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Crocker Art Museum
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Main Entrance of the Crocker Art Museum, Teel Family Pavilion Sacramento, California
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| Location: | 216 O St., Sacramento, California |
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| Area: | 2.5 acres (1.0 ha) |
| Built: | 1871 |
| Architect: | Seth Babson and Charles Gwathmey |
| Architectural style: | Victorian Italianate and Classic Contemporary |
| Governing body: | Local |
| NRHP Reference#: | 71000176[1] |
| CHL #: | 599 |
| Added to NRHP: | May 6, 1971 |
The Crocker Art Museum is one of the leading arts institutions in California, and the longest continuously operating art museum in the West. Located in Sacramento, California, the Crocker has been an art innovator since 1885. The Museum boasts one of the state’s premier collections of Californian art dating from the Gold Rush to the present day, a world-renowned collection of master drawings, European paintings, one of the largest and most comprehensive international ceramics collections in the U.S. and collections of Asian, African, and Oceanic art. In addition to its impressive collections, the Crocker offers a wide variety of public programs.[2]
In 1869, Judge E. B. and Margaret Crocker began to assemble a significant collection of paintings and drawings during an extended trip to Europe. As a prominent California family, the Crockers supported many social and civic causes. Judge Crocker (1818–1875) practiced law and served on the State Supreme Court. He was the brother of Charles Crocker, one of the “Big Four” railroad barons, and acted as legal counsel for the Central Pacific Railroad. In 1885, his widow, Margaret (1822–1901), fulfilled their shared vision of creating a public art museum when she presented the E. B. Crocker Art Gallery and collection to the City of Sacramento and the California Museum Association, “in trust for the public.”[2]
While the Crocker Art Museum had undertaken a series of renovations and additions since it first opened as a public museum 125 years ago, the facility could not keep pace with the Museum’s burgeoning collection and the growing population of Sacramento and California's Central Valley Region. In 2000, the Crocker began a master planning process with Gwathmey Siegel & Associates and in 2002 commissioned the firm to design a major expansion of the Museum. The expanded Crocker Art Museum opened on October 10, 2010.[2]
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The Californian art collection includes works dating from statehood to the present day. The core collection of early Californian art was assembled by Judge E. B. and Margaret Crocker in the early 1870s and has continued to grow over the years. The Crocker now boasts 150 years of painting, sculpture, and craft media covering genres that include Impressionism, Abstract Expressionism, and Pop Art, and features artists such as Thomas Hill, Guy Rose, Joan Brown, and Wayne Thiebaud. The collection also includes American art from the late-19th century to the present. American Impressionists and Modernists are a particular strength, with iconic works by Childe Hassam, Robert Henri, and Georgia O’Keeffe.Other Twentieth Century painters represented include;Granville Redmond,Edwin Deakin,Maynard Dixon,Richard Diebenkorn,Mel Ramos,Jim Piskoti("Justice"),Jess,and Luis Azaceta.
The collection of approximately 1,500 master drawings is one of the finest early collections in the United States, with superb examples from the major European schools. Collection strengths include European drawings from the 17th and 18th centuries. Major drawings by artists such as Albrecht Dürer, Fra Bartolommeo, François Boucher, and Jean-Honoré Fragonard are represented here. American photography and modern and contemporary California prints are also strengths of the works on paper collection.[2]
The collection of European art was shaped by the Crocker family’s purchase of paintings during their grand tour of Europe between 1869 and 1871. This core collection focuses on Central European painting of the 19th century, Dutch and Flemish 16th and 17th-century painting, and Italian-Baroque painting. Painters represented at this art museum include;Antonio Joli,Guido Cagnacci,Gerrit Honthorst,Nicolas Maes,Klaes Molenaer,Pieter Quast("Quarreling Women"),Bernhard Reinhold("Young Mason Eating Lunch"),Andreas Aschenbach.Karl Von Piloty,Paul Blondeau("Dordrecht"),Arnold Marc Gorter,Andreas Schelfhout,and Charles Nahl.
Since midcentury, the Museum has followed the development of notable Californian, American, and international ceramists such as Hamada Shoji and Lucie Rie. Major gifts to the museum celebrate craftsmanship, expand upon clay’s traditions, and test its boundaries as a medium. The history of ceramics is also explored in a superb collection of 18th–century Meissen porcelain tableware and in the works of ancient cultures dating to the Neolithic period.
The collection of Asian art is especially noted for its holdings of Chinese tomb furnishings and trade ceramics, and Japanese armor and tea ware. The collection is also notable for Korean ceramics which began with a gift by Judge E.B. and Margaret Crocker’s daughter Jennie Crocker Fassett in the 1920s. South and Southeast Asia are well represented through the William and Edith Cleary gift of more than 600 Indian and Persian miniature paintings and drawings, as well as Buddhist art from the region between Pakistan and Southeast Asia.[2]
The collection of African and Oceanic art features a variety of objects created for daily life and traditional ceremonies. The art of the Asmat of New Guinea is strikingly evidenced in the towering memorials to ancestors, called bis poles.
A biennial exhibition has been held by the museum in cooperation with the Kingsley Art Club since 1927, and juried since 1940. Artists whose works have appeared include Robert Arneson, Elmer Bischoff, David Gilhooly, Ralph Goings, Roland Petersen, Mel Ramos, Fritz Scholder, and Wayne Thiebaud.[3][4]
In 1868, Judge Edwin B. Crocker purchased the property and existing buildings on the corner of Third and O Streets. He then commissioned Seth Babson (1830–1908), a talented local architect, to redesign and renovate the home into a grander, Italianate mansion. In addition, Crocker asked Babson to design an elaborate gallery building that would sit adjacent to the mansion and display the family's growing art collection.
Babson saw the home and gallery as an integrated complex, unique in design and demanding the finest materials. The gallery building included a bowling alley, skating rink and billiards room on the ground floor; a natural history museum and a library on the first floor; and gallery space on the second floor. Completed in 1872, the Crocker family mansion and art gallery are considered the masterpieces of Babson's career.
The family mansion went through several uses and reconstructions until a 1989 renovation restored the historic façade and created a modern gallery interior.
On October 10, 2010 the Crocker Art Museum opened a new 125,000-square-foot (11,600 m2) building designed by Gwathmey Siegel & Associates Architects. The roughly 37,600-square-foot (3,490 m2) custom facade system was designed and supplied by Overgaard Ltd., Hong Kong. The new building, named the Teel Family Pavilion, complements the museum's historic structures and expands the Crocker Art Museum's ability to originate and present traveling exhibitions and educational programs, exhibit significantly more of its growing collection, and enhance its role as a cultural resource for California and the state's many visitors.
The design gives the Crocker, long considered one of the cultural gems of the western United States, a more prominent, contemporary image along with greatly expanded, sky lit gallery spaces suitable for both its permanent collection and temporary exhibits.
The expansion has more than tripled the Crocker’s size to 145,000 square feet (13,500 m2) — adding four times the space for traveling exhibitions and three times the space for the Museum to showcase its permanent collection.
The expanded Museum includes a new education center with four studio art classrooms, an art education resource room for teachers and docents, an expanded library, and student and community exhibition galleries, as well as an auditorium and public gathering places. These new facilities allow the Crocker to present expanded programming, enabling the Museum to serve the community as never before.
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