Career-spanning Thiebaud exhibit marks Crocker museum’s Friday reopening
Legendary Sacramento artist Wayne Thiebaud’s iconic works will be among the features of a reopened Crocker Art Museum this week, seven months after the coronavirus pandemic forced its shutdown in March, museum officials announced Monday.
“We are eager to open and allow our community to regain their access to art and relationships found inside the museum,” Crocker director and CEO Lial A. Jones said in a statement announcing the museum’s reopening. “I believe now more than ever that art has an enduring ability to bring comfort, respite, joy and a deeper understanding of ourselves and one another.”
The museum at 2nd and O streets will open Friday to the general public with new wrinkles owing to the global public health crisis. Crocker members will get a preview Wednesday and Thursday.
The Crocker will be open four days a week, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Thursday through Sunday. Every third Sunday, including Oct. 18, will be a “Pay What You Wish Sunday.”
Face coverings are required of visitors and employees. Crowd controls are in place. The museum is limiting the numbers of visitors to 25 percent of its maximum capacity, is ramping up its cleaning regimen and is implementing an advance ticket reservation system, say museum officials.
A complete list of new procedures is available at the museum’s website, www.crockerart.org
The Crocker has been closed since March 17 in what has been a calamitous year for the arts in California and across the country as arts spaces of all stripe have been forced to close amid the deadly pandemic.
“Opening the Crocker’s doors is an important signal for Sacramento,” Crocker director Jones said. “This will be a time for Sacramentans to reconnect with their favorite artworks and Crocker friends. So many people have reached out during the time of closure to express how much they miss being at the museum and we are eager to see them back at the galleries.”
That includes the eagerly awaited Thiebaud centennial retrospective, “Wayne Thiebaud 100: Painting, Prints and Drawings,” debuting Friday, that marks the icon’s birthday and the Crocker’s return from COVID-19 dormancy.
Also on display, “Todd Schorr: Atomic Cocktail” explores what the Crocker describes as a “visual extravaganza of Pop Surrealism,” with the artist’s vivid investigations of comic book art, “It Came From…” horror and science-fiction and psychedelia.
“Al Farrow: The White House” features the artist’s single sculpture - a work “meant to jolt us out of complacency, no matter which side of the political divide we stand upon,” the museum’s promotional notes read.
But it is the presentation of Thiebaud’s works - a sprawling 100-piece exhibition of his celebrated career - that will take center stage.
Nov. 15 marks Thiebaud’s 100th birthday.
In November 2019, as the Crocker prepared for this year’s sweeping survey, his “Encased Cakes” netted a record $8.46 million at auction. Weeks later, his “Blueberry Custard” fetched $3.225 million.
The bright confections of his signature bakery and restaurant paintings; his works on canvas and paper; his newest works of circus clowns - all are part of Thiebaud’s largest career survey in two decades and reveals what the Crocker labels an “extraordinary, expansive practice” that “asserts that Thiebaud’s body of work is singular and visionary, informed by memory, tradition and imagination.”
The works include many pieces that had never previously been publicly displayed; works from Crocker’s vaults and from the Thiebaud Family and Foundation, say museum officials.
A new publication commissioned to accompany the exhibition, virtual tours, and new and archived interviews with Thiebaud and Thiebaud authority, Crocker associate director and chief curator Scott A. Shields, who authored the new document, are also part of the months-long celebration.
The exhibit, which runs through Jan. 3, 2021, also marks a Crocker tradition dating back more than a half-century. The museum has organized a Thiebaud exhibition every decade since 1951 - the year it hosted his first solo museum show.
“Wayne Thiebaud is a national treasure, Sacramento is his hometown and we are delighted to celebrate his 100th birthday with an exhibition that honors the vitality, vibrancy and wit of his art and civically engaged life,” Jones said.
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