The Crocker Art Museum houses one of the state’s premier collections of California art, offering the most comprehensive collection of art from statehood to the present.

Early California Art
The Museum's collection of early California art includes outstanding examples dating from the Gold Rush through 1945. The core collection, assembled by Judge E. B. Crocker in the early 1870s, is the only such collection to remain virtually intact in its original setting. Among the highlights are Charles Christian Nahl’s Sunday Morning in the Mines, Thomas Hill’s Great Canyon of the Sierra, Yosemite, and William Hahn's Market Scene, Sansome Street, San Francisco. Works by Albert Bierstadt, Samuel Marsden Brookes, A.D.O. Browere, and William Keith are among other landscapes, genre scenes, and still lifes that help document both California ’s history and its importance as a leading art center. In addition to the core collection assembled by the Crockers, the Museum has since added important examples by late 19th and early 20th century Californians, including signature works by Giuseppe Cadenasso, Dong Kingman, Xavier Martinez, M. Evelyn McCormick, Mary Curtis Richardson and Theodore Wores.

Take a virtual tour of works from our Early California Art collection.

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Contemporary California Art
The Museum’s collection of contemporary works by California artists includes more than 60+ years of painting, sculpture and craft media and testifies to the artistic vitality of our state. Collection highlights include Robert Arneson's self-portrait, Overcooked, Joan Brown's Wolf in Studio, Raymond Saunders’s Joseph Fitzpatrick was our Teacher, Wayne Thiebaud's Pies, Pies, Pies, and Stephen Kaltenbach’s Portrait of My Father. The collection also includes important paintings by Christopher Brown, Irving Norman, Oliver Jackson, Roland Petersen, Roy DeForest, and William Wiley, as well as outstanding three-dimensional works by Robert Brady, Stephen DeStaebler, Manuel Neri, Alan Rath, Peter VandenBerge and Peter Voulkos.

Take a virtual tour of the Contemporary California Art.

Click here for collection highlights.