Oakland Museum of California presents Mark Dion: The Marvelous Museum September 11, 2010

September 11, 2010-March 6, 2011; Wed/Sat/Sun 11-5, Thu/Fri 11-8

For his latest project, conceptual artist Mark Dion has embarked on an unprecedented expedition through the Oakland Museum of California's art, history, and natural science collections to create multiple site-specific installations and interventions throughout its art galleries, drawing upon the overlooked orphans, curiosities and treasures from the collections. The Marvelous Museum includes objects that date back to OMCA's predecessor institutions and, while they often lie outside of OMCA's California focus, still tell a rich and interesting story of how museum collections are assembled over time and how curators and museum visitors engage in an often invisible and silent dialog about the nature of art, history and science. OMCA Senior Curator of Art Rene de Guzman will curate this first major West Coast presentation of Dion's work, which will be accompanied by a publication by Chronicle Books in partnership with The Believer magazine. The book itself, like many of Dion's artworks, is a compendium of oddities and discoveries featuring an in-depth interview with the artist by Lawrence Weschler, photographs by David Maisel, and writings by a range of cultural and art historians. Through March 6, 2011.

The Marvelous Museum comprises two discrete installations and 18 interventions for which Dion has selected a variety of objects, exploring the Museum's collections over a period of two years and drawing on a pool of close to 2 million items in storage. Dion refers to these items as "orphans" because they are "objects that no longer fit the museum's mission or curatorial mandate, which, as times have changed, left lots of things high and dry." The objects he has chosen present what he calls a "comical/critical foil" that illuminates the history of OMCA in visually and philosophically compelling ways.

Official Website: http://www.museumca.org