An Appreciation
(Grace and Marion)

Letter from the Curator

In March of 1956, the Bakersfield Museum of Art opened its doors as the Cunningham Gallery after a donation from the Osborn family who wanted to establish an art gallery in memory of their daughter, artist Marion Osborn Cunningham. Cunningham was born in 1908 in Indiana, as the first of three children of Walter and Priscilla Osborn. The family settled in Bakersfield in 1911, their first home was on Sunset Avenue. Marion attended Bakersfield High School (then known as Kern County Union High School) and studied art under the beloved Mrs. Ruth Emerson. After continuing her studies at Santa Barbara City College and then Stanford University, Marion made her home in San Francisco. There she quickly gained national recognition for her artwork. In the 1930s she was well known as a pastel artist, and in the 1940s for her printmaking. Her small compositions were praised for their curious, dream-like charm and color harmony. She maintained a studio on Montgomery Street, the center of San Francisco’s art colony. Her untimely death at the age of 39 cut her prolific career short, but Cunningham and her work continue to reign as a significant facet of BMoA's history and legacy. 

Nearly one-quarter of BMoA's 400-piece permanent collection is comprised of Cunningham's serigraphs, drawings, pastels, and paintings. Our Collection Policy states that we are required to remain stewards of her work, and if a work of hers is made available, we must accession it. Anytime you visit BMoA, you will find her intimate street scenes or surreal landscapes on display. She is deeply woven into our history. 

Recently, I read an article about the original Director of SFMOMA Grace McCann Morley (1900-1985) that encouraged further research about this powerhouse of a woman. Morley is vital to the history of California's art scene and was a pioneer in championing contemporary art and democratizing museums. While exploring her legacy, I realized I had come across this woman while during research for BMoA's 2016 exhibition of Cunningham's work: The Life and Work of Marion Osborn Cunningham. In BMoA's archive sits a small pink catalog from a 1957 exhibition at the original gallery. For the booklet, Grace Morley wrote a short essay titled An Appreciation, which introduced Cunningham's work with knowledge, grace, and awareness:

"Marion Cunningham was throughout her career an artist of conviction and personality. In the 30’s, her work, done principally in San Francisco, reflected the current interest in the American scene. But she recorded the local subjects she knew and loved so well with a freshness of vision which her favorite medium at that time, pastel, rendered vividly and brightly. She was adept at composition and design and her use of color was decorative, so that her work was always more than a record of observed reality and always essentially a work of art.

"Later when she took up the technique of the serigraph she was able to keep the same qualities, matured by her art study and made more effective by her developed style and long experience in art. Even in this multiple-copy medium she was able to keep her personality in her work and contributed an individual flavor and style much to be admired.

"She will hold her place in California’s art as an artist of talent and quality and her contribution in pastel and in serigraph techniques will not be forgotten. She gave them both distinction and character. It is appropriate that the city she called home should do her honor and in her name provide a museum to enrich with art activity, community life, and with art example the education of young people, some of whom may well follow in her steps as artists."

Realizing there was a connection between these two women, whom I respect, is a discovery that genuinely delights a curator. However, it is in Morley's last sentence, where I find excitement in being able to confirm that her hopes for this museum have and continue to be fulfilled. For it is through the contributions of both Marion and Grace and many other creatives, artists, donors, staff and supporters that BMoA perseveres and can enrich the community through the arts. 

Rachel Magnus
Curator
Bakersfield Museum of Art