The Bower Museum: Part 2

The Charles W. Bowers Memorial Museum first opened its doors in 1936 as a city-run museum devoted primarily to the history of Orange County. Over the last 86 years it has evolved into an award-winning museum with an exceptional permanent collection worth sharing.

The Bowers Museum holds in its collection more than 91,000 works of art. These works were donated from 1935 to the present and represent many regions and cultures of the world. The museum's largest collections are in the areas of Native American art, Pre-Columbian art, Asian art, art of the Pacific, art of Africa and Orange County history.

Our first encounter was with the exhibit Encounter Pre-Columbian Art from the western Mexican states of Colima, Nayarit and Jalisco. Here we learned about West Mexican shaft tombs and the cultures who used this means of burying their dead. These ceramic figures were placed inside shaft tombs to accompany the deceased in the afterlife.

The exhibition includes artworks that depict imagery from daily life, that show the intensity of West Mexican figurative work and that are naturalistic in form like the famously plump Colima dogs.

This installation showcases the Bowers' extensive permanent collection of Native American art and artifacts in stone, shell, plant fiber (through spectacular basketry) and feathers.

These primary resources help tell the story of the culture of Native Californians. Although groups from all regions of California are represented in the exhibit, special attention is placed on local groups that inhabited the coastal regions of Southern California.

California Legacies: Missions and Ranchos (1768-1848) features objects related to the settlement of Alta California through Spanish land grants, life at the California Missions and the wealth and lifestyles of the first families who flourished under Mexico's rule of California known as the Rancho period. The collection originating from Orange County's missions and ranchos includes the first brandy still to be brought to California, a statue of St. Anthony that originally stood in the Serra Chapel at Mission San Juan Capistrano, a dispatch pouch used by Native Americans to deliver messages between missions, and fine clothing, paintings and daily use objects.

I had to share this painting of Don Bernardo Yorba, a prominent Californio landowner, public figure, and one of the wealthiest men in early 19th-century California. Yorba also served as alcalde (magistrate or mayor) of Santa Ana. The city of Yorba Linda is named after him. Side note: Yorba Linda is the city where we purchased our first home. Man, do I love his mustache.

California Bounty is the first curatorial interpretation of the museum’s distinguished painting collection since 1994. Viewers take a rambling journey through California's visual history, a history shaped by a unique mixture of Mexican and Anglo traditions as well as the state’s position on the Pacific Rim. Each painting epitomizes California’s land, people and offerings as a place of produce (celery?) and plenty.

The exhibition brings together many of the museum’s most cherished paintings, including works by early artists documenting the Mission and Rancho periods; landscapes by plein air painters portraying California’s coasts and canyons; sumptuous portraits and still-life paintings of flowers and paper-wrapped fruit by Alberta and William McCloskey (my favorites); and a small selection of works indicating California as a continued place of possibility.

I love that museums introduce us to people we might never have met. One such person, David Hewes, was met through this 1877 bust, commissioned while on vacation in Pisa, Italy. Mr. Hewes (1822-1915) was an American born into one of the "old families" of Massachusetts. Hewes is associated with the construction and completion of the First Transcontinental Railroad, although he was an enthusiastic supporter rather than being directly connected with the construction thereof. He provided a golden spike marking completion of the railroad and he also planned the connection of the railroad company's wires to Western Union so the taps of the silver hammer driving the golden spike at Promontory Summit, Utah Territory could be heard instantaneously coast-to-coast.

Hewes' greatest accomplishment was his ranch, Anapauma, near El Modena in Orange County. It was a massive sheep ranch over 800 acres with a large portion eventually converted in vineyards which later died off from blight. Hewes restored the ranch as a citrus farm which was one of the noted orange groves that stayed with the estate until 1920 when it was sold for $1,000,000. Hewes' art collection of pictures, statues and frescos was presented to the Leland Stanford Jr. University. He also created Hewes Park on what was once a barren hilltop. Hewes died in Orange, California in 1915 at the age of 93 and is buried at Mountain View Cemetery in Oakland. Interesting!

The Bowers Museum holds a collection of nearly 2,000 paintings, almost all of which were painted between the late 19th century through the 20th century. Highlights of this collection are a group of 40 paintings by William and Alberta McCloskey and a California plein air collection.

I must admit, this exhibit was the most unique. The museum had something for everyone.

For over 35 years Harold Van Pelt has quietly been perfecting the art of carving quartz, rock crystal and agate gemstones. Gemstone Carvings: Masterworks by Harold Van Pelt is a display of his mastery.

"Each work in the exhibition is a reflection of hundreds of hours of craftsmanship. Van Pelt’s working of the stone down to paper-thin walls brings out the gorgeous natural quality and colors of agate and gives quartz the transparency of glass. Transformed by one man's vision and skill from a solid stone to an incredibly delicate work of art, the gemstone carvings of Harold Van Pelt have to be seen to be believed."

After a lifetime of boning up (pun intended) on carving, in the early 2000s Van Pelt created perhaps his most famous rock crystal sculpture: a life-sized carved quartz skull titled Izok. Named for the trace amounts of the rare izoklakeite found suspended in its quartz medium by mineral analysis, the hollow skull is fantastically elaborate.

I will use Mr. Van Pelt's anatomically correct, Chalcedony Skeleton Hand, to wave goodbye to the Bowers Museum. Steve and I will be back for the upcoming Everest: Ascent to Glory exhibition. Fun is found everywhere.

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