SFMOMA | Exhibitions | Making Art Histories

Making Art Histories: On the Trail of David Park



	August 22 - February 24, 1998 Presenting the work of three dozen artists spanning the 1930s to the 1960s, Making Art Histories: On the Trail of David Park examines how what we call "art history" emerges from the many different and often contradictory art practices simultaneously occurring in any particular time or region. Making Art Histories displays works drawn primarily from the Museum's permanent collection by well-known artists as well as those not frequently shown. The exhibition was organized by John Weber, Leanne and George Roberts curator of education and public programs, and Janet Bishop, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation associate curator of painting and sculpture, with the goal of demystifying the process through which museums acquire art and program exhibitions. This is examined within the context of some of SFMOMA's finest individual objects displayed in thought-provoking juxtapositions.

  David Park
  Man in a T-Shirt
  1958
  Collection SFMOMA

Making Art Histories: On the Trail of David Park also provides visitors with a look at one of the great moments of Bay Area art history, the mid-1950s, and the work of one of its greatest artsits, David Park, the originator of what came to be known as Bay Area Figurative Art. The first section of the exhibition, A Context for Bay Area Artists, 1930s to 1960, offers a broader look at art in the San Francisco region throughout the span of Park's creative life and includes artists like Jay DeFeo who are widely recognized and others whose works are shown less frequently. The second section, Abstract and Figurative, New York and the Bay Area, contrasts with the first by presenting a highly selective, art-historically traditional group of works from the Bay Area Figurative movement and the New York School of Abstract Expressionism, two movements considered representative of the 1950s.

Collecting in the 50s -- A View from the Vault, the third section of Making Art Histories, offers a broad look at works in the permanent collection acquired during the 1950s, hung salon-style from floor to ceiling -- as they would be in the Museum's storage vault -- to demonstrate the range of artists collected during the high points of Bay Area Figurative Art and Abstract Expressionism. This is a comparatively "unfiltered," non-canonical selection of art acquired during that era. The fourth and final section, Charting David Park, 1930s to 1960, traces the career of the well-known Bay Area artist with rich examples from SFMOMA's collection as well as selected loans. Park was a key instigator of the Bay Area Figurative movement when in 1949, after a group exhibition of abstract painting at the San Francisco Museum of Art (now SFMOMA), Park destroyed nearly all his abstract works and renounced "non-objective" painting. The presentation includes the figurative works of the 1950s for which Park is widely recognized as well as rarely seen work from the 1930s and 1940s, including biblical drawings, social realist painting, and abstract work.