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<\/a>\u201cA Winter Day\u201d (2023, acrylic) by Brad Maxey is part of \u201cChanging Terrain,\u201d a joint exhibition between Oceanside Museum of Art and San Diego History Center. (OMA & SDHC)<\/p>\nQ: What was the genesis of this exhibition?<\/p>\n
Katie Dolgov: The genesis of \u201cChanging Terrain\u201d originated from \u201cNature Improved,\u201d a 2013 exhibition that marked the first partnership between Oceanside Museum of Art (OMA) and San Diego History Center (SDHC) around shared themes of landscape and the environment.<\/p>\n
As the concept of building on that exhibition developed, we realized how dramatically the region\u2019s art scene had grown over the past 13 years. This presented an exciting opportunity not only to renew our partnership and honor that history, but also to consider what a contemporary regional landscape exhibition could look like today.<\/p>\n
Contemporary artistic expression has evolved, OMA has evolved, and our relationship to the land has become increasingly complex through a deeper understanding of its history, politics, development and climate change.<\/p>\n
Rather than recreate \u201cNature Improved,\u201d we decided to use it as a starting point, honoring the history of the partnership with SDHC while asking what a contemporary regional landscape exhibition could look like now.<\/p>\n
Q: You can say this is a sequel to a 2013 joint exhibition between SDHC and OMA. What led to this iteration?<\/p>\n Dolgov: The exhibition could be considered a sequel in some respects, but with dramatic departures from the original. Developed by an entirely new curatorial team, it brings together artists from \u201cNature Improved\u201d whose practices continue to feel timely and relevant, alongside exceptional artists from across the region known to members of the curatorial advisory committee.<\/p>\n Perhaps the biggest departure was the addition of artists identified through a regional open call. This brought dozens of artists into the conversation with whom we had never worked before, opening the exhibition to a much wider range of perspectives and practices. This became an opportunity to reflect the remarkable growth and evolution of the region\u2019s art community since 2013, and to make sure the exhibition reflects those expanded voices.<\/p>\n Q: As members of the curatorial team, what criteria did you use to narrow down the list of artists?<\/p>\n Dolgov: We approached it from a few different directions. We worked with experts in the field to identify some of the strongest landscape artists working in the region, invited a number of artists from \u201cNature Improved,\u201d and then spread the word about the open call as widely as possible to bring in artists we hadn\u2019t worked with before.<\/p>\n That resulted in 1,109 entries by 192 artists. We first looked for the most well-executed work in terms of concept, novelty and technical execution, individually scoring the submissions and narrowing them down to roughly 280 works.<\/p>\n But that was really the easy part. The harder part was making those final, painful eliminations from a group that was thoroughly excellent and powerful. We had to prioritize thinking about the exhibition as a cohesive unit while still representing the incredible diversity of ways artists are thinking about landscape. We wanted to select works that spoke to each other, created visual and conceptual conversations, and collectively told a larger story about a region in flux. We also wanted to represent as many perspectives on landscape as possible, including Indigenous voices, memory, history, climate, development, culture, community, and the ways people physically and psychologically experience a place.<\/p>\n So the criteria weren\u2019t just \u201cis this a good landscape painting?\u201d We were asking: Does this bring something new to the conversation? Does it add a perspective we don\u2019t already have? Does it work with the other artworks? And ultimately, does it help us build a compelling exhibition?<\/p>\n Gabriel Boils: In order to narrow down the list of selected artists for the exhibition, in addition to the careful survey of technical merit, originality and visual impact of the artworks under review, we also paid close attention to the reflections and commentaries that each artist proposed through their work upon the subject of landscape. In this sense, we considered the notion of change, as both a constant present in nature, and in the constantly evolving relationship that we, as the human species, have with our natural environment.<\/p>\n Q: What was the most challenging part of putting this together?<\/p>\n Dolgov: One of the most challenging parts of the project was realizing there are as many ways to look at and consider a landscape as there are people to do the looking and considering. There were so many excellent works and so many compelling directions we could have taken. We were constantly balancing individual artworks against the larger exhibition. And of course, there\u2019s the practical question of what actually works together in the gallery. Ultimately, it was about making difficult choices while knowing there was no single \u201cright\u201d version of this exhibition.<\/p>\n Boils: The process of the selecting both artists and participating artworks was not easy given the substantial and exciting response from the open call, but since this show is deployed across two venues, it was quite a challenge to strike a balance so that the exhibition could be appreciated in its entirety\u00a0 \u2014 in terms of the diversity of techniques and different approaches to the overall theme \u2014 in the works shown at each museum, while also establishing connections that integrate the exhibition as a whole.<\/p>\n Q: The most rewarding?<\/p>\n Dolgov: One of the most rewarding parts of putting this exhibition together was realizing that the idea of landscape is never static; it is built, and crafted, and destroyed, and burnt, and overgrown, and never ever the same twice. Also, realizing there are so many different ways to understand and represent this place we live in. The exhibition feels like a snapshot of the region right now, a really exciting peek into how artists are seeing and thinking about our changing landscape, rather than a definitive statement on the subject.<\/p>\n Boils: This was a very rewarding experience, firstly because of the inclusion of artworks that approached the landscape through different media, some of which are quite unconventional in the traditional representation of this artistic genre. I also consider it was a significant decision to include works by artists residing in Tijuana, Tecate and Ensenada, since we ultimately share the same ecosystem, climate and environmental challenges.<\/p>\n Finally, it was also a great experience to gain a deeper understanding of the artistic production around this subject from the many talented artists from all over the county and beyond, and get to know and work with the dedicated teams at both Oceanside Museum Art, and again with the San Diego History Center.<\/p>\n Q: At the end of the day, what was your goal in putting this show together?<\/p>\n Dolgov: Our goal was to create a snapshot of how contemporary artists in this region are simultaneously creating works that are stunning depictions of the world around us while exploring the many ways environment, history, culture, climate, memory and community shape our experience of a place. Just as importantly, we wanted to bring new voices into that conversation while honoring the history of \u201cNature Improved.\u201d Twenty-nine of the artists are completely new to OMA. That makes the exhibition not just about landscape, but about the evolution and expansion of OMA\u2019s relationship with the regional art community. The result is intentionally just a small slice of a much bigger, constantly changing regional art community.<\/p>\n Boils: I was invited to be part of the project after it was conceptualized.\u00a0 However, the appreciation of \u201clandscape\u201d is a universally shared human experience.<\/p>\n The growing interest on this subject nowadays is present in all mediums and techniques in contemporary art practice, surely because the impact humankind has had on the planet is becoming increasingly evident. Climate change is likely the greatest challenge facing humanity in this century. Therefore, I believe it is appropriate and highly relevant to reflect on the relationship we have with our changing natural environment.<\/p>\n In this exciting exhibition, our region is aesthetically surveyed by its inhabitants from diverse points of view: Some relate to the territory and its sociopolitical implications, others to the environment and the need for sustainability. Some more, to the very concept of landscape and its representation in various media, and finally there are those who approach the landscape through memory and imagination.<\/p>\n Oceanside Museum of Art and San Diego History Center present \u201cChanging Terrain\u201d<\/p>\n When: Through Jan. 17<\/p>\n Where: Oceanside Museum of Art, 704 Pier View Way, Oceanside; and San Diego History Center, 649 El Prado, San Diego<\/p>\n Admission: OMA: $15 adult; $10 seniors 65 and up; free for members, youth 17 and under, college students with I.D., and active military and dependents with I.D. SDHC: Suggested donation: $10 or more.<\/p>\n Phone: (760) 435-3720 and (619) 232-6203<\/p>\n Online: oma-online.org<\/a> and sandiegohistory.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the Curator\u2019s Words\u00a0is an occasional series that takes a critical look at current exhibitions through the eyes…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":500225,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[7,967,181,3054,3282,74,84,76,75,420,18740],"class_list":["post-500224","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-california","tag-entertainment","tag-latest-headlines","tag-north-county","tag-oceanside","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-county","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news","tag-things-to-do","tag-visual-arts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/500224","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=500224"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/500224\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/500225"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=500224"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=500224"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=500224"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a>\u201cParking Lot at Night\u201d (2025, acrylic on canvas) by Lynette K. Henderson is part of \u201cChanging Terrain,\u201d a joint exhibition between Oceanside Museum of Art and San Diego History Center. (OMA & SDHC)<\/p>\n<\/a>\u201cAerial Gunnery Range\u201d (2024, mixed media) by Jennifer Steffey is part of \u201cChanging Terrain,\u201d a joint exhibition between Oceanside Museum of Art and San Diego History Center. (OMA & SDHC)<\/p>\n<\/a>\u201cCarscape Wind Farm\u201d (2026, oil on canvas) by Kim Reasor is part of \u201cChanging Terrain,\u201d a joint exhibition between Oceanside Museum of Art and San Diego History Center. (OMA & SDHC)<\/p>\n<\/a>\u201cNight\u2019s Passage\u201d (2025, oil on canvas) by Joshua Orozco is part of \u201cChanging Terrain,\u201d a joint exhibition between Oceanside Museum of Art and San Diego History Center. (OMA & SDHC)<\/p>\n