Inspiration Points: Masterpieces of California Landscape

Thomas Hill, Land's End (Land's End, San Francisco), n.d. Oil on canvas, masonite, 20.75 x 27.5 inches. Collection of Oakland Museum of California, gift of Grace Decker Meyer in memory of her husband, Victorien Melville Meyer.

Oakland Museum of California opened the vaults to showcase the very best in California landscape art from the museum’s holdings, including works by Ansel Adams, Thomas Hill, David Hockney, William Keith, Arthur Mathews, Richard Misrach, Thomas Moran, and more. The first special exhibition to be featured in the newly transformed Gallery of California Natural Sciences, Inspiration Points: Masterpieces of California Landscape explores the human presence on the landscape through approximately 60 of OMCA’s best landscape paintings, photographs, and works on paper.

From majestic scenes of unspoiled wilderness to exploited lands and dystopic visions, the exhibition showcases how artists have interpreted the landscape at particular moments in time. Highlighting important recent acquisitions while also shedding new light on timeless favorites, the exhibition examines the changing attitudes toward the environment over time, and provides a surprising investigation of California’s natural world. 

The artworks included in Inspiration Points have been carefully selected from the Museum’s extensive and pre-eminent holdings of California art from the Gold Rush era to the present to tell the stories of how people have interacted with the natural world. The exhibition will be divided into several areas of focus that reflect artists’ depiction of the landscape from a celebration of California’s sublime natural world, to the documentation of exploitation of natural resources, to the investigation of the intersection of the urban and “wild.”

“This is a terrific special exhibition to complement the all-new 25,000 square-foot Gallery of California Natural Sciences,” says OMCA Senior Curator of Natural Sciences Douglas Long. “It eloquently and beautifully demonstrates the interdisciplinary nature of the transformed Gallery of California Natural Sciences — drawing on nature, art, and history to tell the many stories of California and allowing Museum visitors to see themselves in the landscape. The emphasis in these great works of landscape art is on the human presence, which is the main focus of our completely new presentation in the Gallery.”

Don't overlook the museum's terrific shop and its selection of books and jewelry. We rarely leave without a purchase for ourselves and family.

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