The Hilbert Museum of California Art is a U.S. museum located at

Chapman University Chapman University is a private research university in Orange, California. It encompasses ten schools and colleges, including Fowler School of Engineering, Dodge College of Film and Media Arts, Fowler School of Law, and Schmid College of Scie ...

Orange, California Orange is a city located in North Orange County, California. It is approximately north of the county seat, Santa Ana, California, Santa Ana. Orange is unusual in this region because many of the homes in its Old Town District were built before ...

. The museum's collection consists of more than 1,000 paintings – primarily watercolors and oil paintings by artists of the

California Scene Painting California Scene Painting, also known as Southern California Regionalism, is a form of American regionalist art depicting landscapes, places, and people of California. It flourished from the 1920s to the 1960s. History Early 20th century Californ ...

movement.

History

The Hilbert Museum of California Art, located in the historic district of Old Town Orange, opened in 2016. It was founded by Mark and Janet Hilbert with a gift of $10 million, including a collection of more than 1,000 paintings valued at more than $7 million in 2015. The collection consists mostly of works in oil and watercolor created between the 1930s and the 1970s by artists – including

Millard Sheets Millard Owen Sheets (June 24, 1907 – March 31, 1989) was an American artist, teacher, and architectural designer. He was one of the earliest of the California Scene Painting artists and helped define the art movement. Many of his large-scale bu ...

, Emil Kosa Jr.,

Phil Dike Phil Dike (1906-1990) was an American painter and art teacher. He painted watercolors, and he taught at Scripps College and the Claremont Graduate University. His work is in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National ...

Milford Zornes James Milford Zornes (January 25, 1908 – February 24, 2008) was an American watercolor artist and teacher known as part of the California Scene Painting movement. Biography Milford Zornes was born in rural western Oklahoma, a few miles fr ...

and

Rex Brandt Rexford Elson Brandt (August 12, 1914 – March 21, 2000) was an American artist and educator. Much of his oeuvre consists of paintings inspired by the life and geography of the West Coast of the United States, particularly California. Brandt wor ...

– of the California Scene Painting movement, a form of American regionalist art depicting scenes of everyday life involving landscapes, places, and people of California. The museum also features regular exhibitions of works of American illustrators, as well as the motion-picture production art and animation art created by many of the California Scene artists, who found work in the movie studios during the Great Depression.

Expansion

With the support of the founders, Chapman University is planning a major expansion of the museum, with groundbreaking tentatively scheduled for late 2021 to early 2022 and doors opening between 2022 and 2023. The current 7,500-square-foot facility will triple in size, being extended to between 21,000 and 28,500 square feet. The price of the expansion will be around $14 million, and the goal is to have 100,000 visitors per year by 2025.

References

{{reflist 2015 establishments in California Chapman University Art museums and galleries in California