California African American Museum

California African American Museum (CAM

Los Angeles Metropolitan Area
Established	1981
Location	Exposition Park, Los Angeles, California
Coordinates
Type	African American museum
Director	George Davis
Curator	Tiffini Bowers (History), Sonia Brown (Education),
Public transit access	Expo Park/USC (Expo Line)
Website	http://www.caamuseum.org/

The California African American Museum (CAAM) is a museum located in Exposition Park, Los Angeles, California, USA. The Museum focuses on enrichment and education on the cultural heritage and history of African Americans with a focus on California and western United States. Admission is free to all visitors. Their mission statement is " To research, collect, preserve, and interpret for public enrichment the history, art and culture of African Americans with an emphasis on California and the western United States.

CAAM hosts independent and collaborative educational programs both on and off site of lectures, workshops, innovative programs, and hands-on activities that serve public and private school students, museum patrons and community visitors.

History

The CAA Museum was chartered by the State of California in 1977 and first opened in 1981, in temporary quarters at the California Museum of Science and Industry (now the California Science Center).

Building

The current facility was built with state and private funds of around $5 million. The museum was designed by the African–American architects Jack Haywood and (the late) Vince Proby. The new museum building opened to the public during the Los Angeles Olympic Games in July 1984. A major renovation occurred between 2001 and 2003.

The museum occupies a 44,000 square feet (4,100 m²) building. It includes three exhibition galleries, a theater gallery, a 14,000-square-foot (1,300 m²) sculpture court, a conference center special events room, an archive and research library. Behind the scenes there are administration offices, exhibit design and artifact storage areas. A 2011 preliminary planning by design firm Huff and Gooden Architects pegged the cost at $67.3 million for a major expansion and renovation that would nearly triple the size of the museum.

Collection

CAAM exists to research, collect, preserve and interpret for public enrichment, the history, art and culture of African Americans. The museum conserves more than 6,300 objects of art, historical artifacts and memorabilia, and maintains a research library with more than 20,000 books and other reference materials available for limited public use.

The permanent collection includes paintings, photographs, sculpture and artifacts representing the diverse contributions of African Americans. The collection ranges from African art to 19th-century landscape. Along with its permanent collection, CAAM hosts specially mounted exhibitions curated out of its own collection, as well as traveling exhibitions from other museums.

Exhibitions

Current exhibitions include

• "Lookin' Back in Front of Me: Selected Works of Mark Steven Greenfield, 1974-2014," (September 25, 2014 through July 5, 2015)
• "Light Catchers," (March 20, 2014 through June 7, 2015)
• "Curvature: Lines and Shapes," (July 24, 2014 through March 1, 2015)

Past exhibitions include

• "Black Chrome" concerning the West Coast's Black motorcycling experience.
• "In the Hands of African American Collectors: The Personal Treasures of Bernard and Shirley Kinsey" (the Kinsey Collection)
• "Intersections of South Central: People and Places in Historic and Contemporary Photographs"

Programs

The Museum's Education Department offers a broad range of programming and events designed to serve the needs of the greater Los Angeles community. Their focus is to provide a variety of enriching, entertaining and enlightening learning experiences, to serve as a resource for diverse communities and to broaden public awareness of the artistic, historical and cultural contributions of African Americans and how other cultures intersect with African American history, art and culture. More than 80 programs are offered annually and those include Target Sundays at CAAM,Young Docents, Young Docents After-Hours and Work-Study Re-Entry programs, Buses and Docents, Young Voices@CAAM, Conversations at CAAM, and Films at CAAM to name a few.

Management

The California African American Museum has a budget of about $3.5 million a year. Admission is free. The state provides $2.5 million, augmented by funds from a private nonprofit museum foundation that in recent years has generated annual contributions and other revenues of $650,000 to $1.4 million.

See also

• List of museums focused on African Americans
• California State and Consumer Services Agency

External links

• California African American Museum -
• Birth of the California African American Museum in Los Angeles

Further reading

• California African-American Museum. (2004). California African American Museum: "The Brown decision: A California perspective" : a roundtable discussion. Los Angeles?: Eighth and Wall Inc.
• Biggers, J. T., Hammons, D., Outterbridge, J., Cummings, M., Johnson-Calloway, M., California Afro-American Museum Foundation., J. Paul Getty Trust., Crystal Productions. (1991). African American art. Los Angeles, CA: J. Paul Getty Trust.

References

• http://www.caamuseum.org/web_pages/mission_statement.htm