We’re open today from 11 AM—5 PM
On view
March 20, 2025 to December 31, 2025
Land and Sea: Selections from the Collection
In recent years, MCASD has expanded its collection with land and seascapes by artists with connections to our region. Organized by senior curator Jill Dawsey, PhD, Land and Sea: Selections from the Collection, features new acquisitions alongside beloved pieces that use the visual vocabulary of landscape to explore local and global concerns. In a new installation commissioned by MCASD, Fox Maxy (Mesa Grande Band of Mission Indians and Payómkawichum) embeds her digital film Blood Materials (2021)—a meditation on the idea of home—in a sculptural frame that emulates the craggy inclines of the La Jolla coast. In a similar spirit, intimate monotypes by Gail Werner (Cupeño, Kumeyaay, Luiseño, and enrolled member Pala Band of Mission Indians) depict cactus seeds, seashells, and other symbols evoking the stories and traditions of Native people of Southern California. Jeanne Dunn’s animate landscape painting portrays what she describes as “the agency of trees,” underscoring the role forests play in reducing climate change. Margaret Noble’s live-feed video installation Horizon (2024) uses common materials to produce the illusion of a sun setting on the ocean, prompting reflections on how technology shapes—and sometimes substitutes for—our experience of the natural world.
Land and Sea pays tribute to the distinguished coastal site on which MCASD sits, which is layered with history told through land and sea. This seaside location is the ancestral homeland of the Kumeyaay Nation, which was first colonized by Spain, then incorporated as part of Mexico, before the United States claimed the territory as its own and renamed it California. Turning to the historic genre of landscape, contemporary artists engage with land and sea as a way of connecting this past to our present. Their wide-ranging explorations of landscape recover familial heritage, unearth histories of settlement and displacement, and highlight the fragile beauty of the natural world that we call home.
New On View: Vito Acconci and Gary Simmons
Notable installations by Vito Acconci (1940-2017) and Gary Simmons (b. 1964) anchor a new display of MCASD’s collection that also includes works by Amy Adler (b. 1966), Terry Allen (b. 1943), Sadie Barnette (b. 1984), Rafael Canogar (b. 1935), Allen Sekula (1951–2013), and William E. Jones (b. 1962).
Acconci’s Instant House (1980) will be displayed in MCASD for the first time since its recent presentation at The Broad in Los Angeles.
With allusions to labor, play, war and peace, the works on view evoke memories of an American past. Acconci’s interactive sculpture, assembled from multiple cloth flags, combines youthful memories playhouses and park swings into an adult meditation on global politics. Nearly erased from view, an isolated gazebo haunts Simmon’s massive blackboard drawing.
New on View: Celestial and Terrestrial Worlds
In Richard D. Marshall Gallery and nearby Marcia Foster Hazan View Gallery, works evoke the ways we see and understand the celestial and terrestrial worlds. From distanced views provided by technology to tightly focused observation—as in Mary Weatherford's roses—precision gives way to abstraction. Underfoot, Maya Lin represents the earth’s circumference with a three-ringed panorama. Overhead, Sara Genn “builds” a sky with celestial shades of blue that are also the names of popular, earthly songs. Trevor Paglen’s stealth drone is absorbed in a sublime skyscape. Robert Rauschenberg layers flying machines of all sorts in his historic prints, created around the Apollo 11 space launch. Bryan Hunt's lunar relief recalls the artist's early experience working as a draftsman at NASA in the late 1960s. Similarly, Byron Kim's monochromatic canvas—an aquatic horizon marked by a container ship—alludes to the engineering feat of the 100-year-old Panama Canal.
MCASD joins an international roster of institutions commemorating Robert Rauschenberg’s 100th birthday (1925–2008). Rauschenberg’s conviction that engagement with art can nurture people’s sensibilities as individuals, community members, and citizens was key to his ethos. The Centennial celebrations seek to allow audiences familiar with him and those encountering the artist for the first time to form fresh perspectives about his art work.
A year of global activities and exhibitions in honor of Rauschenberg’s Centennial reexamines the artist through a contemporary lens, highlighting his enduring influence on generations of artists and advocates for social progress. The Centennial’s activation of the artist’s legacy promotes cross-disciplinary explorations and creates opportunities for critical dialogue. Learn more by visiting rauschenberg100.org.
On view
Top: Fox Maxy, "Blood Materials, 2021." Museum purchase, Louise R. and Robert S. Harper Fund, 2023.21 © Fox Maxy, 2021