mindstalk | Oakland Museum (Reply)

Lesson: put more effort into looking up museums in a new place.

So, I've been here a good while now, but only learned a few weeks ago that the Oakland Museum existed, when a friend mentioned as a rainy day alternative to the Bonsai Garden. (We went to the Bonsai Garden.) Yesterday I looked into it a bit more, saw it was well-reviewed, and decided to burn valuable packing time to go check it out.

Bike and BART over. It's pretty close to both 12th Street and Lake Merritt stations, Google claims 3 minute rides. No great bike parking: rack outside the front entrance, a few more inside the garage, no supervision. No one stole anything, though.

$19 admission for adults. Free on first Sundays, though this was the second.

Three big exhibit halls: Art, History, and Natural History -- all of California; this isn't a broad general purpose museum. But fairly big halls.

The History one was most appealing to me. Fairly densely packed, and covering a lot. Native lifeways (could have used a lot more of that), colonial period, Mexican secession (kind of skipped independence), Gold Rush, horrifying genocide (like, direct and personal massacres) of natives, orange and bungalow boom period, Depression, WWII and internment, immigration ban, black power, bit more. If you looked at and read everything carefully, I'm sure it would take at least an hour, maybe two or more.

Art was more mixed for me. Couple of rooms on Dorothea Lange, activist photographer. Some small collections of California artists in Impressionist or Fauvist-looking styles, Hung Liu. A room of art books to look at, each one of which could probably occupy you for a good while. And more, but my notes and memory aren't up to snuff here.

Natural History... well, if you like ecological dioramas and taxidermied animals, they've got you covered. Some children's stuff too, which I didn't pay much attention to, but this hall was definitely the busiest of the three.

Special exhibit of "Calli" "Xicanx" art, which I eventually realized was not some obscure Mayan tribe but (probably) 'Chicano' with an initial X to be more Spanish and a final x to be genden neutral... I prefer the '-e' version of that ("Latine"), you can actually pronounce it. Various politically active art.

There's a nice outdoor garden and set of terraces, too.

Is it it worth making a long trip for? I dunno. Is it worth checking out once? Yeah. Can it take up a full afternoon or full day? Yeah and possibly.

If my review seems superficial, it's because I spent 3 hours across 4 halls, moving quickly at first just to eyeball everything and see what was there, and part of the time resting outside. Also I now have a gallery of 124 photos so you can just look at the stuff I found most interesting. :)