California Current: Art and Histories from the Bay Area

How does a community stay rooted in a region that’s constantly changing? California Current invites you to consider this question and others through its more than 60 works — many on view for the first time — that explore the interplay between Bay Area history, art, and artists over the past century.

 Titled after the major cold-water current that runs the length of the West Coast of North America, California Current brings together paintings, sculptures, works on paper, photographs, and time-based media by Bay Area artists from the twentieth century to the present. The exhibition traces a series of interconnected currents — ecological, infrastructural, technological, personal, creative, and political — that have shaped both artistic production and everyday life in Northern California.

 Arranged thematically across time and media, California Current places historical works in conversation with contemporary ones, emphasizing both continuity and change. Together, they ask: What has drawn so many people to this region? What has allowed communities and creative practices to take root here? And what continues to keep so many of us — despite the Bay Area’s contradictions, pressures, and constant reinvention — deeply connected to this place? Presented as part of the Further Triennial, this exhibition features works by artists Pacita Abad, Saif Azzuz (Libyan-Yurok), Robert Bechtle, Bernice Bing, Kota Ezawa, L. Frank (Tongva, Rarámuri), Lynn Hershman Leeson, Mildred Howard, Chiura Obata,  among others.

The exhibition is curated by: Aleesa Pitchamarn Alexander, PhD, Robert M. and Ruth L. Halperin Associate Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art and Co-Director of the Asian American Art Initiative, Maggie Dethloff, PhD, Assistant Curator of Photography and New Media, Joanna García Cherán (P’urépecha), Phyllis Wattis Assistant Curator of Native American Art, and Jorge Eduardo Sibaja, former Curatorial Assistant.

Image credits: Binh Danh (American, born in Vietnam, 1977). Lower Yosemite Fall, 2014. Daguerreotype. 11 1/4 x 9 1/4 in. Cantor Arts Center, Stanford University The Anonymous B Acquisition Fund, 2021.141, © Binh Danh • Bernice Bing (American, 1936–1998). Blue Mountain No. 4, 1966. Oil and acrylic on canvas, 75 x 68 1/8 in. Cantor Arts Center, Stanford University gift of Alexa Young. Funding for the conservation of this artwork was generously provided through a grant from the Bank of America Art Conservation Project, 2020.14. © Alexa Young