s art classes. Exhibition continues through January 27, 2008.

Gallery of California Art -Art
Transformation underway – reopens in 2009

California: A Place, A People, A Dream-History
Transformation underway – reopens in 2009

Walk Across California-Natural Sciences
The Natural Sciences Gallery takes the visitor on a simulated journey through California's diverse ecosystems, observing plants and animals found from the Pacific coastline to the High Sierra and the inland desert. Exhibits contain approximately 2,500 natural specimens organized around basic ecological principles highlighting relationships among plants, animals, geology and climate. The Aquatic California Gallery presents an overview of our aquatic environments, including the oceans, rivers and streams and estuaries. Natural Sciences Department, first level.