CARLA JAY HARRIS'S "THE PATH " ACQUIRED BY CROCKER ART MUSEUM

The gallery is delighed to announce that the Crocker Art Museum has acquired Carla Jay Harris's The Path. The Path is one of more than 20 works in Carla Jay Harri's ongoing series Celestial Bodies which she began in 2018. In Celestial Bodies, Harris uses narratives of kinship, creation, and myth as tools to understand, undo and build anew. Cloaked in a firmament of stars and sumptuous red fabrics evocative of Mt. Olympus, the protagonists in Celestial Bodies exist in a contemplative and meditative dimension outside of our own reality- a utopian black society that we can look to for inspiration. Celestial Bodies began with black bodies floating ro flying through space, but has become grounded in the landscape- a transition and evolution that Harris relates to her own spiritual growth, becoming politically and socially reengaged as the foundations of her practice have been firmly established. In the tumult of 2020, creation has become a refuge for Harris. 

The Crocker Art Museum hosts the world's foremost collection of California art dating from the Gold Rush to present day, and is renowned for its holdings of European master drawings and paintings, one of the largest international ceramics collections in the U.S., and collections of Asian, African, and Oceanic art. The collection was established in the late 1860s by by Judge Edwin B. Crocker and housed in the Crocker family mansion and connecting art gallery. Over the last century the mansion and connecting art gallery. Over the last century the mansion and museum have undergone several reconstructions and additions, culminating with a major expansion in the 2000s and the Teel Family Pavilion (2010), designed by Gwathmey Siegel & Associates Architects, which added 125,000 square feet of dedicated galleries and program space. 

We are very grateful to Scott Shields, Assosiate Director and Chief Curator of the Crocker Art Museum for making this acquistion possible.