The Bowers Museum is an art museum located in Santa Ana, California. The museum's permanent collection includes more than 100,000 objects, and features notable strengths in the areas of pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, Native American art, the art of Asia, Africa, and Oceania, and California plein-air painting. The Bowers organizes and hosts special exhibitions from institutions throughout the world, and travels exhibitions nationally and internationally. The museum has a second campus two blocks south of the main site, Kidseum, a children's museum with a focus on art and archaeology. The Bowers Museum and Kidseum are located in Santa Ana 6.4 km (four miles) south of Disneyland.
History Ada Elvira Bowers and her husband, Charles W. Bowers, a late 19th-century Orange County citrus grower and land developer, donated the land on which the museum stands to the city of Santa Ana as well as $100,000 to build the museum. The building was completed in 1932 but was not fully operational for almost four years due to the economic downturn of the Great Depression. The Charles W. Bowers Memorial Museum finally opened its doors in 1936 as a city-run museum in a Mission Revival-style building devoted to the history of Orange County. The museum went through its first renovation beginning in 1973 adding a 12,500 square feet wing that brought the museum to 24,000 square feet. The expansion was kicked off by earlier bequests from Evylena Nunn Miller and Nan Preble, with additional funding coming from a countywide drive, the Museum Foundation, and the city of Santa Ana.
In 1985 the Santa Ana City Council formed the Charles W. Bowers Museum Corporation to form a new governing board to run the museum and to handle fundraising. In 1986 a city study panel recommended an expansion in order to make the Bowers one of the region's top cultural centers and the anchor of a planned future arts district for Santa Ana. The museum became institutionally severed from city governance in this year, becoming its own nonprofit corporation. Many of the museum's galleries went dark in preparation for the renovation, finally closing in January 1989. The expansion plan included renovation of the original 1932 structure; a $6-million west wing addition adding over 51,000 square feet of space; and plans to demolish the 1974 addition.
In February 1990, the Bowers' board president announced a new direction for the museum's collection and programming as "the cultural arts of the Pacific Rim". In April 1991, Peter C. Keller, Ph.D., associate director of public programs for the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, was hired as director of the museum. The new museum building reopened on October 15, 1992, as the Bowers Museum of Cultural Art. Since then, the museum's collections, programs, and exhibitions have continued to feature Orange County history, but now reflect the demographics of larger Southern California by celebrating its diverse cultural makeup, with major emphasis on the fine arts of the indigenous peoples of the Americas, Africa, and the Pacific Rim. The Bowers Museum was recognized in the July 1993 issue of U.S. News & World Report as one of nine "must see" museums in the United States.
In February 2007, the Bowers Museum expanded again, adding the $14.6-million Dorothy and Donald Kennedy Wing, named for Donald P. Kennedy, an executive of the First American Corporation, and his wife. The new wing included a permanent Chinese art exhibition, a permanent Oceanic exhibition (opened in 2010), additional galleries for special exhibitions, spacious event venues, and a 300-seat auditorium. The museum now presents special exhibitions from collections and institutions throughout the world, has six permanent collection galleries and, in 2016, watched its membership grow to nearly 8,000 members. The museum has increased in size from its original 10,080 square feet to more than 100,000-square-feet today, with 45,000 square feet of exhibition space. The Bowers serves more than 80,000 school children annually through docent guided tours, community outreach programs, and participatory art classes. The museum has a free family festival on the first Sunday of each month and offers free general admission to Santa Ana residents, with proof of residency, each Sunday. The Bowers Museum is accredited by the American Alliance of Museums.
Collections
"Spirits and Headhunters: Art of the Pacific Islands" highlights masterworks from the three cultural regions of Oceania: Micronesia, Melanesia, and Polynesia. Particular focus is placed on New Guinea, and the rich artistic traditions infused into daily and ritual life. Included are larger-than-life masks, finely crafted feast bowls, objects associated with the secretive Sepik River men's house, shell and feather currency, magic figures and tools of the shaman, objects related to seagoing trade routes, personal adornments, and weapons of warfare. The Bowers' collection includes art and artifacts from many of the Pacific Islands.Muchnic, Suzanne. 2009. "ART; SOUL OF OCEANIA; the Art of Pacific Island Cultures is Gaining New Significance Across the U.S." Los Angeles Times, Feb 22.
"Ancient Arts of China: A 5000 Year Legacy" features nearly 75 sets of objects from the Neolithic period (c. 3000 B.C.) to the Qing dynasty (AD 1644–1911). It is drawn from the Bowers Museum's permanent holdings, plus a small number of loans from private collections, and curated by the Shanghai Museum. The works portray the evolution of Chinese technology, art, and culture, and showcase examples of bronze vessels, mirrors, polychrome potteries, sculptures, porcelains, paintings, ivory carvings, and robes. Art from China and Japan make up the majority of the Bowers' collection of Asian art and artifacts.Richard Chang (February 18, 2007) Expanding the possibilities at the Bowers Museum, Orange County Register
"California Legacies: Missions and Ranchos, 1768-1848" features objects related to three historical eras: 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 the Ranchos of California.The Huntington museum's "Exploring the California Missions" has a link to the Bowers Museum's website and teacher packet for this exhibition. http://missionhistory.org/#lessons; see also http://gsha-sc.blogspot.com/2016/10/bowers-museum-visit-to-celebrate-viva.html.
"Ceramics of Western Mexico" focuses on Pre-Columbian art from the western Mexican states of Colima, Nayarit, and Jalisco, with a particular focus on West Mexican shaft tombs and the cultures who used this means of burying their dead. A selection of the ceramic figures placed inside shaft tombs to accompany the deceased in the afterlife is on display. The exhibition also includes objects depicting 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. The Bowers' collection consists almost entirely of pottery, with some textile, stone and metal pieces. This collection is strongest in sculpture from the ancient cultures of West Mexico.
"California Bounty: Image and Identity, 1850-1930" examines California's visual history, shaped by a unique mixture of Mexican and Anglo traditions as well as the state's position on the Pacific Rim. The exhibition shows how paintings of California's land, people, fruits, and flowers reflect the state's bounty and the massive advertising campaign by real estate developers, citrus growers, the railroads, and other boosters to bring people out West. Highlights of the painting collection are a group of forty works by William and Alberta McCloskey and California plein air paintings.Antonie Boessenkool (June 29, 2016) Bowers Looks at the Sunny Side of California, Orange County Register
"First Californians" is an extensive look at the indigenous peoples of California's art and artifacts from the collection, demonstrating the culture and history of the Southern California Coastal Indians. It explores the ways Indians of the region interacted with their environment for food, clothing, adornment, and religion. The Bowers Museum's collection is strongest in the cultures of the west and southwest but does represent native cultures from across the US. Objects in the collection include basketry, pottery, beadwork, stone and shell tools, weapons, and jewelry. These objects range in age from pre-historic to contemporary.
The Historic and Decorative Arts Collections were the first focuses of the museum. This varied collection includes historic costumes, military uniforms and textiles, furniture, dolls and toys, tools, and house wares, many of which were collected from the founding families of Orange County. The Orange County history collection contains historic newspapers, magazines and other publications, as well as photographs, art, and objects relating to the early days of Orange County. Highlights of this collection include objects relating to Madame Helena Modjeska and memorabilia and objects from the first police and fire departments of Santa Ana. The large photographic collection includes books, maps, posters, stereographs, and slides but is most notable for photographs.Cathy Douglas (March 8, 2015) Santa Ana’s Bowers Museum enriches downtown’s cultural life, Orange County Register
Special exhibitions The Bowers Museum has partnerships with the Nanjing Museum, the Shanghai Museum, the British Museum, the Tokyo National Museum, the Vatican Ethnological Museum, the Museo del Oro of Bogotá, and the Museo de la Basílica de Guadalupe, to organize and host exhibitions since 1992.Scarlet Cheng, (June 2, 2002) China's Latest Greatest-Hits Collection, Los Angeles Times
The Bowers has organized several special exhibitions on Chinese history and culture since 2000. The museum board's chair, Anne Shih, who emigrated to the United States from her native Taiwan in 1979, has developed key contacts with Chinese cultural authorities that have given rise to several exhibitions, beginning with "Secret World of the Forbidden City: Splendor From China's Imperial Palace" (2000), an unprecedented exhibit of 350 treasures from China's Imperial Palace that included statues, pottery, paintings and other pieces, as well as recreations of rooms in the Imperial Palace.Andrea Adelson (May 7, 2000) A Chance to be at Home with China's Emperors, The New York Times. Daniel Yi (October 10, 2000) Bowers Dreams Big in Small Space; and Mike Boehm (March 27, 2014) Bowers exhibition to examine "lost" ancient Chinese civilization; and Karen Alexander (February 6, 2000) A Peek into the Forbidden City, Los Angeles Times
"Treasures from Shanghai: 5000 Years of Chinese Art and Culture" (2007) featured objects on loan for the first time from the Shanghai Museum portraying the evolution of Chinese technology, art, and culture. Curated by Chen Kelun, authority on Chinese history and culture and deputy director of the Shanghai Museum, the focus of the exhibit was the ancient Chinese bronzes from late Xia to early Han dynasty, and Chinese porcelains from the Song dynasty to the prime time of the Qing dynasty. This was the third collection brought to the United States from the Shanghai Museum and the first in more than 20 years.USC Annenberg (February 18, 2007) Exhibition: Treasures from Shanghai: 5000 Years of Chinese art and Culture http://china.usc.edu/calendar/exhibition-treasures-shanghai-5000-years-chinese-art-and-culture