The exhibition celebrating a building expansion at Oceanside Museum of Art is titled "Masterpieces of San Diego Painting: Fifty Works From Fifty Years, 1900-1950." If that doesn't stop you dead in your tracks, nothing will. Masterpieces? Of San Diego painting? From before World War II?
Surely the museum jests. Or, more likely, it's making provincial boasts. A visit to the show reveals that a third explanation for the claim is closer to the truth. Guest curator Bram Dijkstra pretty much means what the cheeky title says. Surely he knows that it will be received with skeptical regard, but Dijkstra wants to provoke a conversation about a specific history of art where virtually none has existed before.
And "Masterpieces of San Diego Painting" delivers -- no, not 50 pictures I'd trade for a mess of Matisses and Picassos from the same era, or even O'Keeffes, Hartleys and Doves. But it does tell a compelling story of regional aesthetics with cosmopolitan ambitions, which more museums ought to do.
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Here are some highlights from new exhibition, which runs through June 29.
