“100 Years of Creative Visions”
Mills College Art Museum Centennial Celebration
5000 MacArthur Blvd., Oakland
September 13, 2025 - April 26, 2026
October 4th marked 100 years to the day since Mills College Art Museum opened its doors. To mark the occasion, the museum hosted an event on the veranda with live performance and hors-d'oeuvres. Kulcha Vulcha doesn’t subsist solely on carrion so I glided down to the scene. I spotted some fellow kulchas. Kulcha Kurious, Kulcha Beara and Kulcha Kub.
Properly gorged, I headed in for “100 Years of Creative Visions.” Albert M. Bender, one of the museum’s founders, was an early supporter of contemporary California Impressionist painters and the modernist photographers that formed Group f.64, which included Ansel Adams and Imogen Cunningham. Bender’s interests were broad and grew to encompass art from East Asia, ceramics, and wood-block prints. With Directors Roi Partridge and Dr. Alfred Neumeyer, the museum showcased Mexican modernists while building an impressive group of modern European works on paper.
The Mills archives are home to an embarrassment of riches. How does one curate so much work into one show? The first leg pays homage to the past while looking to the future. Foundational Group f.64, with prints from Cunningham and Adams prominent, is gallery-right. This is balanced with works representing contemporary communities and cultures at left.
Prints followed in the next gallery, including 15th Century Master Dürer. Try as I might, my attention was wrestled away. Prints by Klee and Miro were not to be resisted. I tried to play it cool but lost it when I spotted Rivera’s “Mother and Child” in the next gallery. Fortunately for an experienced culture vulture, “losing it” comes across like simply looking at something, just with a slight smirk.
Designed by Mills College’s original chief architect Walter Ratcliff Jr., the Mills College Art Museum is as much an attraction as the art homed therein. The building combines Beaux-Arts Classical and Spanish Colonial Revival architectural styles. The façade of the building, once the original entrance, was turned to face inward and is now the back wall. Hippocrates is inscribed on the top “Ars Longa, Vita Brevis” (Art is long, life is short).
Not long ago, Mills College’s future, like many public and private arts institutions, was uncertain. Mills declared a financial emergency in 2017. In 2022, it merged with Northeastern University, saving the school, grounds and (most important on this day), museum. I hadn’t been on the campus since a friend’s graduation over a decade before. How much had changed since the merger, I couldn’t say, but a quick glance at a car kit that transformed its grill to one resembling Darth Vader with an underbite, reminded me that it was definitely a different time.
It was easy on an afternoon such as this to imagine a different crowd on the veranda; all evening wear, pearl-tipped cigarette holders and prohibition gin. The promenade leading back to MacArthur looks much the same as it would have then.
