Crocker Art Museum
Encyclopedia
The Crocker Art Museum is one of the leading arts institutions in California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...

, and the longest continuously operating art museum in the West. Located in Sacramento
Sacramento
Sacramento is the capital of the state of California, in the United States of America.Sacramento may also refer to:- United States :*Sacramento County, California*Sacramento, Kentucky*Sacramento – San Joaquin River Delta...

, California, the Crocker has been an art innovator since 1885. The Museum boasts one of the state’s premier collections of Californian art dating from the Gold Rush
Gold rush
A gold rush is a period of feverish migration of workers to an area that has had a dramatic discovery of gold. Major gold rushes took place in the 19th century in Australia, Brazil, Canada, South Africa, and the United States, while smaller gold rushes took place elsewhere.In the 19th and early...

 to the present day, a world-renowned collection of master drawings, European paintings, one of the largest and most comprehensive international ceramics collections in the U.S. and collections of Asian, African, and Oceanic art. In addition to its impressive collections, the Crocker offers a wide variety of public programs.

In 1869, Judge E. B
Edwin B. Crocker
Edwin Bryant Crocker was a California Supreme Court Justice and founder of the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento, California.-Biography:...

. and Margaret Crocker began to assemble a significant collection of paintings and drawings during an extended trip to Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

. As a prominent California family, the Crockers supported many social and civic causes. Judge Crocker (1818–1875) practiced law and served on the State Supreme Court. He was the brother of Charles Crocker
Charles Crocker
Charles Crocker was an American railroad executive.-Early years:Crocker was born in Troy, New York, to a modest family and moved to an Indiana farm at age 14. He soon became independent, working on several farms, a sawmill, and at an iron forge. In 1845 he founded a small, independent iron...

, one of the “Big Four” railroad barons, and acted as legal counsel for the Central Pacific Railroad
Central Pacific Railroad
The Central Pacific Railroad is the former name of the railroad network built between California and Utah, USA that formed part of the "First Transcontinental Railroad" in North America. It is now part of the Union Pacific Railroad. Many 19th century national proposals to build a transcontinental...

. In 1885, his widow, Margaret (1822–1901), fulfilled their shared vision of creating a public art museum when she presented the E. B. Crocker Art Gallery and collection to the City of Sacramento and the California Museum Association, “in trust for the public.”

While the Crocker Art Museum had undertaken a series of renovations and additions since it first opened as a public museum 125 years ago, the facility could not keep pace with the Museum’s burgeoning collection and the growing population of Sacramento and California's Central Valley Region. In 2000, the Crocker began a master planning process with Gwathmey Siegel & Associates
Gwathmey Siegel & Associates Architects
Gwathmey Siegel & Associates Architects LLC is a New York City-based architectural firm founded in 1967 by architects Charles Gwathmey and Robert Siegel. The firm's work ranges from art and educational facilities and major corporate buildings to furniture systems and decorative art objects...

 and in 2002 commissioned the firm to design a major expansion of the Museum. The expanded Crocker Art Museum opened on October 10, 2010.

Californian Art & American Art

The Californian art collection includes works dating from statehood to the present day. The core collection of early Californian art was assembled by Judge E. B
Edwin B. Crocker
Edwin Bryant Crocker was a California Supreme Court Justice and founder of the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento, California.-Biography:...

. and Margaret Crocker in the early 1870s and has continued to grow over the years. The Crocker now boasts 150 years of painting, sculpture, and craft media covering genres that include Impressionism
Impressionism
Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement that originated with a group of Paris-based artists whose independent exhibitions brought them to prominence during the 1870s and 1880s...

, Abstract Expressionism
Abstract expressionism
Abstract expressionism was an American post–World War II art movement. It was the first specifically American movement to achieve worldwide influence and put New York City at the center of the western art world, a role formerly filled by Paris...

, and Pop Art
Pop art
Pop art is an art movement that emerged in the mid 1950s in Britain and in the late 1950s in the United States. Pop art challenged tradition by asserting that an artist's use of the mass-produced visual commodities of popular culture is contiguous with the perspective of fine art...

, and features artists such as Thomas Hill
Thomas Hill (painter)
Thomas Hill was an American artist of the 19th century. He produced many fine paintings of the California landscape, in particular of the Yosemite Valley, as well as the White Mountains of New Hampshire.-Biography:...

, Guy Rose
Guy Rose
Guy Rose was an American Impressionist painter who is recognized as one of California's top impressionist painters of the late 19th and early 20th centuries....

, Joan Brown
Joan Brown
Joan Brown was an American figurative painter who lived and worked in Northern California. She was a notable member of the "second generation" of the Bay Area Figurative Movement....

, and Wayne Thiebaud
Wayne Thiebaud
Wayne Thiebaud is an American painter whose most famous works are of cakes, pastries, boots, toilets, toys and lipsticks. He is associated with the Pop art movement because of his interest in objects of mass culture, although his works, executed during the fifties and sixties, slightly predate...

. The collection also includes American art from the late-19th century to the present. American Impressionists
American Impressionism
Impressionism, a style of painting characterized by loose brushwork and vivid colors, was practiced widely among American artists in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.-An emerging artistic style from Paris:...

 and Modernists are a particular strength, with iconic works by Childe Hassam
Childe Hassam
Frederick Childe Hassam was a prolific American Impressionist painter, noted for his urban and coastal scenes. Along with Mary Cassatt and John Henry Twachtman, Hassam was instrumental in promulgating Impressionism to American collectors, dealers, and museums...

, Robert Henri
Robert Henri
Robert Henri was an American painter and teacher. He was a leading figure of the Ashcan School in art.- Early life :...

, and Georgia O’Keeffe.Other Twentieth Century painters represented include;Granville Redmond,Edwin Deakin,Maynard Dixon,Richard Diebenkorn,Mel Ramos,Jim Piskoti("Justice"),Jess,and Luis Azaceta.

Works On Paper

The collection of approximately 1,500 master drawings is one of the finest early collections in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

, with superb examples from the major European schools. Collection strengths include European drawings from the 17th and 18th centuries. Major drawings by artists such as Albrecht Dürer
Albrecht Dürer
Albrecht Dürer was a German painter, printmaker, engraver, mathematician, and theorist from Nuremberg. His prints established his reputation across Europe when he was still in his twenties, and he has been conventionally regarded as the greatest artist of the Northern Renaissance ever since...

, Fra Bartolommeo
Fra Bartolommeo
Fra Bartolomeo or Fra Bartolommeo , also known as Baccio della Porta, was an Italian Renaissance painter of religious subjects.-Biography:He was born in Savignano di Prato, Tuscany...

, François Boucher
François Boucher
François Boucher was a French painter, a proponent of Rococo taste, known for his idyllic and voluptuous paintings on classical themes, decorative allegories representing the arts or pastoral occupations, intended as a sort of two-dimensional furniture...

, and Jean-Honoré Fragonard
Jean-Honoré Fragonard
Jean-Honoré Fragonard was a French painter and printmaker whose late Rococo manner was distinguished by remarkable facility, exuberance, and hedonism. One of the most prolific artists active in the last decades of the Ancien Régime, Fragonard produced more than 550 paintings , of which only five...

 are represented here. American photography and modern and contemporary California prints are also strengths of the works on paper collection.

European Art

The collection of European art was shaped by the Crocker family’s purchase of paintings during their grand tour of Europe between 1869 and 1871. This core collection focuses on Central European painting of the 19th century, Dutch and Flemish 16th and 17th-century painting, and Italian-Baroque painting. Painters represented at this art museum include;Antonio Joli,Guido Cagnacci,Gerrit Honthorst,Nicolas Maes,Klaes Molenaer,Pieter Quast("Quarreling Women"),Bernhard Reinhold("Young Mason Eating Lunch"),Andreas Aschenbach.Karl Von Piloty,Paul Blondeau("Dordrecht"),Arnold Marc Gorter,Andreas Schelfhout,and Charles Nahl.

International Ceramics

Since midcentury, the Museum has followed the development of notable Californian, American, and international ceramists such as Hamada Shoji and Lucie Rie
Lucie Rie
Dame Lucie Rie, DBE was an Austrian-born British studio potter.-Early life:Lucie Rie was born as Lucie Gomperz in Vienna, Lower Austria, Austria-Hungary the youngest child of Benjamin Gomperz, a Jewish medical doctor who was a consultant to Sigmund Freud. She had two brothers, Paul and Teddy...

. Major gifts to the museum celebrate craftsmanship, expand upon clay’s traditions, and test its boundaries as a medium. The history of ceramics is also explored in a superb collection of 18th–century Meissen porcelain
Meissen porcelain
Meissen porcelain or Meissen china is the first European hard-paste porcelain that was developed from 1708 by Ehrenfried Walther von Tschirnhaus. After his death that October, Johann Friedrich Böttger, continued his work and brought porcelain to the market...

 tableware and in the works of ancient cultures dating to the Neolithic period
Neolithic
The Neolithic Age, Era, or Period, or New Stone Age, was a period in the development of human technology, beginning about 9500 BC in some parts of the Middle East, and later in other parts of the world. It is traditionally considered as the last part of the Stone Age...

.

Asian Art

The collection of Asian art is especially noted for its holdings of Chinese tomb furnishings and trade ceramics, and Japanese armor and tea ware. The collection is also notable for Korean ceramics which began with a gift by Judge E.B.
Edwin B. Crocker
Edwin Bryant Crocker was a California Supreme Court Justice and founder of the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento, California.-Biography:...

 and Margaret Crocker’s daughter Jennie Crocker Fassett in the 1920s. South and Southeast Asia are well represented through the William and Edith Cleary gift of more than 600 Indian and Persian miniature paintings and drawings, as well as Buddhist art from the region between Pakistan and Southeast Asia.

African & Oceanic Art

The collection of African and Oceanic art features a variety of objects created for daily life and traditional ceremonies. The art of the Asmat
Asmat people
The Asmat are an ethnic group of New Guinea, residing in the Papua province of Indonesia. Possessing one of the most well-known and vibrant woodcarving traditions in the Pacific, their art is sought by collectors worldwide...

 of New Guinea
New Guinea
New Guinea is the world's second largest island, after Greenland, covering a land area of 786,000 km2. Located in the southwest Pacific Ocean, it lies geographically to the east of the Malay Archipelago, with which it is sometimes included as part of a greater Indo-Australian Archipelago...

 is strikingly evidenced in the towering memorials to ancestors, called bis poles
Bisj Pole
A Bisj Pole, or Bis Pole, is a ritual artifact used by the Asmat people of south-western New Guinea. Objects similar to Bisj Poles are found among many peoples of the South Pacific islands - in New Zealand, and on Vanuatu....

.

The Crocker-Kingsley

A biennial exhibition has been held by the museum in cooperation with the Kingsley Art Club since 1927, and juried since 1940. Artists whose works have appeared include Robert Arneson
Robert Arneson
Robert Carston Arneson was an American sculptor and professor of ceramics in the Art department at UC Davis for four decades.- Career :...

, Elmer Bischoff
Elmer Bischoff
Elmer Nelson Bischoff was a visual artist in the San Francisco Bay Area.Bischoff, along with Richard Diebenkorn and David Park, was part of the post-World War II generation of artists who started as abstract painters and found their way back to figurative art.-Biography:Elmer Bischoff, second...

, David Gilhooly
David Gilhooly
David Gilhooly, also known as David James Gilhooly III, is an American ceramicist and printmaker, born in Auburn, California in 1943.He graduated from the University of California, Davis with a BA in 1965 and an MA in 1967...

, Ralph Goings
Ralph Goings
Ralph Goings is an American painter closely associated with the Photorealism movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s...

, Roland Petersen
Roland Petersen
Roland Petersen is an American painter and printmaker of Danish birth.Petersen was born in Endelave, Denmark in 1926. He studied at University of California at Berkeley, San Francisco Art Institute, California College of Arts and Crafts, Atelier 17 , Islington Studio, London, the Print Workshop,...

, Mel Ramos
Mel Ramos
Mel Ramos is a U.S. figurative painter, whose work incorporates elements of realist and abstract art. Born in Sacramento, California, he gained his greatest popularity in association with the Pop Art movement of the 1960s....

, Fritz Scholder
Fritz Scholder
Fritz Scholder was one of the most renowned Native American artists of the 20th century. Born in Breckenridge, Minnesota, Scholder was one-quarter Luiseño, a California Mission tribe. Scholder's most influential works were post-modern in sensibility and somewhat Pop Art in execution as he sought...

, and Wayne Thiebaud
Wayne Thiebaud
Wayne Thiebaud is an American painter whose most famous works are of cakes, pastries, boots, toilets, toys and lipsticks. He is associated with the Pop art movement because of his interest in objects of mass culture, although his works, executed during the fifties and sixties, slightly predate...

.

Architecture

In 1868, Judge Edwin B. Crocker
Edwin B. Crocker
Edwin Bryant Crocker was a California Supreme Court Justice and founder of the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento, California.-Biography:...

 purchased the property and existing buildings on the corner of Third and O Streets. He then commissioned Seth Babson (1830–1908), a talented local architect, to redesign and renovate the home into a grander, Italianate mansion. In addition, Crocker asked Babson to design an elaborate gallery building that would sit adjacent to the mansion and display the family's growing art collection.

Babson saw the home and gallery as an integrated complex, unique in design and demanding the finest materials. The gallery building included a bowling alley, skating rink and billiards room on the ground floor; a natural history museum and a library on the first floor; and gallery space on the second floor. Completed in 1872, the Crocker family mansion and art gallery are considered the masterpieces of Babson's career.
The family mansion went through several uses and reconstructions until a 1989 renovation restored the historic façade and created a modern gallery interior.

On October 10, 2010 the Crocker Art Museum opened a new 125000 square feet (11,612.9 m²) building designed by Gwathmey Siegel & Associates Architects
Gwathmey Siegel & Associates Architects
Gwathmey Siegel & Associates Architects LLC is a New York City-based architectural firm founded in 1967 by architects Charles Gwathmey and Robert Siegel. The firm's work ranges from art and educational facilities and major corporate buildings to furniture systems and decorative art objects...

. The roughly 37600 square feet (3,493.2 m²) custom facade system was designed and
supplied by Overgaard Ltd., Hong Kong. The new building, named the Teel Family Pavilion, complements the museum's historic structures and expands the Crocker Art Museum's ability to originate and present traveling exhibitions and educational programs, exhibit significantly more of its growing collection, and enhance its role as a cultural resource for California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...

and the state's many visitors.

The design gives the Crocker, long considered one of the cultural gems of the western United States, a more prominent, contemporary image along with greatly expanded, sky lit gallery spaces suitable for both its permanent collection and temporary exhibits.

The expansion has more than tripled the Crocker’s size to 145,000 square feet (13,500 m2) — adding four times the space for traveling exhibitions and three times the space for the Museum to showcase its permanent collection.

The expanded Museum includes a new education center with four studio art classrooms, an art education resource room for teachers and docents, an expanded library, and student and community exhibition galleries, as well as an auditorium and public gathering places. These new facilities allow the Crocker to present expanded programming, enabling the Museum to serve the community as never before.

External links

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