Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego

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This article is about Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego. For other Museums named Museum of Contemporary Art, see Museum of Contemporary Art.

The Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego (or MCASD) is an art museum focused on the collection, preservation, exhibition, and interpretation of works of art from 1950 to the present.

MCASD functions as a museum whose programs encompass the art of our time; a cultural center and forum for the exploration of contemporary art and ideas; and a research laboratory for artists and audiences to experiment and learn. Visitors come to MCASD to investigate a wide range of artists and the most recent developments emerging nationally and internationally as well as in San Diego/Tijuana.

MCASD is located in two distinct and beautiful venues, where visitors can directly experience the work and ideas of living artists, are an important cultural destination for those coming to San Diego, California, for business or pleasure San Diego tourism.

MCASD has an international reputation for its permanent collection, highly acclaimed, varied schedule of thought-provoking exhibitions, lectures, performances, and scholarly publications. The museum also offers special programs in its 500-seat Sherwood Auditorium in La Jolla and 120-seat Berglund Room in downtown San Diego, and free tours daily.

At MCASD Downtown, there is a varied schedule of exhibitions, including the Cerca Series of one-person exhibitions of young, emerging artists. The first Thursday of each month, starting at 7PM, TNT (Thursday Night Thing) takes place, featuring music, performance, drinks, and more.

The Museum is currently engaged in a $30 million campaign to expand and endow the downtown venue. With the new MCASD, which opened in January 2007, there are now two significant buildings there (the Joan and Irwin Jacobs Building and the David C. Copley Building). These, together with the Museum's already-operating downtown location at 1001 Kettner Boulevard, dramatically increase the overall capacity for service. The Museum has a unique mix of facilities allowing the flexibility to present a wide range of artists (the more traditional, “white cube” galleries and outdoor sculpture garden in La Jolla; contemporary urban galleries at 1001 Kettner, and renovated 1915 warehouse spaces in the new Joan and Irwin Jacobs Building and a modern lecture hall and public spaces in the David C. Copley Building).

The Museum also includes two retail locations, X Stores, at both the downtown and La Jolla locations. The stores carry a wide array of contemporary home and office design objects, as well as an extensive book selection.

1 History
2 Contact information
3 Addresses of the museum
4 External links

[edit] History

Founded in 1941 in La Jolla as The Art Center in La Jolla, a community art center, through the 1950s and 60s the organization operated as the La Jolla Art Museum. The museum was originally the 1915 residence of philanthropist Ellen Browning Scripps, designed by the noted architect Irving Gill.

In the early 1970s, the name changed to the La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art, focusing the purview on the period from 1950 to the present. The Museum has long held a reputation for bold, prescient exhibitions and collecting practices and the oceanfront site became a mecca for artists and art aficionados from around California, the nation, and beyond. In 1990, acknowledging the larger geographic context and the population base of nearly 3 million in San Diego County, the name changed to the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, and in 1993, a branch facility first opened downtown, further embracing the region. In 1996, a major renovation and expansion of MCASD La Jolla took place, designed by Robert Venturi of the firm Venturi Scott Brown & Associates. In 2007, a much larger downtown Museum was opened, designed by architect Richard Gluckman of Gluckman Mayner Architects, New York.

MCASD is fiscally sound, with a permanent endowment fund of over $40 million, and an annual operating budget of approximately $6 million. Annual support comes from a balanced mix of individuals, corporations, foundations, government agencies, and interest earned from the endowment, the majority of which came from a transormational 1999 bequest from Rea and Jackie Axline of more then $30-million.

[edit] Contact information

For questions about MCASD, one may e-mail [info@mcasd.org]. For press inquiries, contact [press@mcasd.org]. If you wish to write to the Museum you may do so by mailing to their La Jolla branch at Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego (MCASD La Jolla), 700 Prospect, La Jolla, CA 92037. Their phone number is 858-454-3541, while their fax number is 858-454-6985.