Oceanside Museum of Art

The Oceanside Museum of Art is a small regional museum in Oceanside, California about 30 minutes north of downtown San Diego. It has just been entirely refurbished with a giant addition to the original Irving Gill building. I think they are still in the middle of a massive capital campaign. The museum generally shows regional exhibits of regional artists with several juried exhibitions every year. I had the distinct pleasure of speaking with their newly hired curator while I was in Oceanside and she has very forward views about making the museum more than just a regional California museum but really making it a destination in a part of the world where you can’t hardly go two feet without stumbling upon another museum. She seemed very clever and certainly seemed to know her stuff, so I would watch out for the upcoming OMA! While I was there, there was a show called Quilt Visions. Quilt Visions is a juried exhibition of the best fabric and textile arts in Southern California. There is quite a bit of innovation going on in the fabric arts (or, if nothing else, I’d not paid much attention to what was going on and so what surprised by how interested I was by it all. It is certainly not limited to Amish-style quilts). I believe that the museum aims to put on four to five shows per year. This is quite the feat considering that the museum staff is limited to five paid employees. I have ABSOLUTELY no idea how a museum (and a pretty decent one at that) can run with only five employees. Think of it: the Met has over 130 curators alone, not to mention the development, education, and administrative staff, assistants, building and grounds crew, etc. There must be around 1,000 individuals working to make the Met the great museum that it is. It’s not wonder that it moves so smoothly. I am excited for what the future has in store for this museum. And if nothing else it is worth a visit merely for the fact that it is about two blocks from one of the most beautiful beaches I’ve been to!