September 12, 2009.  First HCC event of the season – a visit to the collection of Barbara and Tom Stiles in Monarch Beach.  The Stiles Collection is one of the most important and comprehensive collections of California Impressionism.  Formed in the early 1980s, while Tom and Barbara lived in New York City, the collection encompasses major paintings by all the best-known artists….  California and French paintings by Guy Rose, Laguna Beach scenes by Joseph Kleitsch, a view of Giverny by Alson Clark, a large view of Cambria by Franz Bischoff, “Sierra Slopes” by Edgar Payne, and the list goes on.  To top it off, the Stiles’ home is spectacular, designed around the art collection and perched on the pictures rocks of Monarch Bay.  Lunch will be at the Sapphire Restaurant in Laguna.  The afternoon will be taken up with a tour of Villa Rockledge (see villarockledge.net).  Frank A Miller and Arthur Benton, the developer and architect of the Mission Inn in Riverside, began to craft this stunning residence by hand – from the thick cement foundations and retaining walls to the rustic stone towers, large open ocean-side porches and ornamental chimneys.  Each leaded glass casement window, heavy beam, wrought iron railing and masterpiece timework was hand made.  It took four years.  Currently the estate is for sale at $29.5 million.  Bring your check book.  (from the announcement)  Cost of attendance is $80/person (members) and $90/person (non-members).   

 Orange County Museum of Art Deaccessioning.

 Can it really be possible that fifteen years after the supposedly beneficial merger between the Laguna Art Museum and the Newport Harbor Art Museum there is still negative fallout?

 I was one who thought the merger a good idea.  In the Spring of 1996 Naomi Vine, then Director of the Laguna Art Museum, suggested a new and greater entity called the Orange County Museum of Art that could be devoted to the whole history of California art.  A similar merger had worked well in San Francisco between the DeYoung and the California Palace of the Legion of Honor.  Historic California art would have more exhibition space and a dedicated curator.  The building in Laguna Beach was to be kept open.

 Almost as soon as the remodeled Orange County Museum of Art was opened there was talk of closing the Laguna site.  Fortunately LAM Heritage Group was formed and worked to modify the terms of the LAM-Newport Harbor agreement so that LAM Heritage could run the Laguna building as a museum.  And, while Naomi Vine continued as OCMA’s Director, the new museum stayed true to its goals and equally showed historic and contemporary California art … and it hired a full time curator of historic California art – Sarah Vure.

 Changes began in the spring of 2001 when the Orange County Museum of Art dropped the reference to California art in its mission statement.  That December, Naomi Vine suddenly died.

 In early 2003 when Dennis Szakacs assumed OCMA’s directorship, I vaguely recall a speech or article promising to continue the museum’s interest in historic California art … but after a number of years.  Instead, in April 2004 our curator Sarah Vure was let go.  In August of 2004 the HCC was told that OCMA would no longer support historic art through exhibitions and staff.   And, in the spring of 2005 Szakacs initiated the breakup of the LAM-OCMA Art Collection Trust.  OCMA’s take-it-or-leave-it offer left OCMA with most of the quintessential historical pieces.  Now 18 of those plein air paintings have been sold off.

 Szakacs in an email to OCMA’s Board of Trustees dated June 24, 2009, defended his sale of the paintings with six major points. 

 1)       He stated the works were not within the museum’s current mission.  This is true.  After many morphings, that mission statement now reads OCMA “enriches the lives of a diverse and changing community through modern and contemporary art” completely obliterating the mission of the old Laguna Art Museum.  Does OCMA only claim to be half the old Laguna Art Museum when it is to its benefit?  Also Szakacs states the Collection Committee felt OCMA’s Impressionist paintings were redundant as such work could be easily viewed at the Irvine Museum and the new Laguna Art Museum.  Coming up with a logical reason to justify what someone has done is only human – murderers do it all the time.  And good touch to put the blame on the Collection Committee.  I have been a member of one and I can tell you, sadly, they primarily rubber stamp curatorial suggestions.   If OCMA didn’t want historic paintings in the first place, why did Szakacs select them from the OCMA/LAM Trust nine months after informing the HCC that OCMA would no longer support its interest in historic California art.  Why deprive the new Laguna Art Museum from owning them? 

2)       Szakacs states OCMA acted ethically as well as legally.  Ethics are subjective and difficult to assess, but if the transaction was so ethical, why the secrecy?

3)       Szakacs claims Laguna Art Museum was given a chance to acquire the works.

Here is Bolton’s answer:

“At a dinner that Mark Bergendahl, a Laguna Art Museum Trustee and

Collections Chair, had with Dennis Szakacs, Dennis tossed out the idea

that Laguna Art Museum trade its Abstract Classicist art--such as works

by John McLaughlin, Lorser Feitelson, Frederick Hammersley, and Karl

Benjamin--for some unspecified "historical" work.  Mark told me about his

vague conversation with Dennis.  I suggested to Mark that the idea of

gutting one part of the Collection to strengthen another would not be in

the Museum's best interest, but that he should ask if Dennis would be

willing to talk about trading duplicate work, having them give the work

back, or lending the work back to Laguna Art Museum on Long Term Loan.

Mark contacted Dennis but before he could talk about these ideas Dennis

told him that OCMA had decided to go in another direction.   

No offer was ever made in any manner (sale, trade, loan, etc.) by OCMA,

formally or informally, to Laguna Art Museum to acquire the 18 works”. 

Did OCMA’s director opt for an easy-out solution – one quick sale?

4)       Szakacs claims the works were NOT sold below value.  Your editor took the works one by one and with a VERY critical eye looked at them just as merchandise in an auction and at today’s prices.  Many of you will be frustrated at me for the values that I have come up with.  The prices were determined from auction records on askart.com.

a.        Dana Bartlett, Eucalyptus, c. 1920, o/c, 29 x 19 in.  Classic, early, decorative.  c. $20-25,000.

b.       William A. Griffith, Gnarled Oaks, c. 1920, o/c, 25 x 30 in.  Historically important painting to the old LAM but difficult, up-close subject for average collector.  Value $16,000-30,000.

c.        Anna Althea Hills, Golden Hillside – Hemet, Ca., 1920, o/panel, 20 x 24 ½ in.  Nice, palette knife picture.  $25-30,000.

d.       Anna Althea Hills, Lure of the Road, 1916, o/c, 24 x 32 in.  Uninteresting subject.  $15,000.

e.        Edgar Alwyn Payne, Sierra Slopes, c. 1925, o/c, 34 x 34 in.  Large but weak and late.  $50-70,000.

f.         Edgar Alwyn Payne, Untitled (Seascape), c. 1920, o/c, 18 x 24 in.  Lesser subject but excellent brushwork.   $20-30,000.

g.       Granville Redmond, Golden Skies, c. 1900, o/c, 20 x 26 in.  Tonalist work.  $30,000.

h.       Granville Redmond, Silver and Gold, c. 1918,o/c, 30 x 40 in.  Sea view not as desirable as mountains but large size.  $250,000.

i.         Marion Kavanagh Wachtel, High Sierra, c. 1915, o/c, 26 x 30 in.  Date probably early 1920s.  Oil not her best medium.  $30-50,000.

j.         William Wendt, Spring in the Canyon, 1929, o/c, 50 x 60 in.  Size and date = $150-$170,000 in today’s market.

These ten paintings lent to the Nevada Museum of Art in Reno total $695,000.  Are the eight other works worth $300,000?  (One is Clarence Hinkle’s Woman in a Hammock, which is a top example of this artist.)  Much of the real value of these works to the new LAM is their historic significance to the old LAM as some of the earliest paintings to come into the collection and given by historic artists.

Of course the real question is -- WHY did OCMA choose to sell art in a recession when prices are half of normal?

         5)  Szakacs states the artworks were sold to a private collector rather than at auction in order to       keep the art in the local community and available for loan to local museums. 

According to the American Association of Museum Director’s Guidebook, sale of museum works should be either through 1) publicly advertised auction, 2) to another public institution, or 3) to a reputable, established dealer.  (Auction is preferred because the open bidding process is completely arm’s length.)  Is Szakacs suggesting local collectors aren’t the biggest market for such work and don’t buy at auction?  Borrowing works for exhibit will, of course, be difficult as the buyer prefers to remain anonymous.

6)       Szakacs states funds from the deaccession have not been short circuited to operating purposes but will be used to purchase modern and contemporary art works for the museum’s permanent collection.  Most museums try to buy like for like, and using money derived from Impressionist works to buy modern and contemporary items probably would not excite the donors, if they were alive.

 What is going to happen to the rest of the pre-1930 artworks that OCMA selected from the OCMA-LAM Trust?  I have a personal interest in this because OCMA kept a Paul DeLongpre (dated 1900) and an Albert Jenks still life (dated 1890) that I gave to the original LAM.  These are prime examples of their artists.  My call to OCMA’s registrar informed me that there is no plan to sell such works at the moment.  Why?  Because such works don’t bring the fabulous prices of Impressionist works or because I, the donor, am alive and might object?  And what will happen to the Guy Rose painting that OCMA owns?

 Donors like to believe in the institution they give money or paintings to.  A director is a symbol of that institution.  My personal encounters with Szakacs have been less than satisfactory.  In 2004, when I discovered that approximately $20,000 I had given to the old Laguna Art Museum for the purchase of library books, had disappeared in the first few years of OCMA, my first reaction was to ask that these monies be returned to their specified purpose.  While the poor accounting and change of accountants in OCMA’s natal years was said to be the culprit, Szakacs just brushed me off until I wrote to each of the Board of Trustees asking for restitution.  My token redress was having my name added to the list of funders for a survey exhibition.  At a later time, after the separation of the OCMA-LAM Trust, I visited a show at OCMA and found a painting I had donated to the old LAM bore the label credit: Orange County Museum of Art without the expected addition of credit to the donor.  Other wall labels read the same.  I said nothing at the time, but wondered at the museum’s naiveté or tremendous ego to ignore donors so cavalierly.  (The OCMA registrar informs me labels now read per museum standards.)

 Much of this hullabaloo could have been avoided if the transaction hadn’t been kept secret.  Why was it?  Transparency would have told us if OCMA took all cash or accepted part trade.  And, readers of the LA Times responding to the June 14 article have questions about the sales tax.  Did OCMA collect the nearly $100,000. at the time of the purchase or defer it because the “local collector’s” artworks were delivered to an out-of-state address.  (According to the LA Times article of June 14, the Nevada Museum of Art Director David Walker was approached in late February by the purchaser about taking the show.  The sale took place in late March.)  If the works are to be kept out of state, then how did OCMA “keep them in the local community”?  And, what prompted the Nevada Museum of Art to take a spur-of-the-moment show?  Most museums are booked months in advance.

 What about the future?  Louis Rohl, President of LAM’s Board of Trustees, writes “Going forward, our official position with OCMA is that we are interested in the remaining pieces that were acquired during the demerger negotiations of 1996, and if any further deaccessions are planned, to first contact us before offering these works for sale on the open market.”

 Also, Rohl adds, “To the still yet-to-be-identified purchaser of the 18 works, we would like him or her to be aware of our still-passionate interest in acquiring, or accepting as a donation, these fine examples of the early California plein air movement… [The Laguna Art Museum] take[s] the storage and care of our permanent collection … seriously…. Planned for this Fall is an exhibition showcasing works from our permanent collection.” 

 I’m certain we all look forward to learning the true facts. 

 EDENHURST OPENS LAGUNA GALLERY

It takes really farsighted individuals to open an art gallery in the midst of a recession, but Thom Gianetto, Dan Nicodemo and Don Merrill of Edenhurst Gallery in Palm Desert have never waited to follow a trend.  By October they will open their new approximately 1500 square foot gallery at 305 North Coast Highway (just 150 feet north of the Laguna Art Museum).  Consummate optimists, they believe in the enduring quality of fine California and American art, and they are excited about bringing their mark of excellence to the city of Laguna Beach.

Thom's family seems to have been blessed with more than its share of artistically inclined children.  Perhaps one can look to genetics, as for generations a branch of the family in Sicily has run art schools and excelled in the making of ceramics in their own factories at St. Steven on the north coast.  A great, great grandfather, Niccolo` Zingarelli, was Napoleon's court musician and head choirmaster of the Sistine Chapel in Rome, and his first operas, Montezuma (1781) and Antigone (c. 1790) debuted in Paris during the French Revolution.  He also is credited with authoring the modern Italian dictionary.  It is no wonder Thom's child prodigy older brother Robert's musical abilities led to his becoming the youngest member of the U. S. Marine Corps band at the age of eleven. 

Thom and his identical twin, Lawrence, showed exceptional artistic abilities by the first grade.  The nuns at St. Ann's, in the quiet town of Emmaus, Pennsylvania provided a nurturing environment with a generous inclusion of music and art programs.  Thom vividly recalls classroom studies that imbued in them images of works by Old Master and Renaissance greats Vermeer, Durer, Giotto, Raphael, Caravaggio and DaVinci among many others.  Their teachers also recognized the twins' own artistic abilities and asked them to make classroom decorations for special occasions and holidays, such as Thanksgiving and Christmas, and to illustrate classroom projects, such as the study of Chaucer and Shakespeare.  The twins' images in pencil, watercolor and poster paints were pinned to the bulletin board or taped to the wall, sometimes covering the classroom.  Always creatively energized, they preferred making art to taking recesses, and they worked devotedly to keep the classrooms well furnished with colorful and didactic images that related to the current curriculum.  In high school they took all of the offered art courses.  At home, their parents, Rose and Robert, also sympathetic to their sons' tastes, and eager to encourage their interests, took them to museums (such as the Allentown (Pennsylvania) Art Museum), to cultural events, and to antique shops.    

When the twins were twelve years of age, a relative gave them oil paints and brushes.  Scenic images in National Geographic Magazine inspired the boys to paint a floor-to-ceiling mural of Virginia's Shenandoah National Park in a large corridor to their bedroom.  They also created landscapes on sometimes very large canvases and by the age of thirteen exhibited their paintings in an open-air art show in Easton, Pennsylvania. (Thom still owns some of his paintings from this period.)  By age seventeen Thom’s preferred medium was watercolor and his style reminiscent of Percy Gray. 

Still at thirteen, pursuing their keen interest to learn the keyboard, the twins, unbeknownst to their parents, used their own savings to buy a baby grand piano -- Thom vividly remembers it was bright yellow -- at a church sale and taught themselves to play, using skills learned at school in music class to read notes and interpret scores.  Within the next several months Thomas and Lawrence could play from memory with the verve, passion and skill of any seasoned professional.  Larry's dauntless proclivity for any great challenge led him to Chopin's most difficult Polonaises and to an incredibly precocious and dynamic rendition of "Slaughter on Tenth Avenue", while Thom's preference for turn-of-the-century opera and popular music provided a counterpoint to his brother's.  Their virtuosity brought many friends, neighbors and relatives to their art and music "salons".  

At age seventeen, in their senior year of high school, the boys came to California to live with their father, who was helping to build the 1969 lunar landing module.  Entering UCLA in 1970 with honors, they majored in literature with minors in art history and anthropology.  Their high grades and exceptional abilities earned them a scholarship for two year's (1972 to 1974) study at both the University of Padua and as independents - in Italian language, literature and art.  Most of their art classes were taken at the Accademia delle Belle Arti in nearby Venice.  Subjects ranged from Old Master painting through Baroque, Mannerism, Rococo and early nineteenth century art.  In literature they studied writers such as Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio and Manzoni.  Living in Italy allowed them to learn Italian fluently and to reconnect with relatives in Switzerland, Sicily, Rome and the Abruzzi.  (Thom's grandfathers immigrated to America in 1899 and 1900 and grandmothers in 1912, all from Italy.) 

Many of Thom’s relatives proved to be in the film industry.  Cousin Fernaldo Di Giammatteo was an important film critic and scholar, whose many books on American cinema and film noir, most notably on Alfred Hitchcock and other American directors, can be found in any film library.  As vice president alongside Roberto Rossellini's presidency at Cinecitta` (the 20th Century Fox of Italy), the twins were able to meet many of the major Italian directors including Vincente Minnelli, Bernardo Bertolucci, and Carlo de Palma, who requested their participation in several films as well as television programs. With a personal letter of introduction to Federico Fellini, they were invited to act in Fellini's Amarcord (I Remember).  Returning to America in 1974, they continued their studies at UCLA, and in 1975, they graduated with high honors. 

Entrepreneurship was a natural for these self-directed men.  In the 1970s, the real estate market was on the rise, and the twins turned building skills inherited from their father and their love of historic preservation to buying, restoring and reselling homes of the 1920s and 1950s.  Between 1978, when they formed Domus Interiors, until 1995 four homes were completed in the Los Angeles area.  The boys also bought newer investment properties for rental purposes as another means of income.
 
In 1985 Thom and Larry's interest in fine art returned to the forefront when an acquaintance introduced them to California painting.  They gave themselves a crash course utilizing the few books then published on the subject including Ruth Westphal's Plein Air Painters of California: the Southland.  It was good friend, Marty Turk, who introduced them to magazines such as Fine Art & Antiques and Art of California, and who along with best friend and mentor, Dr. Gary Faltico, encouraged them in their new endeavor.  On their rounds of the antique shops looking for architectural items, they kept an eye out for artwork.  Acquisitions led them to research information and auction records at the Beverly Hills Library and elsewhere.  The first painting of significance that they acquired was by Granville Redmond.  As they began to sell works privately or through consignment, they learned to appreciate the restoration and reframing process.  Your editor first met Thom in the fall of 1988 to view a William Wendt that he was in the process of acquiring.

Though the art business officially started in 1985, the name "Edenhurst" did not come into play until 1991 when Thom opened a storefront gallery on Edenhurst Avenue in the Glendale area of Los Angeles with Dan Nicodemo, who he had met a year earlier and who had been a dealer in fine art and antiques since the late1960s.  (Sadly, Thom's beloved brother, Larry, passed away in 1987.) 

Dan had studied art and architecture in college and had been a draughtsman in the field of engineering for the State of California Division of Highways.  Always a superb athlete, he had also been winning competitions at Venice Beach for power weight lifting.  A lifetime interest in Japanese culture including Noh Theater and Kabuki developed into his passionate involvement in the art of Aikido, leading to his eventual position as head instructor at the Pasadena Aiki Kai. 

Edenhurst’s third partner, Don Merrill, joined Thom and Dan in 1995 and the three began exhibiting in various shows including the Los Angeles Art Show (FADA - Fine Art Dealers Association) and the Los Angeles Modernism Show in Santa Monica.  Travels took them to venues in Seattle and San Francisco.  They also began to advertise in major art magazines such as Art of California, Fine Art & Antiques, American Art Review, The Magazine Antiques, and many more. *

In 1997, inspired again by Dan's keen business sense and background in design and architecture, the three opened a new and elegant showroom on the southeast corner of Melrose and Almont in West Hollywood, and they officially incorporated under the name Edenhurst Gallery, LLC in 1998.  It was probably about that time that most collectors became aware of the gallery and the significant early California and American plein air paintings in its inventory.  Thom's extensive art background allowed them to make discerning choices.  Both privately and at auction they set record prices to acquire museum quality works.  Word of the gallery also spread through its website, designed in 1997 by Don Merrill, and his nephew, Robert Binns.  (Don brought to the gallery an extensive background in communications and computers.) 

In 1998, Edenhurst Gallery began contributing substantial funds to exhibitions and catalogues on historic California art.  Twice, the Gallery, along with Jeffrey Morseburg of Morseburg Galleries, hosted the Spring Salon of the California Art Club, contributing awards of $10,000 as the Granville Redmond Purchase Prize.  Prestigious judges such as Catherine Leonhard, Wesley Jessup, Amy Scott, Nancy Moure, Debra Solon and others were engaged.  The Gallery’s monetary donations or the donation/lending of artworks have benefited such major institutions as the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Springville Museum of Art (Springville, Utah), the Crocker Museum of Art (Sacramento), the Laguna Art Museum, the Irvine Museum, etc.**

In 2003, Thom, Dan, and Don decided to open a second storefront in the Coachella Valley of Riverside County.  Each had been living part time in Palm Springs and felt the need to bring their gallery to the area.  The best location proved to be the high-end shopping district of El Paseo in Palm Desert.  There, besides continuing to deal in masterpieces, offering fine inventory to both beginners and seasoned collectors, they have developed an interest in paintings of the desert.  Don's and Dan's interest in modern painters, sculptors and photographers has expanded their inventory to Regionalists and Mid-Century Modern artists.  They also have continued to feature the work of several well-known contemporary California plein air painters, most notably Junn Roca and Lynn Gertenbach.  And, they have continued their charitable work with local organizations including the Palm Springs Museum of Art.  More recently, the Gallery served as executive producer for Jayne McKay's film on Maynard Dixon, Art and Spirit which has won several film festival awards, including the Puerto Vallarta Film Festival and the coveted "Spur Award".  In 2006 when the three decided to close their Melrose Avenue location, the Palm Desert venue became their main gallery.  Just this spring they moved this to an expanded and completely remodeled space across El Paseo.

The Gallery continues to regularly participate in major exhibitions such as The San Francisco 20th Century Modernism Show, The Palm Springs Modernism Show, The Los Angeles Fine Art Fair, The Golden California Show, and the Los Angeles Pottery Show.

Thom, Dan and Don’s most recent enterprise, and the spark for this article, is the gallery that the three will open at 305 North Coast Highway in Laguna Beach by October of this year.  Although the building is relatively modern (1950s), they are told that the land was once occupied by the William A. Griffith studio, and next door still stands the home of Anna Hills, albeit in it's new incarnation as a restaurant.  This location brings convenience to collectors from the coastal metropolitan areas who wish to view the extensive Edenhurst inventories. 

Your editor has been pleased to see financial success come to Thom, Dan and Don who, like herself, are driven by strong ideals and a quest for excellence.  Almost daily they stretch to acquire quality works of art.  And, unlike most dealers, one of Thom's greatest pleasures is researching his finds, tracking down a painting's original name or its exhibition record.  For these three, Edenhurst Gallery represents a lifetime of love and devotion. 

Good luck to you Thom, Dan and Don.  We look forward to receiving our invitations to your opening.

 * Additional advertisements in Southwest Art, ArtTalk, Art + Auction, Plein Air, Fine Art Connoisseur, Gallery Guide, Key Magazine, Palm Springs Life, Antiques and Fine Art, Art News, The Antique Trader, The Newtown Bee, Antiques & The Arts Weekly, Fine Art Trader, America's Elite 1000, Architectural Digest, California Art Club Newsletter, California Homes, Art and Living and other fine art and design-based publications.

** Additional contributions were made to The Art Institute of Chicago, the Autry Museum of Western Heritage (Los Angeles), the Bakersfield Museum, the Pasadena Museum of California Art, the Oakland Museum, the Trust for American Museums (Washington, D.C.), the San Jose Museum, the Georgia Museum of Art (for the 1996 Cultural Olympiad), the Palm Springs Museum, The Western Art Council of the Palm Springs Museum, the California Art Club, the Society for the Four Arts (Palm Beach, Florida), the Nevada Museum of Art (Reno), the San Diego Museum of Art, the Huntsville Museum of Art (Huntsville, Alabama), the Memphis Brooks Museum (Memphis, Tennessee), the Pasadena Museum of History, Fenyes Mansion and the Blinn House, (all in Pasadena), the Millard Sheets Center for the Arts at Fairplex, Historic Pomona Fairgrounds, the Heckscher Museum of Art (Huntington, New York), the Birger Sandzen Memorial Gallery (Lindsborg, Kansas), the College Club of Seattle, and the Salmagundi Club (New York).
 

 Do you own a painting by Franz Bischoff or know where some are located?  Bischoff, one of Los Angeles’s first important painters and a long time resident of the Arroyo Seco, will be honored with a one-man-show at the Pasadena Museum of California Art curated by Jean Stern, Executive Director of the Irvine Museum.  Jean asks that anyone who owns or knows of the existence of Franz Bischoff paintings please contact him at the Irvine Museum.  949-476-0294  He is looking for works for the exhibit as well as works that will give him a greater understanding of Bischoff on whom he is writing a biography.  He is particularly eager to find one of Bischoff’s pictures showing cows at a dairy.

 The Hollywood Entertainment Museum, located for ten years on Hollywood Boulevard, recently closed its doors and has morphed into a different and broader concept that hopes to open soon in downtown Los Angeles in a 150,000 square foot space.  It will be called the Los Angeles Museum and will be dedicated to the several creative industries that make Los Angeles what it is and that attract people to this city.  These include Architecture/Interior Design, Art, Entertainment, Fashion, Music, Video Games, Graphic Arts, Culinary Arts, Technology, Industrial Design, Toys, Tourism, and Visual and Performing Arts.  Could this be a new venue for exhibits of historic California art?

 Email announcements from galleries include the following.  CaliforniaWaterColor.com has received new works by Maurice Logan, Louis Macouillard, Jake Lee, Emil Kosa, Jr., Dong Kingman, Hardie Gramatky, Ruth Lotan, Stanley Long, George Akimoto, and Charles Keck.  American Eagle Fine Art has acquired new works by Douglass Parshall, John W. Hilton, Arthur E. Beaumont, George Bickerstaff and lesser knowns John Chetcuti, Cecil Fern Gary, Merlin Hardy and John M. Kelly.  See AmericanEagleFineArt.com.  Kevin E. Stewart, fine art appraiser and private dealer at 2481 North Palm Canyon Drive in Palm Springs sends a postcard listing about 60 California artists in his inventory.  For details, see www.kevinestewart.com.   Edenhurst Gallery has acquired top pieces by Theodore Lukits, Lucretia Van Horn, Maurice Logan, Paul Grimm, Alson Skinner Clark, Frederick Penney, Robert Frame, Duncan Gleason, and Joseph Kleitsch.

 November 7, 2009.  Palette to Palate Soiree, Katherine Norris Fine Art, Newport Beach.  View the gallery’s expanded inventory of watercolor paintings while enjoying refreshments.  Jewelry will also be on sale.  A portion of proceeds goes to Hospice.

 Karges Fine Art has instituted a virtual tour of the Carmel gallery led by its director, Patrick Kraft.  To view this on your computer, please call the gallery and get the link.  It was in an email but I can’t access it via the gallery’s main website.  In it Patrick strolls through the gallery, pausing at various paintings to discuss them.  Karges’ recent announcements list acquisitions by William Clapp, William Otte, Millard Sheets, William Wendt and Charles Rollo Peters.  Also Edgar Payne, Hanson Puthuff, Franz Bischoff, and Granville Redmond.  See www.kargesfineart.com. 

 Jan Holloway is seeking to purchase San Francisco art of the 1930s: paintings, original prints, drawings, and sculpture as well as ephemera from the Golden Gate International Exposition of 1939 - 1940.  Contact her at Jan Holloway, 550 Davis St., # 12, San Francisco, Ca. 94111.  Email jmholl@mac.com. 

 The Maynard Parker (1901-1976) collection of architectural and garden photography owned by the Huntington Library in San Marino has now been put on line.  It is accessible through www.huntington.org.  Parker arrived in Southern California from Vermont in 1923 and permanently settled in the Echo Park neighborhood of Los Angeles with his wife Annie in 1929.  He established Maynard L. Parker Fine Photographs in 1938.  His views of homes and gardens from all areas of the United States that appeared in national magazines are “often characterized by dramatic camera angles and lighting.  He used a wide-angle lens to heighten a location’s salient features, and he fearlessly scaled rooftops to achieve the optimum vantage point” (from the website.)  Maynard’s photos document home and garden design during America’s mid-century modern era.

 On Saturday September 26, the Historical Art Council of the Laguna Art Museum will take a “walk-about” of Laguna Beach searching for hidden gems.  Since the venues are physically small, attendees (limited to 36) will be broken into three groups and each will start at one of the three sites.  Ken and Jan Kaplan’s collection (mostly watercolors in Ken’s legal offices) focuses on California School artists from the 1930s to the 1960s.  Dentist Mark Judy collects California Impressionism including works by Granville Redmond, Anna Hills, Clarence Hinkle, Frank Coburn and others.   At the Festival of Arts offices the group will view its permanent collection of paintings by early area artists.  And at the offices of the City of Laguna Beach, the town’s Cultural Arts Manager Sian Poeschl will discuss the village’s little-known art collection.  Lunch will be at the Lumberyard.  Reservations can be made by contacting Dawn Minegar, LAM membership manager at 949-494-8971 x 203.  $35/HAC members and $50/non-members.  The HAC plans upcoming trips to the collections of Michael Brickman and Dwight Stuart.

 The Josh Hardy Galleries Quarterly for August 2009 (v. 1, issue 2) features an essay on a Franz Bischoff marinescape titled “Point Lobos”.  Page 3 contains 30 thumbnail photos of inventory.

 The Ruth Chandler Williamson Gallery at Scripps College in Claremont has recently been given an untitled watercolor by Milford Zornes that depicts an Irish landscape.  The gallery has also completed the electronic cataloging of 94% of its 8,500 objects.  These are accessible on http://web-kiosk-scrippscollege.edu/kiosk/mainmenu.htm.

 The Bodega Bay Heritage Gallery continues to hold interesting special exhibits and to include important information on its website.  The current show, running through August, features famous painters of early Northern California.  The Fall show will feature paintings by those artists associated with the movie industry including Disney artists Joshua Meador, Bennett Bradbury, and Ralph Hulett as well as Jan Domela and Phil Dike.  (This exhibit will be presented in celebration of the upcoming opening of the new Disney Museum in The Presidio, San Francisco.)    The gallery has also added a rack of vintage prints by such desert artists as Clyde Forsythe, John W. Hilton, and Jimmy Swinnerton.

 The Bowers Museum’s California Arts Council plans to make a field trip to the Irvine Museum on October 31.

 Spencer Jon Helfen’s second email Newsletter (July 11, 2009) announces new inventory by artists such as Alexander Canedo, Pele DeLappe, Erle Loran, Elmer Plummer and Edna Reindel.

 The Thunderbird Foundation for the arts is actively seeking paintings by Maynard Dixon to be included in a major showing of Dixon’s work at the Maynard Dixon Home & Studio in Mt. Carmel, Utah.  (Paintings by Edith Hamlin and Milford Zornes may also be considered.)   Please contact www.maynarddixon.com.

 The California State Library Foundation recently received over 200 vintage photographs of Ventura, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo Counties, a gift of bibliographer Dennis Kruska.  (Nineteenth century photographs from these areas are extremely rare.)  The library also received a large oil by Maynard Dixon gift of Marcia and Robin Williams of San Francisco and a rare Daguerreotype of Benicia at the time it was California’s state capitol, from Stephen Anaya of Santa Monica.  With funds from Mead B. Kibbey and Robert Gordon the Library purchased a Daguerreotype of Theodore D. Judah, famed engineer who surveyed the route of the Central Pacific Railroad over the Sierra Nevada. 

 The California State Library owns many paintings of California dated from the 1840s to the 1930s.  These include scenes of Gold Rush era towns, portraits of historic figures, and landscapes of Southern California and the deserts.  Recently, taking advantage of the closure of the library building for restoration, Mr. Jesse Bravo photographed the collection digitally, the project funded by the California State Library Foundation.   The paintings were then transferred to the Library’s facility at 900 N Street, Sacramento where many will be hung in the California History Room.  The 48-bit depth digital files will be catalogued and loaded onto the Library’s server and will ultimately be viewable on the web.  Still to be captured on disk are the Maynard Dixon murals in Gillis Hall and the Frank Van Sloan murals in the World War I Memorial Vestibule. 

 Three new Frank Coburn paintings belonging to the Bowers Museum in Santa Ana have been conserved with money from the Museum’s California Arts Council (formerly the Plein Air Council).  City of Mexico shows that Coburn, like many of his fellow artists of the 1920s and 1930s, traveled to our exotic and colorful southern neighbor for subject matter.  Willow Bird and Waiting for the Bull an image of a Native American and a Spanish man respectively suggest Coburn followed 1930s trends to use ethnic types as subjects.

 The Crocker Art Museum now has more than 500 items from its permanent collection on line.  The groupings having most interest to HCC members would be “American and California Art: 19^th Century 1848-1900” and “American and California Art, 20^th Century, 1900-1945”.  To view these, see www.crockerartmuseum.org/exhibitions/digital.htm.

 In October 2009, the new Walt Disney Family Museum will open in San Francisco’s Presidio.  There is a lot of misinformation circulating about Walt Disney, and some people aren’t aware he was a real person.  However the new Disney museum, according to daughter Diane, is to help “people to understand his character and how he pursued his career” and also to have fun.  The $112 million dollar museum is housed at the San Francisco Presidio in a refurbished army barracks at 104 Montgomery Street.  On two floors there are ten galleries that trace Disney’s life chronologically.  After his birth in Chicago in 1901 he grew up on a Kansas farm where he discovered animation and amusement parks.  A high school dropout, he apprenticed to a commercial artist who used a primitive camera to create his first hand-drawn films, which he called “Laugh-O-Grams.”  In 1923 Disney moved to Hollywood and first gained fame for his 1928 creation Mickey Mouse.  Through the 1930s he used Technicolor, a new process, in his animation and he developed “personality animation” in which figures’ movements are minutely engineered to express their character.  During World War II Disney turned to making military service films and propaganda.  In the post war era he produced animated movies like “Lady and the Tramp” and live-action films like “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea”.  His 32 Oscars are more than those earned by any other person.  Behind the barracks stands a two-story steel and glass pavilion which explores Disney’s visions for a utopian community called EPCOT and contains a detailed model of Disneyland.  High tech interactive displays make the museum “fun”.  Three dimensional items include a “Model T Ford ambulance like the one Disney drove for the Red Cross during World War I, a two-story multi-plane camera he designed to give his animated films more depth, and the miniature train he built that presaged later rides at Disney theme parks.”  (extracted from an article by Seth Rosenfeld in the San Francisco Chronicle) 

 Sam Maloof  (January 24, 1916 – May 21, 2009).  Although Sam Maloof’s hand-crafted furniture is more spiritually related to mid-century modern than to plein air painting, all we collectors know about him either through visits to his Alta Loma, California home/studio or by viewing exhibits or books on his work.  Some of us even own works by him.  Maloof, who always referred to himself as a simple woodworker, as opposed to a designer or artist, was born in Chino of Lebanese immigrant parents.  By the mid 1930s, after graduation from high school, he began making a living through art: making signs, drawing cartoons and designing industrial objects.  After service in WWII, he worked as an assistant to Millard Sheets at Scripps College in Claremont, a rich artistic environment, and it was there he met his wife Alfreda, an ex-Navy WAVE who was interested in Native American art.  Furniture making grew out of the newlyweds’ need for furnishings for their small house, but Maloof didn’t officially start a business for it until 1949 when he quit working for Sheets.  Maloof decried machine-made furniture and wanted his works to contain spirit, to fit the body, and to feel beautiful to the touch.  No nails or metal hardware were used.  Even hinges were of wood.  Many people responded to the sculpted designs and the more who saw the objects in magazine articles, displays, shows and books liked them.  After 20 years he began to make a profit.  Part of Maloof’s charm was his love of people and his generosity.  He leaves the Sam and Alfreda Maloof Foundation for Arts and Crafts; its website is malooffoundation.org.  On it you can view Maloof’s hand crafted house, its gardens, the permanent collection, the exhibits the foundation curates, etc.

 Robert Fisher  ( - August 2, 2009)  Bob Fisher is best known to people who were active in the world of historic California art before the mid 1980s.  Among other things, he owned a very early European period painting by John Gamble that showed the artist’s excellent promise, and he unearthed many American and California paintings which he either sold privately or passed on to brick-and-mortar dealers.  For the past twenty years or so he has been active in Westlake and Montecito where he has enjoyed his senior years with long-time friend Sybil Rosen.  His demise was triggered by a simple infection magnified by a hospital stay.  Those of us who knew him knew a kind and gentle person. 

 Julius Shulman (1910-2009).  Legendary architectural photographer Shulman passed away July 15 at the age of 98.  In the last few years he has enjoyed many exhibits of his work, and many of his photos are retained in museum collections and archives. 

Permanent displays of historic (pre-1945) California paintings can be found at many California institutions.  These are listed on www:CaliforniaArt.com in the “Galleries” section (scroll down to Museums).  Several institutions have already put their permanent collections (including California works) on-line.

 (See earlier Newsletters for exhibits that might still be on view.)

February 19 – August 15, 2009.  Hobos to Street People: Artists’ Responses to Homelessness from the New Deal to the Present, California Historical Society, San Francisco.   Celebrates the 75^th anniversary of The New Deal.  The 42 artworks in this show deal with California themes and are by more than 30 artists identified wholly with California or who have worked in the state.  Here are a few quotes from a very perceptive review by Jean Schiffman in the San Francisco Arts Monthly of February 2009.  “The differences between then and now in the way artists reflect society’s and the government’s attitude toward the poor are striking.”  In the Depression the artists themselves were often from the ranks of the disenfranchised and, supported by government programs, portrayed their poverty-stricken brothers and sisters as noble and suffering.  Now, such subjects are painted by socially conscious artists, not under government auspices, but wanting to make visible those social ills that cause homelessness, such as mental illness, drug addiction, alcohol abuse, lack of low-cost housing, lack of government programs to protect the disenfranchised, etc.  Contemporary artists show solidarity with these victims of society, advertise their situation, and call for action from society to alleviate it.  Artists of both eras were storytellers, deliverers of messages, but today’s sophisticated artists see themselves not as Depression-era lowbrows but as politically engaged champions of the underdog.

 March 14, 2009 - early 2010.  American Masterpieces: Artistic Legacy of California Indian Basketry, California Museum, Sacramento.  Over 80 California Indian baskets from the vast collection owned by the California State Parks.  Many have never before been seen.  The exhibit shows the evolution of California’s basket tradition over 5000 years to its culmination at the turn of the 20^th century when baskets were collected as art objects by tourists and museums.  In California, basketry was arguably the Native Americans’ greatest art form.

 May 20 – August 29, 2009.  Film Production in Los Angeles 1909-1914: Movies! Moguls! Monkeys! and Murder!, Foyer of the Linwood Dunn Theater under the auspices of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.  Rare photographs, promotional materials and posters will illuminate activities of studios such as Selig during the pioneer era of LA film production.

 May 30 – September 20, 2009.  Taking Flight: WWI and WWII Aviation Posters, San Diego Historical Society.  While only a few of these posters were probably designed in California, what is significant is that another caring couple has decided to start their own museum in California for a subject that interests them.  Bill and Claudia Allen have lent these posters from the Allen Airways Flying Museum, that resides in a hangar at Gillespie Field in El Cajon, about 20 miles east of downtown San Diego.  The museum already has over 10,000 artifacts, gathered over fifty years and consisting of entire airplanes down to books autographed by Charles Lindbergh and Amelia Earhart.  At the moment the museum is open by invitation only as the display space is being designed.

 June 19 – August 31, 2009.  Old Locals & a Few (Other) Notables, Bodega Bay Heritage Gallery.  The following artists were in this show, and the website (www.bbhgallery.com) contains thumbnail photos and biographies.  Included were William Weaver Armstrong, Harry Cassie Best, Alphonso Herman Broad, John Appleton Brown, Alice Brown Chittenden, Gordon Coutts, Alice Hunt Curtis, Carl Dahlgren, Richard DeTreville, Horace Wolfe Duesbury, Henrietta Riddell Fish, Hugo Anton Fisher, Charles S. Graham, Andrew J. Granville, Grace Myrtle Allison Griffith, Nels Hagerup, Elizabeth Hoen, Ransome Gillet Holdredge, Carl Jonnevold, Frederick Stymetz Lamb, Lorenzo P. Latimer, Gustave Liljestrom, Nellie Moody, William Ritschel, Benigino Yamero Ruiz, Marius Schmidt, Meyer Straus, James Everett Stuart, Manuel Valencia, Napoleon Vallejo, George Weeden, Jack Wisby.

 June 20 – August 1, 2009.  Small Gems, George Stern Fine Arts, West Los Angeles.  The two-fold brochure reproduces in color 14 works by artists such as Clarence Hinkle, Alfred Mitchell, Granville Redmond, Colin Campbell Cooper and S. C. Yuan.

 June 26 – November 2, 2009.  Sweets & Treats: Wayne Thiebaud in the Collection of the Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena.  The Norton Simon Museum continues to accept donations of post 1950s artwork and among this grouping are a number of works by California artists.  These black and white prints, so opposite of Thiebaud’s more famous heavily textured and highly colorful paintings, still contain his basic challenge to the viewer -- to contemplate the real meaning of common objects such as slices of pie, etc.  (see also the Thiebaud exhibit at the Pasadena Museum of California Art, below)

 July 2 – September 27, 2009.  By the Sea, Sullivan Goss Gallery, Santa Barbara.  Although the sea is a prevalent theme in California, few historic artists painted depictions of it.  Historic California artists in this show include Anders Aldrin, Lockwood De Forest, Clarence Hinkle, Ben Messick, and Douglass Parshall. 

 July 3 – August 16, 2009.  Snoopy as the World War I Flying Ace, Museum of History and Art, Ontario.  Organized by the Charles M. Schulz Museum in Santa Rosa.  This show features images of Snoopy flying his doghouse-turned-into-a-Sopwith-Camel airplane battling his arch enemy, the Red Baron.

 July 3 – October 11, 2009.  Edwin Deakin: California Painter of the Picturesque, Sonoma County Museum, Santa Rosa.   This show traveled from the Crocker Museum in Sacramento where it was curated by Scott Shields and was first shown.  See earlier Newsletters for details.

 July 8 – September 13, 2009.  Sardi’s to Orange Julius: Los Angeles Restaurants from the Architecture & Design Collection, University Art Museum, University of California, Santa Barbara.  Unique drawings, vintage photographs and ephemera chronicle the design of eight Los Angeles restaurants by Davidson, Schindler, Weber, Killingsworth and Lyndon.  Restaurants include Nikabob, Hi-Hat, Sardi’s and Lindy’s as well as the chain restaurants Orange Julius and Yummer’s.

 July 11 – November 8, 2009.  Edward S. Curtis Refocused, Grace Hudson Museum, Ukiah.  Curtis, devoted to taking documentary photographs of the Native Americans before they were irrevocably changed by contact with Euro-American society, visited more than 80 tribes.  He also wrote about their languages and oral histories, recorded songs, and, toward the end of his career, made motion pictures of dances and ceremonies.  Many of his 40,000 photos were published in his 20-volume epic “The North American Indian”.   While Curtis was in Ukiah in 1923 recording the Pomo culture, he stayed with John and Grace Hudson.   (John collected ethnographic materials and Grace painted images of the Pomo.)  “Curtis arrived in the summertime, when many Pomo people were scattered abut the countryside working, so John Hudson took him around the county and introduced him to key people and families and allowed Curtis to use the Hudson’s basket collection in his photographs.”  (from the website)  While this show travels from the San Diego Museum of Man, which organized it, it will be supplemented at the Ukiah venue by Curtis photogravures of the Pomo owned by the Sun House Guild and by Pomo artifacts collected by John Hudson.

 July 12 – September 2009.  Bohemian Rendezvous, Christopher Queen Galleries, Duncans Mills, Ca.   Nineteenth annual exhibit of paintings by members of San Francisco’s Bohemian Club.

 July 18 – December 27, 2009 and September 12 – December 20, 2009.  Parts I and II of California Calling: Works from Santa Barbara Collections, 1948-2008, Santa Barbara Museum of Art.  While most of these works post date our interest, it is always informative to view survey exhibitions for what they tell us of artistic trends.  Also, all these pieces are from the Museum’s permanent collection and many have not been on view for years.

 July 18, 2009 – January 10, 2010.  Once Upon a Dream: The Art of Sleeping Beauty, Cartoon Art Museum, San Francisco.  Celebrates the 50^th anniversary of the release of the classic Disney animated feature by showing its artwork from pencil sketches and model sheets to animation cels, color guides, etc. Almost ten years in the making, the final aesthetic is a blend of medieval illustrations and 1950s graphic design.  “Artist Eyvind Earle, who supervised the film’s look and hand-painted most of the dozens of lavish backgrounds, gave the film its unique blend of lush detail and bold, stylized designs.  Disney production designer Ken Anderson developed these elements into a visually arresting feature, much of it animated by members of the Nine Old Men, Walt Disney’s most trusted cadre of animators.  Sleeping Beauty was the last Disney film to use fully hand-inked animation cels and one of only two ever filmed in 70mm widescreen.  … This exhibition also includes a spotlight on Disney artist/illustrator Ron Dias, whose first professional job in the animation industry was as an in-betweener to clean-up animator on Sleeping Beauty.  Dias went on to become one of the most highly regarded and sought after background artists and color stylists in the business.   The Cartoon Art Museum will feature a selection of his background paintings and color concepts from The Secret of Nimh, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, and The Little Mermaid.”  (from the website)

 July 19 – September 27, 2009.  Barthe: His Life in Art, The Museum of African American Art (3^rd floor of Macy’s at the Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Mall, Los Angeles).   The exhibit features 30 sculptures by this historically early Black sculptor most of whose work was accomplished in New York during the Harlem Renaissance but who died in Pasadena in 1989.

 July 21 – September 3, 2009.  Summer Selections, Spanierman Gallery, New York.  All works priced under $25,000.  Included are artists who worked in California including Eugene Berman, Edward Borein, Alson Skinner Clark, Colin Campbell Cooper, Frank Vincent DuMond, Fletcher Martin, Peter Moran, Ogden Pleissner, James Everett Stuart, Theodore Wores, and William Zorach.

 July 25 – October 11, 2009.  Carleton Watkins: Yosemite Photographs, Nevada Art Museum, Reno.  “This small exhibition features views of Yosemite icons such as Half Dome, Yosemite Valley, the Merced River, and the redwood tree nicknamed Grizzly Giant.”  (from the website)

 July 25 – November 30, 2009.  The Language of Lines: How Cartoonists Create Characters, Schulz Museum, Santa Rosa.  “the second in a trilogy exploring the foundations of cartooning, this exhibit explores iconic characters, cartoon heroes and villains, and dynamic duos.”  One section features the four iconic characters of the Peanuts strips -- Charlie Brown, Lucy, Linus and Snoopy – and how they evolved over their 50-year history.

 August 6 – November 1, 2009.  Richard Haines Endurance, Sullivan Goss, Santa Barbara.  Haines, who arrived in California in 1941 is one of the state’s better known post-World War II artists who merged realism with abstraction.  From 1946 to 1954 he taught at Chouinard Art Institute and following its closing, taught for twenty years at Otis Art Institute.  The major Los Angeles gallery, Dalzell Hatfield, was his dealer.  Sullivan Goss has held several shows focusing on various aspects of Haines’ estate.  This is the first to expose a group of lithographs printed by the famous Lynton Kistler.  Also in the show are twelve murals designed under Depression-era art programs.  

 August 9 – September 20, 2009.  California in Relief: A History in Wood and Linocut Prints, Hearst Art Gallery, Mt. Saint Mary’s College, Moraga.  Includes nearly 100 works spanning nearly a century.  Guest curator Art Hazelwood has divided the prints into “eight areas of focus: the Arts and Crafts movement; the Labor School; Wood engraving; Asian influence; Abstraction; the GI Bill and the establishment of the university print department; Latino art; and Fine press print publishers.”  (from the website)  Media varies from woodcuts to wood engravings, linocuts and artists’ books.  Artists include Gustave Baumann, Helen Hyde, Bertha Lum, Chiura Obata, Emmy Lou Packard, and William Wolff.  A complete checklist, with color images, is available in the Gallery.

 August 20 – November 14, 2009.  Masters of the California School: Rex Brandt – Phil Dike – Millard Sheets – From the E. Gene Crain Collection, Maloof Foundation, Alta Loma.  Brandt, Dike and Sheets are the three most prominent artists of the California School of watercolor painting but they were equally talented at oil painting, both of which media are included in this exhibit.

September/October 2009.  Joshua Meador and Selected Artists of California’s Film Industry, Bodega Bay Heritage Gallery.  As we all know, many artists who earned their livings in the motion picture industry, created fine art in their off hours.  In this show, besides Meador, are Jon Blanchette (Fox), Bennett Bradbury (Disney), Phil Dike (Disney), Jan Domela (Paramount), Ralph Hulett (Disney), Charles F. Keck (Columbia), Orpha Mae Klinker, Harold Landaker (MGM) and Charles Wesley Nicholson (freelance). 

 September 12, 2009 – January 9, 2010.  Harrison McIntosh: A Timeless Legacy, American Museum of Ceramic Art, Pomona, Ca.  Opens on McIntosh’s 95^th birthday.  In the middle years of the twentieth century, a category of ceramists termed “studio ceramists” produced finely thrown vessels emphasizing craftsmanship, beautiful shapes, perfect proportions and subtle glazes and decoration.  (This distinguished them from the parallel abstract expressionist potters inspired by Peter Voulkos.)  Among these was McIntosh who learned his craft from other legendary WWII era ceramists such as Glen Lukens, Marguerite Wildenhain and Richard Petterson.    For years McIntosh maintained a studio in Claremont along with fellow potter Rupert Deese.  Accompanied by a major catalogue.  (See “Books” below.)

 October 4, 2009 – January 31, 2010.  Behold the Day: The Color Block Prints of Frances Gearhart, Pasadena Museum of California Art.  First retrospective of this important Southern California color block print artist.

 October 4, 2009 – January 31, 2010.  Wayne Thiebaud: 70 Years of Painting, Pasadena Museum of California Art.  A survey of more than 100 works.   It is interesting to compare the texture and color of the paintings in this show with the black and white prints by Thiebaud on view at the Norton Simon Museum.

 October 14, 2009 – February 15, 2010.  Peanuts Cooks, Charles Schulz Museum, Santa Rosa.   Features 20 Peanuts comic strips on the theme of cooking and food.

 October 17, 2009 – February 22, 2010.  The Color Explosion: Nineteenth Century American Lithography from the Jay T. Last Collection, Huntington Library and Art Gallery, San Marino.  Last, who co-authored several books with Gordon McClelland, gave his extensive collection of nineteenth-century American lithography to the Huntington.  200 examples of this medium, invented by Alois Senefelder in the 1790s, will be on view in the Boone Gallery.  They include advertising posters, art prints, calendars, certificates, children’s books, color plate illustrations, historical views, product labels, sales catalogues, sheet music, toys & games, and trade cards.

 October 24, 2009 – January 4, 2010.  Central Avenue and Beyond: The Harlem Renaissance in Los Angeles, Huntington Library and Gardens, San Marino, Library, West Hall.  Although the term Harlem Renaissance refers to the important Black cultural movement in New York in the 1920s and 1930, it is borrowed to cover this show which focuses on the extraordinary artistic, cultural and intellectual expressions and accomplishments of African Americans in Los Angeles, on Central Avenue and beyond, in the 1920s and 1930s.  The show will include material from both The Huntington Library and the Mayme A. Clayton Library, a new cultural and educational institution founded by Avery Clayton to house and make available his mother’s extraordinary collection of African Americana gathered during her forty-year career as a librarian in Los Angeles.  (from the website)

 October 24, 2009 – May 30, 2010.  Hollywood Chinese: The Arthur Dong Collection, Chinese American Museum, Los Angeles.   Posters, lobby cards, stills and scripts dating from 1916 to the present document the activities of Chinese Americans in Hollywood’s film industry as actors, graphic artists, and filmmakers.  The works come from the collection of Arthur Dong who used them for research for his documentary film on Chinese Americans in Hollywood’s film industry.

 November 6, 2009 – February 28, 2010.  Treasures, Curiosities, and Secrets: The Crockers and the Gilded Age, Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento.  Among California’s most important art collectors of the late nineteenth century were several members of the Crocker family.  Their love of beautiful things ultimately resulted in the Crocker Art Museum.   This is not a show of artworks – as the entire Crocker Art Museum is tribute to what the Crockers achieved.  Rather it is a show about the Crockers themselves – their varying personalities and tastes – and how all contributed to the museum as it now stands.

 November 8, 2009 – February 7, 2010.  The Collection, Laguna Art Museum.  LAM’s permanent art collection began in 1940 fuelled in part by the concern that Laguna’s pioneer artists were quickly passing away.  Since that time several thousand items have come into the collections and it has set its focus on California art.  The Collection will display important works given by collectors including Nancy Dustin Wall Moure, Carl S. Dentzel, Mickey and Ruth Gribin, and Stuart Spence and Judy Vida-Spence.

The following antiquarian book dealers have substantial holdings of out-of-print books on California art: Arcana on the Santa Monica Mall (310-458-1499), Ken Starosciak in San Francisco (415-346-0650), and Muz Art and Books, Sacramento (no telephone; searchable on www.abebooks.com).  If you know a title, it can be searched on www.abebooks.com or www.bibliofind.com to get comparative prices from dealers across the nation.  Searching a book on www.oclc.org -- registration is free -- will bring up local libraries that have the book.

Among dealers in new books on California art are the antiquarian dealers cited above, the bookstores of museums that specialize in California art (see list of museums above under ‘Exhibitions’) as well as John Moran Auctioneer in Pasadena, Kerwin Galleries in Burlingame, George Stern Fine Arts in LA, Sullivan-Goss in Santa Barbara, and DeRu’s Fine Arts in Bellflower and Laguna Beach. 

 Due to demand, Publications in California Art nos 4,5,6 and no. 7 have been reprinted in small quantity.  (For contents of these important reference volumes, see www.CaliforniaArt.com, the “Publications” page.)  To get your copies, please contact Nancy Moure by email at nancymoure@earthlink.net.  This new printing now also makes available four complete sets (v. 1-10) of the Publications in California Art.  Don’t miss the opportunity.

 Tina Skinner.  Esherick, Maloof, Nakashima: Homes of the Master Wood Artisans, Atglen, Pa.: Schiffer Publishing Ltd, 2009.  160 pp.  217 illus.

 Katharine C. Ebner, ed., Sculptor in Buckskin: The Autobiography of Alexander Phimister Proctor, second edition, Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2009.  240 pp.  137 illus.  Identified most commonly with New York, Proctor was active in Los Angeles 1923-25.

 Kevin Bruce, Large Art in Small Places: Discovering the California Mural Towns, Berkeley: Ten Speed Press, 2009.  192 pp.  306 illus.  Deals primarily with post-1950 murals.

 Daniell Cornell and Mark Dean Johnson, eds., Asian/American/Modern Art: Shifting Currents, 1900-1970, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008.  168 pp.  95 color illus.  Catalogue for the exhibition held at several venues in 2008.  Historic California artists include Chiura Obata, Yun Gee, Ruth Asawa, Isamu Noguchi, and others.

 Samella Lewis, Barthe: His Life in Art, Unity Works Publications in collaboration with Museum of African American Art, Los Angeles.  301 pps.   This book accompanies the exhibition organized and circulated by Landau Traveling Exhibitions of LA.  Barthe was active in New York (Harlem) but spent his later years in Pasadena.

 Lyman Hafen and Robert Redford, A Century of Sanctuary: The Art of Zion National Park, Springdale, Ut.: Zion Natural History Association, 2009.  (Published in association with University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City)  132 pp.  158 illus.  Zion attracted several California artists.

 Erika Esau, Images of the Pacific Rim, Australia and California 1850-1935, Sydney University Press, estimated publishing date October 2009.  (Publication date is probable.)  Several California artists were born in Australia while others traveled there and in the Pacific to find subject matter.

 Christy Johnson, Martha Longnecker, Marguerite McIntosh, et al., Harrison McIntosh: A Timeless Legacy, Pomona: AMOCA, 2009.  Mid-century ceramics. 

 John E. Allen, “When I get to California I intend to employ my pencil more: George Holbrook Baker; Argonaut Artist,” California State Library Foundation Bulletin, no. 94, 2009.  Gold Rush era artist.

 Marilyn Moore Sommerdorf, “The Story of Grandma Moore’s Painting of Sutter’s Fort [by artist Jennie Louise Willis Huber Brother],” California State Library Bulletin, no. 94, 2009, p. 31.  Painted in 1895, the work was intended as a backdrop for a booth at the California State Fair that displayed fruit raised by a female farmer.

 Joyce Lovelace, “Making Connections” [Sam Maloof], Huntington Frontiers, Spring/Summer 2009, pp. 12-17.  Primarily an obituary of Maloof but also discusses his furniture. 

 July 11, 2009, 1 p.m.  Beautiful Simplicity: Arts & Crafts Architecture in Southern California, the 86-minute, widescreen production by Paul Bockhorst, will be shown at the Martin Luther King Auditorium at the Santa Monica Public Library, 601 Santa Monica Blvd., Santa Monica.  The event is FREE but seating is limited and on a first-come, first seated basis.  Bockhorst will be present to discuss the production. 

 August 30, 2009, 2-3 p.m.  Panel Discussion on Edith Heath and Heath Ceramics, Pasadena Museum of California Art, Pasadena.  Heath expanded her hobby of making ceramics into a profitable post-World War II business.  Their product’s clean lines and sensible durability fit perfectly with America’s mid-century modern furniture and architecture.  www.pmcaonline.org.  $7 for Adults, $5 for Seniors and students. 

September 12, 2009, 6-9 p.m.  Birthday party for ceramist Harrison McIntosh – he will be 95 – at the home of Julianne and David Armstrong in Claremont.  Reservations are $100/person.  To RSVP, please call 909-865-3146.

 September 20, 2009.  Janet Blake will speak on Masters of the California School: Rex Brandt – Phil Dike – Millard Sheets, at the Maloof Foundation, Alta Loma.  Time to be announced.

 October 10, 2009, 6-7 p.m.  Book signing with Harrison McIntosh (see “Books” above) held at the American Museum of Ceramic Art, 340 South Garey Ave., Pomona, Ca. 91766.  For details call the museum at 909-865-3146. 

For the websites of the many ‘bricks and mortar’ auction galleries dealing with American paintings, see Publications in California Art, No. 9, newsletter for November 1999.  For the most up-to-date auction prices, see www.askart.com  and www.ArtPrice.com. Auction Galleries that hold special sales of historic California art include Bonhams/Butterfields, which can be viewed at www.bonhams.com; Christies at www.christies.com, John Moran at www.johnmoran.com; and Clark’s Fine Art & Auctioneers in Sherman Oaks at www.estateauctionservice.com.

 September 29, 2009.  American Paintings, Christies, New York.  Contains a few California works by artists Guy Rose, Marjorie Reed, Will Sparks, Manuel Valencia, Olaf Wieghorst, Rolph Scarlett and Francis DeErdely.

 October 13, 2009.  California and American Fine Arts Auction, John Moran, Pasadena.