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.

IMAGE: Binh Danh (American, born in Vietnam, 1977). Lower Yosemite Fall, 2014. Daguerreotype. 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. 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

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