The Museum of Art & History presents its biennial CommonGround festival, featured famed sand artists Jim and Brighton Denevan, as well as several others working in place-oriented art pieces. The festival takes place while the MAH is in a leadership transition in the wake of executive director Robb Woulfe’s resignation. Longtime curator Marla Novo is running the museum on an interim basis.
Museum of Art & History
Posted inArts & Entertainment
With Robb Woulfe set to depart, Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History to begin search for new leader
Robb Woulfe has announced his departure as the executive director of the Museum of Art & History after 4½ years. The MAH’s board will begin a monthslong search for his replacement.
Posted inOpinion from Community Voices
Scanning family photos helped me connect to my Vietnamese identity and to the MAH’s new ‘Sowing Seeds’ exhibit
Erin Loury is trying to re-create her family’s past by scanning old photos. She is particularly interested in her family’s life before the Vietnam War forced them to flee. “War destroys so much,” she writes, “disrupting what gets passed down to the next generation in diaspora: heirlooms, stories, language, tradition. I’m trying to counter that loss one photo at a time.” She is also finding startling connections with the Museum of Art and History’s new exhibit, “Sowing Seeds” about Filipino American stories from the Pajaro Valley.
Posted inCity Life
Nina Simon’s new path: A daughter’s story of love, told in the form of a murder mystery
Nina Simon, former director of the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History, put her life and nonprofit leadership on pause in 2020 to care for her mother after a cancer diagnosis. What “started out completely like a fantasy or a distraction” evolved into “Mother-Daughter Murder Night,” a mystery novel she’ll discuss Tuesday at Bookshop Santa Cruz.
Posted inCity Life
‘Frequency’ cycling back into the MAH in September
The biennial “Frequency” digital arts festival is set for a (mostly free) return engagement Sept. 21-24 in and around Abbott Square in downtown Santa Cruz, and among the highlights looks to be a high-tech public memorial to the Santa Cruz Chinatown that once thrived nearby.
Posted inPolitics & Policy
Day of Remembrance at the MAH
Marcia Hashimoto will speak about the legacy of her late husband, Watsonville community icon and incarceration survivor Mas Hashimoto, as part of a program March 1 at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History commemorating the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II.
Posted inCity Life
‘Bay of Life’ enlarges the vision of what we all call ‘home’
“Bay of Life,” a project from Bonny Doon photographer Frans Lanting and writer Chris Eckstrom, is on display at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History with an idea of providing a comprehensive profile of the Monterey Bay.
Posted inUncategorized
From ecological collapse to biodiversity hotspot, Frans Lanting captures our unique ‘Bay of Life’
On Saturday at the Rio, Santa Cruzans Frans Lanting and Chris Eckstrom unveil the Monterey Bay-focused project they’ve been working on through the pandemic. It’s both an appreciation of where we live and a deep exploration, from the redwoods to the bay, of an environment that is near unique on the globe.
Posted inCity Life
MAH’s ‘Strange Weather’ contemplates humanity’s predicaments through art
“Strange Weather,” an exhibition running through Aug. 14, marks a high-profile collaboration between the Museum of Art & History and UC Santa Cruz’s Institute of the Arts & Sciences.
Posted inUncategorized
Welcome to ‘Frequency’: MAH debuts technological arts festival
Installations combining light, sound and digital culture — some featuring audience interaction, some leaning more toward performance art — come to the museum and its downtown Santa Cruz surroundings. “You absolutely need to be open for adventure,” the MAH’s director says.