Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego

Last updated

Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego
La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art.jpg
Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, La Jolla branch in 2008
Location map Northwestern San Diego.png
Red pog.svg
Location within Northwestern San Diego
Former name
The Art Center in La Jolla, La Jolla Art Museum, La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art
Established1941 (1941)
Location San Diego, California, U.S.
Coordinates 32°50′40″N117°16′41″W / 32.84444°N 117.27806°W / 32.84444; -117.27806 (Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, La Jolla)
Type Art Museum
Website www.mcasd.org

The Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego (MCASD), in San Diego, California, United States, is an art museum focused on the collection, preservation, exhibition, and interpretation of works of art from 1950 to the present.

Contents

Binational mandate

Located in the border city of San Diego, the museum's binational mandate includes a focus on artists from both sides of the US/Mexico border, [1] celebrating both San Diego and Tijuana’s artistic communities. [2] MCASD has held several exhibitions that explore cross-border themes, including Being Here With You / Estando aquí contigo: 42 Artists from San Diego and Tijuana, [3] The Very Large Array: San Diego/Tijuana Artists in the MCA Collection [4] and Strange New World: Art and Design from Tijuana. [5]

In 2023, artists Celia Álvarez Muñoz and Griselda Rosas have exhibited their artwork to express their lived experiences from living on both U.S. and Mexico borderlands. More than 35 pieces of art were exhibited by these two artists. They exhibited their special representations of artwork including sculptural installations, textile drawings, embroidery, book projects, and photographic series. Both exhibit a unique and share a circulation of cultures with their artwork. [6]

Locations

MCASD has two sites, about 13.2 miles (21 km) apart:

MCASD – 700 Prospect St, La Jolla, CA 92037.

Located on a 3-acre oceanfront campus (1.2 ha), [7] MCASD's flagship La Jolla location was originally an Irving Gill-designed residence, built in 1916 for philanthropist Ellen Browning Scripps. Since opening in 1941, the property has undergone several expansions. Mosher & Drew completed a series of expansions in 1950, 1960, and again in the late 1970s; and a renovation by Venturi Scott Brown & Associates was done in 1996. [8] In 2017, MCASD began its most recent expansion led by architect Annabelle Selldorf, which increased its size and added a public park. [9] The La Jolla location reopened to the public after its four-year renovation on April 9, 2022. [10] [11]

MCASD Downtown – 1100 Kettner Boulevard, San Diego, CA 92101.

In 1986 MCASD established a small gallery space in downtown San Diego and later opened a larger downtown outpost in 1993 inside America Plaza adjacent to the San Diego Trolley line, designed by artists Robert Irwin and Richard Fleischner along with architect David Raphael Singer. [12] In 2007, MCASD expanded its downtown facility with two buildings. [13]

History

A large art piece displayed projecting out from the La Jolla museum roof in 2007 Museum of Contemporary Art, La Jolla, 2007.jpg
A large art piece displayed projecting out from the La Jolla museum roof in 2007
The entrance of Museum of Contemporary Art, downtown San Diego The entrance of Museum of Contemporary Art.jpg
The entrance of Museum of Contemporary Art, downtown San Diego
Museum of Contemporary Art, downtown San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art, Downtown San Diego.jpg
Museum of Contemporary Art, downtown San Diego

Founded in 1941 in La Jolla as The Art Center in La Jolla, a community art center, through the 1950s and 1960s the organization operated as the La Jolla Art Museum. The museum was originally the 1915 residence of newspaper heiress and philanthropist Ellen Browning Scripps, designed by the noted architect Irving Gill. [20]

In the early 1970s, the name changed to the La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art, focusing the purview on the period from 1950 to the present. In 1990, the museum changed its name to San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art, only to change it to Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, after confusion developed between its name and the San Diego Museum of Art. [21] [22] The new name also acknowledged the larger geographic context and the population base of nearly 3 million in San Diego County, and opened a $1.2-million satellite facility downtown in 1993, further embracing the region. [22]

In 1996, a major $9.2 million renovation and expansion of MCASD La Jolla took place, designed by Robert Venturi of the firm Venturi Scott Brown & Associates. [23] Venturi's 30,000 square feet (2,800 square metres) addition included four more galleries, doubling the museum's exhibition space to 10,000 square feet (930 square metres). [24] It also expanded the museum's educational space, storage space, bookstore library and restaurant. It transformed the garden into an outdoor exhibition space for sculpture. [24]

In 2007, a $25-million downtown location of the museum was opened, designed by architect Richard Gluckman of Gluckman Mayner Architects, New York. [19] The expansion added 30,000 square feet (2,800 square metres) of space to the downtown site and increases its exhibition space from about 6,000 square feet (560 square metres) to 16,500 square feet (1,530 square metres). At the north end of the building is a three-story structure of corrugated steel and textured glass. It houses curatorial offices, art-handling and storage facilities, an art education classroom, a lecture hall that opens onto a terrace and a boardroom with a view of the harbor. [19] The renovated baggage building is named for Irwin M. Jacobs, founder of the technology company Qualcomm, and his wife, Joan. The three-story Modernist structure bears the name of philanthropist and newspaper publisher David C. Copley. [19]

In 2014, the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego chose architect Annabelle Selldorf to head a $30 million expansion [23] tripling the size of the museum's location in La Jolla. Upon completion, the museum had 3,700 square metres (40,000 square feet) of gallery space to exhibit the permanent collection, as well as additional space for education. [25] The museum's footprint was expanded to include properties (now residential but owned by the museum) on both sides of the institution, and the space that previously housed the Sherwood Auditorium was reconfigured as a gallery with exhibit space of approximately 740 square metres (8,000 square feet). [23]

Collection

The Museum of Contemporary Art has a nearly 5,500-object collection [26] of post-World War II art that includes key pieces by color field painter Ellsworth Kelly, minimalist sculptor Donald Judd and renowned California installation artist Robert Irwin. [27] In 2012, museum received 30 contemporary pieces from the 1950s to 1980s, with artworks from Piero Manzoni, Ad Dekkers, Christo, Jules Olitski and Franz Kline, as well as California artists Craig Kauffman and Ron Davis, from the collection of Vance E. Kondon and his wife Elisabeth Giesberger. [28]

As a site-specific installation, Irwin created 1° 2° 3° 4° (1997), consisting of squarish apertures cut into three lightly tinted museum windows so visitors have an unmediated view of the horizon line separating sea and sky and can feel the ocean breeze. [29]

Notable works

Deaccessioning

In May 2021, MCASD sent nine paintings and one sculpture from its collection to auction in New York, selling works by Roy Lichtenstein, Conrad Marca-Relli, Lorser Feitelson and six other postwar American artists for nearly $900,000. [30]

Management

MCASD has a permanent endowment fund of over $40 million, and an annual operating budget of approximately $6 million. [19] Annual support comes from a balanced mix of individuals, corporations, foundations, government agencies, and interest earned from the endowment, the majority of which came from a transformational 1999 bequest from Rea and Jackie Axline of more than $30 million.

From 1983 to 2016, Hugh Davies steered the museum as director. From October 2016, Kathryn Kanjo became the museum's director and CEO. [27]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">San Francisco Museum of Modern Art</span> Modern and contemporary art museum in San Francisco, California (SFMOMA)

The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) is a modern and contemporary art museum located in San Francisco, California. A nonprofit organization, SFMOMA holds an internationally recognized collection of modern and contemporary art, and was the first museum on the West Coast devoted solely to 20th-century art. The museum's current collection includes over 33,000 works of painting, sculpture, photography, architecture, design, and media arts, and moving into the 21st century. The collection is displayed in 170,000 square feet (16,000 m2) of exhibition space, making the museum one of the largest in the United States overall, and one of the largest in the world for modern and contemporary art.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">La Jolla</span> Neighborhood in San Diego, California, United States

La Jolla is a hilly, seaside community within San Diego, occupying 7 miles (11 km) of curving coastline along the Pacific Ocean. The population reported in the 2010 census was 46,781.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Los Angeles County Museum of Art</span> Art museum in California, United States

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) is an art museum located on Wilshire Boulevard in the Miracle Mile vicinity of Los Angeles. LACMA is on Museum Row, adjacent to the La Brea Tar Pits.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robert Irwin (artist)</span> American installation artist (1928–2023)

Robert Walter Irwin was an American installation artist who explored perception and the conditional in art, often through site-specific, architectural interventions that alter the physical, sensory and temporal experience of space.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Irwin M. Jacobs</span> American businessman, founder of Qualcomm (born 1933)

Irwin Mark Jacobs is an American electrical engineer and businessman. He is a co-founder and former chairman of Qualcomm, and chair of the board of trustees of the Salk Institute. As of 2019, Jacobs has an estimated net worth of $1.2 billion.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Orange County Museum of Art</span> American art museum in California

The Orange County Museum of Art (OCMA) is a modern and contemporary art museum located on the campus of the Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Costa Mesa, California. The museum's collection comprises more than 4,500 objects, with a concentration on the art of California and the Pacific Rim from the early 20th century to present. Exhibits include traditional paintings, sculptures, and photography, as well as new media in the form of video, digital, and installation art.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ellen Browning Scripps</span> American journalist, philanthropist

Ellen Browning Scripps was an American journalist and philanthropist who was the founding donor of several major institutions in Southern California. She and her half-brother E. W. Scripps created the E. W. Scripps Company, America's largest chain of newspapers and patron of the Scripps National Spelling Bee, linking Midwestern industrial cities with booming towns in the West. By the 1920s, Ellen Browning Scripps was worth an estimated $30 million, most of which she gave away.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David C. Copley</span> Newspaper publisher

David C. Copley was an American publishing heir, on the board of the Copley Press for over thirty years, becoming president and owner, as well as publisher of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a noted philanthropist.

Salomón Huerta is a painter based in Los Angeles, California. Huerta was born in Tijuana, Mexico, and grew up in the Boyle Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles. Huerta received a full scholarship to attend the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena and completed his MFA at UCLA in 1998.

"America's Favorite Architecture" is a list of buildings and other structures identified as the most popular works of architecture in the United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ron Wigginton</span> American artist and landscape architect (born 1944)

Ron Wigginton is an American artist and landscape architect. His paintings and sculptures are found in West Coast museums and many private collections. His landscapes are known for their narrative and aesthetic qualities, and his artwork typically involves and explores human perceptions of natural and built landscapes. Wigginton is considered to be one of the first Landscape Architects to approach the design of a landscape as a conceptual work of art, for which he has received international recognition through publication and awards.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Light and Space</span> Art movement

Light and Space denotes a loosely affiliated art movement related to op art, minimalism and geometric abstraction originating in Southern California in the 1960s and influenced by John McLaughlin. It is characterized by a focus on perceptual phenomena, such as light, volume and scale, and the use of materials such as glass, neon, fluorescent lights, resin and cast acrylic, often forming installations conditioned by the work's surroundings. Whether by directing the flow of natural light, embedding artificial light within objects or architecture, or by playing with light through the use of transparent, translucent or reflective materials, Light and Space artists make the spectator's experience of light and other sensory phenomena under specific conditions the focus of their work. From the movement's inception, artists were incorporating into their work the latest technologies of the Southern California-based engineering and aerospace industries to develop sensuous, light-filled objects. Turrell, who has spread the movement worldwide, summed up its philosophy in saying, "We eat light, drink it in through our skins."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Peter Alexander (artist)</span> American artist (1939–2020)

Peter Alexander was an American artist who was part of the Light and Space artistic movement in southern California in the 1960s. He is notable for his resin sculptures from the 1960s and 1970s.

Sarah Cain, is an American contemporary artist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hugo Crosthwaite</span>

Hugo Crosthwaite is a contemporary figurative artist who is best known for his black and white graphite and charcoal drawings.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The Broad</span> Contemporary art museum in Los Angeles, US

The Broad is a contemporary art museum on Grand Avenue in Downtown Los Angeles. The museum is named for philanthropists Eli and Edythe Broad, who financed the $140 million building that houses the Broad art collections. It offers free general admission to its permanent collection galleries. However, not all of its events are free and admission prices may vary by exhibit and/or by event. It opened on September 20, 2015.

Guillermo Acevedo (1920-1988) was a Peruvian-born artist and master draftsman, most famous in the United States for his striking portrayal of Native Americans of the Southwest, and for his ability to capture and help preserve the disappearing architectural styles of old neighborhoods throughout the U.S. and abroad. Known to be an artist-observer with great sensitivity, Acevedo is recognized as a master at recording the human condition.

The New Children's Museum is an arts-based children's museum in downtown San Diego, California, whose mission is to "stimulate imagination, creativity and critical thinking in children and families through inventive and engaging experiences with contemporary art". The Museum commissions contemporary artists to create room-sized art installations (playscapes) for children to interact with and explore. The Museum has collaborated with hundreds of artists since opening in 2008. The Museum is housed in a dynamic space designed by visionary and award-winning architect Rob Wellington Quigley and is one of the first green museums in California.

Elizabeth Sisco is an artist active in the Chicano art movement.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Conrad Prebys Performing Arts Center</span> Concert hall in La Jolla, California

The Conrad Prebys Performing Arts Center, also known as The Conrad, is a concert hall located in La Jolla, California. It was opened in April 2019 and serves as the permanent residence of the La Jolla Music Society.

References

  1. ↑ Heidenry, Rachel (November 16, 2018). "A Vibrant Arts Community Bridges Two Cities Separated by a Contentious Border". Hyperallergic. Retrieved January 4, 2022.
  2. ↑ Knight, Christopher (March 21, 2024). "A San Diego museum is selling its buildings. What will happen to the extraordinary art built into it?". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved March 23, 2024.
  3. ↑ Schimitschek, Martina (October 25, 2018). "MCASD's 'Being Here With You/Estando aquí contigo' celebrates artists from both sides of the border". San Diego Union-Tribune. Retrieved January 4, 2022.
  4. ↑ Chute, James. "Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego set to display local artists". mcall.com. Retrieved January 4, 2022.
  5. ↑ "Artnexus". www.artnexus.com. Retrieved January 4, 2022.
  6. ↑ "Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego Debuts Two New Borderland-Inspired Art Exhibits". La Jolla. March 16, 2023. Retrieved October 8, 2023.
  7. ↑ "An architect's unifying vision for MCASD". San Diego Union-Tribune. February 14, 2015. Retrieved January 8, 2022.
  8. ↑ Welch, Adrian (November 13, 2021). "Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego MCASD". e-architect. Retrieved January 8, 2022.
  9. ↑ Frausto, Elisabeth (May 1, 2021). "'Bringing art to people': Lead architect for Museum of Contemporary Art renovation lays out her vision". La Jolla Light. Retrieved January 8, 2022.
  10. ↑ Hardison, Ryan (April 9, 2022). "7 Things to Do in San Diego This Weekend". San Diego Magazine. Retrieved April 11, 2022.
  11. ↑ Dixon Evans, Julia (April 7, 2022). "Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego in La Jolla reopens to the public". KPBS Public Media. Retrieved April 11, 2022.
  12. ↑ Saarinen, Eero (January 20, 2007). "Museum lays tracks all across the city". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved January 8, 2022.
  13. ↑ Staff (January 19, 2007). "Museum expands downtown location, preserving intimate feel of La Jolla site". Baltimore Sun. Retrieved January 8, 2022.
  14. ↑ Wood, Beth. "So much more than just a train station". mcall.com. Retrieved January 8, 2022.
  15. ↑ Artdaily. "Maya Lin: Systematic Landscapes at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego". artdaily.cc. Retrieved January 8, 2022.
  16. ↑ "Expanded Museum Opens In Downtown San Diego". www.e-flux.com. Retrieved January 8, 2022.
  17. ↑ Kaitlyn Huamani (27 March 2024), Where to find Richard Serra’s sculptures in Southern California Los Angeles Times .
  18. ↑ "Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego to waive admission for all on Jan. 31 to honor its late benefactor David Copley". La Jolla Light. January 22, 2013. Retrieved January 8, 2022.
  19. 1 2 3 4 5 Suzanne Muchnic (January 7, 2007). "Modern art's train reaches the station". Los Angeles Times .
  20. ↑ McCoy, Esther (1960). Five California Architects. New York: Reinhold Publishing Corporation. pp. 97–99. ASIN B000I3Z52W.
  21. ↑ John R. Lamb (February 6, 1992), New Name for La Jolla Museum Los Angeles Times .
  22. 1 2 Kevin Brass (May 4, 1992). "La Jolla Museum Unveils Annex in San Diego". Los Angeles Times .
  23. 1 2 3 James Chute (March 14, 2014). "MCASD names architect for expansion". The San Diego Union-Tribune .
  24. 1 2 Hilliard Harper (May 5, 1988). "La Jolla Museum of Art Unveils Venturi's Design for Expansion". Los Angeles Times .
  25. ↑ David Ng (March 17, 2014), Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego picks architect for expansion Los Angeles Times .
  26. ↑ Jori Finkel (5 April 2022), Light and much more Space: first look at the expanded Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego The Art Newspaper .
  27. 1 2 Miranda, Carolina A. (March 23, 2012). "Kathryn Kanjo named new director of Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego". Los Angeles Times .
  28. ↑ Jamie Wetherbe (March 23, 2012), San Diego museums receive $40-million art collection Los Angeles Times .
  29. ↑ Jori Finkel (5 April 2022), Light and much more Space: first look at the expanded Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego  The Art Newspaper .
  30. ↑ Christopher Knight (8 June 2021) Commentary: Art museum endowments soared in the pandemic. So why sell art to pay the bills? Los Angeles Times .
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.