Hilbert Museum Expansion Breaks Ground This Summer

Rendering of expanded Hilbert Museum of California Art, Chapman University. Johnston Marklee

Chapman University has secured approval for its planned expansion of the Hilbert Museum of California Art. The project, overseen by Johnston Marklee, will nearly triple the museum's space (from 7600 to 20,275 sf). Construction is to begin this summer. The new complex will incorporate a 40-foot-long mosaic mural, Pleasures Along the Beach (1969), designed by Millard Sheets and studio for a Santa Monica Home Savings. 

The Hilbert Museum is known for Mark and Janet Hilbert's collection of American Scene watercolors and paintings. Some recent acquisitions are veering into what I guess we're now calling "narrative art." 

Jack Sees Snow for the First Time, about 1993. Concept art for Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas, Disney/Touchstone. Hilbert Collection
Danny Galieotte, Freedom of Speech, 2020. Hilbert Museum of California Art

Comments

Danny Galieotte's Freedom of Speech, 2020, in the Hilbert Museum of California Art, is a wholesale expropriation [dare I say rip-off] of Norman Rockwell's seminal Freedom of Speech of 1943, oil on canvas, in the collection of the Norman Rockwell Museum, Stockbridge, Mass.
I have no problem with artists following earlier artists, but this is at the edge of, or beyond, the pale.

See the original at...

https://www.google.com/search?q=Rockwell+Four+Freedoms,&client=firefox-b-1-m&sxsrf=APq-WBvLKxiPY5AvZMgHvWzvLtH_9997tw:1647971086658&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwisqOHZotr2AhXxUN8KHZRYBWUQ_AUIBigB&biw=678&bih=708#imgrc=DKGBk4NvS8lElM
Anonymous said…
^ Cultural appropriation!

Norman Rockwell had no business impinging on your work, Mr Galieotte. How dare he!

I imagine the Lucas museum would love adding Danny G's work to their Rockwells.
Anonymous said…
Chapman University is a joke...

A former professor and dean at the law school provided Trump with a plan to overturn the election and take over the government.

... If that weren't absurd enough, now this:

The Hilbert collection is NOT worthy of a public or private museum. Yet, Chapman University wants to show more of it, including bric-a-brac from the Hilbert's house in a founder's gallery. Hilarious!!!

Shame that Johnston Marklee are involved. Business must be bad.
Anonymous said…
Why would the Lucas Museum buy a work by Danny Galieote?

Did you look at his CV?

He is NOT a very accomplished painter --- no major museum shows or museum collections.

His work is NOT in high demand. Numerous large paintings listed on Artsy with prices --- $12,000 for a large painting. (You could get a small Alex Da Corte drawing for $3000 more.)

Mr. Galieote is also white. Which makes me wonder why he's painting black people.

Lucas has some sweet prizes. I can't imagine they'd be beguiled by Danny Galieotte's flaccid Freedom of Speech.

Now Lucas already has a masterpiece, oil on canvas, that strongly follows an earlier artist, Grant Wood: Criselda Vasquez, with her The New American Gothic of 2017. She "uses her parents to reinterpret and contemporize the iconic 1930 painting by Grant Wood, his American Gothic."

See Vasquez's work at ...

https://twistedsifter.com/2019/10/the-new-american-gothic-by-criselda-vasquez/
Anonymous said…
> Mr. Galieote is also white. Which makes me wonder why he's painting
> black people.

To be honest, I thought he was a black guy.

Regardless, people in today's world love to virtue signal until they're blue in the face.
Anonymous said…
^^^ Yup, it's absurd (on any level) to compare the Lucas Museum to the Hilbert Museum.

The Hilbert collection is truly laughable. Locate the Hilbert Museum on Google. You will see what I mean.

Can't believe a college accepted the collection as a gift. It has no educational value, let alone an aesthetic one.
Anonymous said…
This might be a disaster. California scene painting is so niche and outdated and so much of it is just plain bad art. Last year, Chapman University was recategorized into the national rankings. That's how much their departments have grown (a respected film school and business school) But this is like taking a step back.

No one is going to take their art department seriously with this museum, and maybe it becomes a liability in attracting students majoring in art. Imagine an aspiring young artist taking a college tour and seeing a collection that’s badly out of fashion.. The next Noah Davis is going to run out the door.

Anonymous said…
Chapman is tossing away the advantage of being right next door to the most vital contemporary art scene in America as Eli Broad would say, because this assures that they’re not going to engage with the excitement happening in LA or be part of the discourse. This museums content is going to be so far removed from the LA art world, it might as well be Iowa.

I guess it’s not the mind-numbingly boring California impressionism or plein air, so that’s something. But even UC Irvine at least has the Buck collection.