History Wing
California is a landscape of incredible ecological diversity. It is also a landscape of diverse and intersecting cultures and traditions. A look at the history of people, and the places they call home, is a study of politics and opportunity in natural and artificial environments As you explore the history of our state, consider your own place in the narrative. What forces brought you to California and the Bay Area? Maybe your family immigrated here from the American South during the Great Depression, or maybe through the depots of Angel Island. Maybe your distant ancestors chased the snowy footprints of mastodons across the Bering Strait 35,000 years ago. Maybe you showed up on your own for your first year of University. Whether you’ve only recently found your way to the Golden State for a college education, or can trace deeper roots, you are a part of the unique tapestry that is California.
Art Wing
The inspiration we find in places like the mountains and forests of California often reflexes our innate desire to creatively digest and share these fleeting experiences. Many of us reach for our phones to take a picture when we want to cherish and preserve the ephemeral. Smartphones can be a window between our senses and our experience of the world around us. The technology of our phones is simply the latest kaleidoscope through which we perceive and process a complex universe of elemental components. As early as the 1600s, artists relied on a technique called camera obscura. A simple method of lens projection, a camera obscura frames and reduces the word into two dimensions, making it easier for artists to comprehend chaos and to communicate it on a canvas.A walk through this gallery is a chance to empathize with the minds of those who have found inspiration and affinity with California and Californians. What each artist has witnessed and experienced we see stripped away and reduced to what that artist had found essential. Through the emergent properties of color, shape, composition, and subject matter, these works convey the passions, hardships, perspectives, and mythologies that collectively outline the California experience.
Science Wing
Stretching from Baja California to Coos Bay in Oregon, the area between the Great Basin and the Pacific Ocean is often referred to by naturalists as the California Floristic Province. The geopolitical boundaries of the Golden State map closely onto this bioregion. The California Floristic Province is a landscape that shares a common geological, evolutionary, and political history. This region was spared the grind of much of the glacial ice that impacted the North American continent over the past million years. This led to the persistence of ancient plant communities such as the diverse conifer forests in the Klamath mountains of far northern California, as well as the evolution of novel life forms across the warm, gentle clines of the Bay Area and southern California. California is a collision of many unique systems and a wellspring of new forms. Within a few miles of the Berkeley campus, we find cool, fog-swept redwood groves, dry chaparral, serpentine barrens, and oak savannas. As you make your way through these exhibits, ask yourself what unifies these disparate systems and what explains their close proximity. More importantly, what does the diversity of California flora, fauna, and natural history mean for conservation as we enter a period of climatic and ecological instability?
Garden
The plantings around the Oakland Museum of California are entirely of species native to California. Take a break to walk around the garden! For fun, identify and observe a couple of plants with which you are unfamiliar. You can use the Seek app to help you with an ID. But, most importantly, enjoy some time outside and the (hopefully) fresh air. Take a moment to close your eyes and be still with the sounds around you.
