San Diego is flourishing with new art that promises to place the city among leading art hotspots. Recently, the beach town has aggressively picked up its pace as the most prominent artists of our time install works, placing the city on the art map. With its new spaces, the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego allows the city to surpass America’s world-renowned art destinations, working with the city’s youthful energy and aspiration. The MCASD is pushing the limits of the city beyond its imagined reach and the commission of a Richard Serra sculpture accompanies its mind-blowing expansion of newly designed space in downtown.
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In addition, UCSD’s Stuart Collection has also acquired a magnificent Tim Hawkinson piece that magnifies the prominence of its highly celebrated collection.
The Stuart Collection closes the year off presenting this unrivaled opportunity for the UCSD community. The Hawkinson sculpture is being installed in the new courtyard in Engineering Building Unit II as the 16th addition to the Stuart Collection.
Hawkinson is one of the most acclaimed American artists of his time, especially renowned for his inventive use of material and his genius in manual construction. His work on show in a New York gallery has been described by critics to be “[an] extravaganza … must be seen to be believed.” Hawkinson was rewarded with a mid-career retrospective exhibit at the Whitney Museum of American Art, jointly organized with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The exhibit, which will come to the West Coast in June, brings the artist back to his hometown.
Hawkinson’s work is known for being accessible to a wide audience; his manually intensive works fascinate the viewer, then further satisfy with prominent comments on the peculiarity of time in life, investigating concepts surrounding the human body and matter. The work to be installed at UCSD is a replica of the bear that Hawkinson created with pebbles a few years ago, featuring the artist’s first permanent outdoor public project — a 20-foot-tall bear constructed out of eight naturally formed granite boulders, mimicking sculptures of prehistoric time.
In addition, the Museum of Contemporary Art is looking beyond its territory with ambitious expansion plans for fall 2006. Not conforming to mediocre standards, the museum commissioned the best in every respect, hiring architect Wayne Donaldson, in addition to Richard Gluckman of Gluckman Mayner Architects, a New York company famous for its renovations of industrial spaces into magnificent art venues, including the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, the Dia Center in New York, the Picasso Museum in Spain and a number of the most respected galleries of Chelsea, England. The transformation of the historic Santa Fe Depot “baggage building,” providing over 10,000 square feet of exhibition space, will accompany the new contemporary building that will be attached to it. A site-specific sculpture by Serra will be installed in front of the new downtown space, and a Jenny Holzer piece will work to bridge the two spaces.
The new MCASD space will include a studio for artist-in-residence Robert Irwin, a special gallery space dedicated to and equipped for the presentation of multimedia works. The new glass and steel structure, referencing railroads with its red color, will also house a lecture hall with a capacity of 130 people, extensive educational areas and administrative spaces for the museum, along with art handling and art preparation spaces and a board conference room.
Some hope to secure for display “Überorgan,” a massive pipe organ claimed to be one of Hawkinson’s most ambitious machines. The organ is currently on display in the IBM Building Atrium in New York.
The Hawkinson installation is part of the museum’s future plans for commissioning large installation works by contemporary artists each year in collaboration with the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art.
The head of the “Bear” sculpture by Hawkinson will be installed May 27. Art lovers have plenty to look forward to before the new MCASD space in downtown opens its doors to more outstanding art for the city.
