Item 08 - Receive and File Bowers Museum Report

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PERMANENT EXHIBITIONS ONGOING - 0 For over 35 years Harold Van Pelt has quietly been perfecting the art of carving quartz, rock crystal andp agate gemstones. Gemstone Carvings: Masterworks by Harold Van Pelt is a display of his mastery. Each work in the exhibition is a reflection of hundreds of hours of craftsmanship. Van Pelt's working of the stone down to paper -thin walls brings out the gorgeous natural quality and colors of agate and gives quartz the transparency of glass. Transformed by one man's vision and skill from a solid stone to an incredibly delicate work of art, the gemstone carvings of Harold Van Pelt have to be seen to be believed. The Bowers Museum is proud to welcome this collection back to Santa Ana, where it was first exhibited in 2010. ONGOING California Legacies: Missions and Ranchos (1768-1848) features objects related to the settlement of Alta California through Spanish land grants, life at the California Missions and the wealth and lifestyles of the firstfamilies who flourished under Mexico's rule of California known as the Rancho period. The collection originating from Orange County's missions and ranchos includes the first brandy still to be brought to California, a statue of St. Anthony that originally stood in the Serra Chapel at Mission San Juan Capistrano, a dispatch pouch used by Native Americans to deliver messages between missions, and fine clothing, paintings and daily use objects. ONGOING Encounter Pre -Columbian Art from the western Mexican states of Colima, Nayarit and Jalisco. Visitors learn about West Mexican shaft tombs and the cultures that used this means of burying their dead. A selection of the ceramic figures placed inside shaft tombs to accompany the deceased in the afterlife are on display. The exhibition includes artworks that depict imagery from daily life, that show the intensity of West Mexican figurative work and that are naturalistic in form like the famously plump Colima dogs. ONGOING This extensive collection of Native Californian art and artifacts demonstrates the culture and history of the Southern California Coastal Indians. The visitor can explore the ways that Indians of the region interacted with their environment for food, clothing, adornment, and religion. The exhibition is presented in the Richard P. Ettinger Gallery.