Scenic, historic, and oh-so-very California spaces that justify an art pilgrimage.

John Seed
John Seed is a professor emeritus of art and art history at Mt. San Jacinto College in Southern California. He is also the author of Disrupted Realism: Paintings for a Distracted World (2019) and More Disruption: Representational Art in Flux, which will be released in the fall of 2023.
The Art in America’s Largest Catholic Parish Church
St. Charles Borromeo Church features Mission Revival architecture, murals evocative of a Pixar movie, and nearly an acre of interior space.
The Unexpected Detours of Marshall Brown’s Architectural Collages
By disrupting the reality of his images Brown’s collages lead to surprises.
Alyssa Monks Captures the Energy and Anxiety of Being in Paint
With the numerous self-portraits Monks has painted throughout her career she offers her “self” to the viewers while also generating a sense of dissolution.
Unearthing a Treasure Trove of Bay Area Women Abstract Painters
The Long View amply demonstrates that Jay DeFeo and Joan Brown may be the best known Bay Area women artists who worked in abstraction, but they were far from alone.
The Artist Who Painted the Struggles We Face
Francis De Erdely had an intuitive grasp of the inner worlds of people who were coping with a sense of displacement in their daily lives, which he conveyed in his art.
Two Santa Monica Artists Create a Legacy Through Potlucks
An extraordinary variety of artists came to Jon Swihart and Kim Merrill’s backyard potlucks, discussing not just their work, but also the events and challenges of their lives.
The Love and Art of Irene and Peter Stern
The artist couple shared creativity and mutual devotion reflecting a period of light and joy that came after considerable darkness in their early lives.
Photographs as Passageways to the Profound
Rich in sensations and ideas, Running Falling Flying Floating Crawling uses unexpected juxtapositions of text and image to offer both antidotes to the mundane and passageways to the profound.
Remembering the Legacy of a Larger-Than-Life Artist, Sam Tchakalian
The Bay Area artist believed in shaping artists rather than relaying rules.
How Joan and Jack Quinn Built a Major Art Collection Based on Friendship
Seeing On the Edge purely in art historical terms misses what the Quinn family and their guests have been appreciating for years, that their collection is really about friendship and encouragement.
Where the Billionaire Buyers Are
In BOOM: Mad Money, Mega Dealers, and the Rise of Contemporary Art, Michael Shnayerson paints a vivid portrait of the dizzying ascent of the contemporary art market and the powerful succession of dealers responsible for its rise.