Mills College Art Museum

Mills College Art Museum (MCAM) is a museum and art gallery in Oakland, California. The museum hosts contemporary work and exhibitions year-round by nationally and internationally known artists, as well as student thesis exhibitions.

Early History

Before Mills College Art Museum was established, Mills College began acquiring art pieces. The founders of Mills College, Susan and Cyrus Mills, were profoundly fond of art and history. By the 1880s, Mills College had amassed 1,000 works of art and reproductions. Susan's sister Jane Tolman, an art historian at the College, developed an art history curriculum in 1875.^[1]

Founding

Thanks to a bequest from Susan Tolman Mills in 1912, as well as additional gifts, the current museum building was constructed in 1925. The museum was opened the same year as the Mills College Art Gallery. Albert M. Bender, the Mills College Trustee chiefly responsible for the museum's completion, made a gift of 40 paintings and 75 prints by contemporary San Francisco Bay Area artists. Bender's gift became the first public collection of modern art in Northern California. Bender later became a principal founder of what is now the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

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  Wild Geese, by Rowena Meeks Abdy
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  Carmel, by Anne Bremer
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  Still Life, by Nora Allis Schmalhorst

The Building

The current Mills College Art Museum building was designed by California architect Walter Ratcliff Jr. Ratcliff served as campus architect from 1923 to 1947 and designed several additional structures at Mills College. The design of the museum combines Beaux-Arts architecture and Spanish Colonial Revival architecture styles. The museum originally functioned as an art gallery as well as a ballroom. Currently the museum houses 6,000 square feet of gallery space.

References

Non-profit art spaces

San Francisco County	AAWAA Acción Latina Artists' Television Access Chinese Culture Center CounterPulse Creativity Explored Graphic Arts Workshop Gray Area Foundation for the Arts Intersection for the Arts Kadist The LAB The Laundry SF Luggage Store Gallery Metal Arts Guild Minnesota Street Project Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts Pro Arts Gallery Root Division San Francisco Arts Commission SF Camerawork SOMArts Cultural Center Southern Exposure Saint Joseph's Arts Society
Alameda County	Berkeley Art Center Creative Growth Art Center Firehouse Arts Center Kala Art Institute
San Mateo County	Pacifica Center for the Arts Sanchez Art Center
Santa Clara County	Institute of Contemporary Art San José Montalvo Arts Center Movimiento de Arte y Cultura Latino Americana Pacific Art League WORKS San José
Contra Costa County	Richmond Art Center NIAD Art Center
Marin County	Gallery Route One Golden Gate Marin Artists Headlands Center for the Arts ICB Artists Association Marin Art and Garden Center Marin County Watercolor Society Marin Jewelers Guild Marin Society of Artists O’Hanlon Center for the Arts Sausalito Artists
Solano County	Arts Benicia

Non-profit art spaces for disabilitiesArt museumsArtist-in-residence programsPublic and site-specificDefunct