Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego facts for kids
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| Former name | The Art Center in La Jolla, La Jolla Art Museum, La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art |
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| Established | 1941 |
| Location | San Diego, California, U.S. |
| Type | Art Museum |
The Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego (MCASD) is a cool art museum located in La Jolla, a community in San Diego, California. It collects, keeps safe, shows, and helps people understand art made from 1950 until today.
Contents
Art from Both Sides of the Border
San Diego is a city right on the border with Mexico. Because of this, MCASD shows art from artists on both sides of the US/Mexico border. This celebrates the amazing art communities in both San Diego and Tijuana.
MCASD has had many shows that explore themes about crossing the border. Some of these include Being Here With You / Estando aquí contigo: 42 Artists from San Diego and Tijuana. Another was The Very Large Array: San Diego/Tijuana Artists in the MCA Collection.
In 2023, artists Celia Álvarez Muñoz and Griselda Rosas showed their art. Their work shared their experiences of living near the US and Mexico borderlands. They displayed over 35 art pieces. These included sculptures, textile drawings, embroidery, and photo series. Both artists show how cultures mix in their unique artwork.
Where to Find MCASD
MCASD has two main locations. They are about 13.2 miles (21 km) apart.
La Jolla Location
The main MCASD museum is at 700 Prospect St, La Jolla, CA 92037. This location is on a 3-acre campus right by the ocean. It was first built in 1916 as a home for a kind person named Ellen Browning Scripps. A famous architect named Irving Gill designed it.
The museum opened in 1941. Since then, it has been made bigger several times. In 2017, MCASD started its most recent big expansion. Architect Annabelle Selldorf led this project. It made the museum much larger and added a public park. The La Jolla location reopened on April 9, 2022, after being closed for four years for the updates.
Downtown San Diego Location
The MCASD Downtown location is at 1100 Kettner Boulevard, San Diego, CA 92101. MCASD first opened a small gallery downtown in 1986. Later, in 1993, they opened a bigger space inside America Plaza station.
In 2007, MCASD made its downtown facility even larger by adding two buildings.
- Joan and Irwin Jacobs Building: This building is named after Joan and Irwin M. Jacobs, who were very generous supporters. It used to be a baggage building for the old Santa Fe Depot train station. This station was built in 1915-16. The Jacobs Building has shown very large art pieces. Behind the building, you can see six huge cube-like sculptures by Richard Serra. They weigh a total of 156 tons!
- David C. Copley Building: In 2004, David C. Copley helped build this new building next to the Jacobs Building. The Copley Building has two special art installations that use light. Roman De Salvo made cool light fixtures from industrial materials for the stairwell walls. Outside, Jenny Holzer created a display of her famous sayings. These words light up vertically in clear plastic tubes that look like icicles.
Museum History
The museum started in 1941 in La Jolla. It was first called The Art Center in La Jolla. It was a place for the community to enjoy art. In the 1950s and 1960s, it was known as the La Jolla Art Museum. The museum building was originally the home of Ellen Browning Scripps, designed by Irving Gill.
In the early 1970s, its name changed to the La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art. This new name showed that it would focus on art from 1950 onwards. In 1990, the museum changed its name again to San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art. But people sometimes confused it with the San Diego Museum of Art. So, it changed its name one more time to Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego. This new name also showed that it served the larger San Diego area. In 1993, it opened a downtown location.
In 1996, the La Jolla museum had a big renovation that cost $9.2 million. This project was designed by Robert Venturi. It added four more galleries, doubling the museum's exhibition space. It also made the education areas, storage, bookstore, and restaurant bigger. The garden was even turned into an outdoor space for sculptures.
In 2007, a new downtown location opened. This expansion added 30,000 square feet of space. It increased the exhibition space from about 6,000 square feet to 16,500 square feet. The renovated baggage building is named for Irwin M. Jacobs and his wife, Joan. Another building is named after David C. Copley.
In 2014, the museum chose architect Annabelle Selldorf for a $30 million expansion in La Jolla. This project tripled the size of the museum's gallery space to 40,000 square feet. This allowed more of the museum's permanent collection to be shown. The space that used to be the Sherwood Auditorium was also changed into a gallery.
Art Collection
MCASD has a collection of nearly 5,500 art pieces. These are mostly "post-World War II art," which means art made after the 1940s. The collection includes important works by artists like Ellsworth Kelly, Donald Judd, and Robert Irwin. In 2012, the museum received 30 more contemporary pieces from the 1950s to 1980s. These included artworks by Piero Manzoni, Christo, and Franz Kline.
One special art piece is 1° 2° 3° 4° (1997) by Robert Irwin. It has square openings cut into three museum windows. This lets visitors see the horizon where the sea and sky meet. You can even feel the ocean breeze!
Famous Artworks
Here are some of the notable artworks you might find at MCASD:
- Richard Hunt, Linear Peregrine Forms, 1962
- Ellsworth Kelly, Red Blue Green, 1963
- Andy Warhol, Liz Taylor Diptych, 1963
- John Baldessari, Terms Most Usefull…, 1966-1968
- Helen Pashgian, untitled, 1968-1969
- Maren Hassinger, Wallflower, 1975
- Jack Whitten, Chinese Sincerity, 1974
- John Valadez, Pool Party, 1986
- Lorna Simpson, Guarded Conditions, 1989
- Tschabalala Self, Evening, 2019
- Mely Barragan, Black Light, 2017
Selling Artworks
Sometimes, museums sell art pieces from their collection. This is called "deaccessioning." In May 2021, MCASD sold ten artworks at an auction in New York. These included pieces by Roy Lichtenstein and other American artists. The sales brought in almost $900,000.
How the Museum is Run
MCASD has a special fund of over $40 million that helps support it. Its yearly budget for running the museum is about $6 million. The money comes from many places. These include individuals, companies, foundations, and government groups. A large part of the fund came from a gift of over $30 million from Rea and Jackie Axline in 1999.
Hugh Davies was the museum's director from 1983 to 2016. Since October 2016, Kathryn Kanjo has been the museum's director and CEO.
