Two Art Shows under One Roof at the San Diego History Center
Article by Anna Robert
It has been a hundred years since the Panama California Exposition – the event that became a milestone for San Diego. San Diego History Center joins many other cultural institutions in Balboa Park to celebrate the centennial by organizing the art exhibition Masterworks: Art of Exposition Era that is accompanied by the opening of the Noel-Baza PopUp Gallery Under the Same Sky.
Masterworks is an attempt to reproduce, at least, partially the exhibition of 1915. The audience gets to see some of the paintings that have not been presented to public since then. The History Center managed to bring together more than 80 works from various art museums and private collections. These paintings are mainly landscapes by American artists who are considered to be among the most celebrated of the era, including Robert Henri, Guy Rose, Alice Klauber, and Alfred Mitchell.
The main curator of the show is Bram Dijkstra – an author of many books and essays about art and a former professor of English literature at the University of California, San Diego. Together with his wife, he owns one of the most prominent collections of art in San Diego County. Paintings from the Dijkstra collection are now on display at the Oceanside Museum of Art in the exhibit Naked: 20th Century Nudes.
Only one hall away from Masterworks, the exhibit Under the Same Sky presents contemporary landscapes of San Diego and Balboa Park. The San Diego History Center will receive a certain percentage from paintings sold at this PopUp Gallery. At the opening reception Bram Dijkstra and his wife Sandra announced that they purchased one of the paintings from the Gallery and donated it to the History Center, which of course, was met by a round of applause.
After closing their brick-and-mortar location on India Street, Larry Baza and Tom Noel decided to open pop-up galleries and participate in art fairs. The gallery within San Diego History Center is their first experience of having a gallery in Balboa Park. It is a great marketing opportunity for Noel-Baza Fine Art as their art works will be exposed to a wider audience.
The close vicinity of two exhibitions does not seem to be the optimal solution for the Gallery though. The idea is to showcase certain continuity of the tradition, but the difference and detachment of the two exhibits is very obvious and, unfortunately, it tarnishes the great impression from the first exposition and slightly diminishes the joy of looking at the contemporary artwork.
It was on January 17th that San Diego History Center held the opening reception of the two exhibitions. Tony Atkins and Todd Gloria who were among the invitees in their speeches talked about the importance of looking back at the history of the city and the significance of these particular art shows. The works of art will be on display until January 2016, so we very much hope that you will have a chance to experience these expositions.
(Image: Eder Photo)
