OMCA Acquires 70 Artworks from Creativity Explored, Creative Growth, and NIAD for Permanent Collection
The Oakland Museum of California (OMCA) announced today its acquisition of over 70 individual artworks — including paintings, sculptures, video, works on paper, textiles and more —featured in its current major exhibition, Into the Brightness: Artists from Creativity Explored, Creative Growth & NIAD, marking the largest acquisition drawn from a single exhibition in OMCA’s history.
Twenty-five of the works acquired are by ten Creativity Explored artists: Camille Holvoet, Daniel Green, Gerald Wiggins, Isaac Haney-Owens, John Patrick McKenzie, Lance Rivers, Marilyn Wong, Peter Cordova, Vincent Jackson, and Maribel Guzman.
On the eve of the closing of Into the Brightness, these additions to the Museum’s permanent collection represent years of partnership building, community engagement, and institutional collaboration with the three Bay Area studios: Creativity Explored in San Francisco, Creative Growth in Oakland, and NIAD Art Center in Richmond. Through this acquisition, OMCA will integrate these works into its regular rotation schedule within the Gallery of California Art, as well as featuring them in future multidisciplinary projects and exhibitions.
“The history of the Bay Area art scene is incomplete without recognition of the work and stories of the artists from Creativity Explored, Creative Growth, and NIAD Art Center. Through this acquisition, OMCA will be better equipped to tell a more reflective and nuanced story of California through OMCA’s interdisciplinary approach and the rich perspectives of these existing and emerging artists in our community. It has been a deeply meaningful experience for me and for our team at OMCA to work with these studios and the artists over many years, to get to know their work and their working processes, and then to culminate this project by bringing these exceptional objects into our collection to steward and present long into the future.”
-Carin Adams, curator of Into the Brightness, and senior curator of art at OMCA
See a small selection of the 25 works acquired from Creativity Explored artists below:
Images, Left to right:Untitled (Anti-Horoding, Anti-unacepting) by Camille Holvoet, 2019, marker and watercolor on paper, 10 x 8 inchesUntitled by Peter Cordova, ca. 2016, glazed ceramic sculpture, 14 x 12 x 17 inchesOctober 23 (Hulk Hogan) by Daniel Green, 2020, ballpoint pen, marker and colored pencil on wood, 13 x 7 x 3.5 inchesA visitor admiring a display of four pieces by artist Daniel Green, all of which were acquired by OMCA. A visitor admiring OMCA-acquired work: Untitled (landscape 4 separate pieces put together as one) by Lance Rivers, 2022, pen on paper, 18 x 30 inchesArtist Gerald Wiggins poses with a few of his pieces at OMCA. All of these pictured have been acquired!