Jeanne Dunn, I Am A Dance in the Dark
Land and Sea: Selections from the Collection at Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego (MCASD)
On View: March 20 - December 31, 2025
Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego
700 Prospect St. La Jolla, CA 92037
Opening Reception (MCASD Members Only) : March 19, 2025
In recent years, MCASD has expanded its collection with land and seascapes by artists with connections to our region. Organized by senior curator Jill Dawsey, PhD, Land and Sea features new acquisitions alongside beloved collection pieces that use the visual vocabulary of landscape to explore local and global concerns. In a new installation commissioned by MCASD, Fox Maxy (Mesa Grande Band of Mission Indians and Payómkaw) embeds her digital film Blood Materials (2021)—a meditation on the idea of home—in a sculptural frame that emulates the craggy inclines of the La Jolla coast. In Fayman Gallery, Margaret Noble’s live-feed video installation Horizon (2024) uses common materials to produce the illusion of a sun setting on the ocean horizon, prompting reflections on how technology shapes—and sometimes substitutes for—our experience of the natural world. Today’s artists unearth their histories in the landscape, yet many also take up the genre as a vehicle for envisioning the future.
Land and Sea pays tribute to the distinguished coastal site on which the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego sits, which is layered with history told through land and sea. This seaside location is the ancestral homeland of the Kumeyaay Nation, which was first colonized by Spain, then incorporated as part of Mexico, before the United States claimed the territory as its own and renamed it California. Turning to the historic genre of landscape, contemporary artists engage with land and sea as a way of connecting this past to our present. Their wide-ranging explorations of landscape recover familial heritage, unearth histories of settlement and displacement, and highlight the fragile beauty of the natural world that we call home.
Artists:
Diedrick Brackens, Gillian Carnegie, Andrea Chung, Esteban Cabeza de Baca, Janet Cooling, Kim Dingle, Jeanne Dunn, Raúl Guerrero, the Harrisons, Fox Maxy, Margaret Noble, Marta Palau, John Pfahl, Philipp Scholz Ritterman, Gail Roberts, Sandy Rodriguez, Lynn Schuette, Ernest R. Silva, Vaughn Spann, Perry Vasquez, Kay Walkingstick, Dana Washington-Queen, Gail Werner
Museum Hours:
Thursday - Saturday, 11 AM - 7 PM / Sunday, 11 AM—5 PM
Monday- Wednesday, Closed
All second Sundays and third Thursdays of the month offer free admission.
Admission:
All Second Sundays and Third Thursdays of the month offer FREE admission.
General: $25, San Diego County & Tijuana Residents: $20, Students, Educators & Older Adults: $15: Free, MCASD Members: Free, 25 and Under, SNAP/EBT Card Holders, Visitors with Disabilities, Military: FREE
For additional information, Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, 700 Prospect St. La Jolla, CA 92037 www.mcasd.org
