Art

Visit to renovated Oakland Museum a hands-on experience

As Alyssia Alexandria entered the newly renovated History Gallery at the Oakland Museum of California (OMCA) Friday night, a museum volunteer handed her a few scraps of drawing paper, a small yellow pencil, and a black and white pamphlet, an official invitation to play “Choose Your Own California Adventure.”

Exhibit reveals forgotten objects, inner workings of Oakland Museum

When conceptual artist Mark Dion needed materials for his new exhibition at the Oakland Museum of California, he headed behind the scenes, or technically, under the scenes. “It was a little bit like raiding the icebox,” he says of his time in the belly of the building. “I began scrounging through the archives, spending a lot of time in storage.” After unearthing an eclectic mix of lost treasures—everything from Reagan campaign buttons to a stuffed baby elephant—Dion constructed “The Marvelous Museum,” which opens Sept. 11.

Taking a surreal walking tour down Telegraph Avenue

Dozens of people participated in a different type of art walk along Telegraph Avenue on Friday. It was the launch of Invisible City Audio Tours, which has the goal of showing an alternative way of looking at Telegraph Avenue by bringing together Bay Area authors, visual artists and a composer to guide walkers on a tour from MacArthur Bart Station to the central hub of Art Murmur.

To ride with the scraper bike king, helmet required

If you want to ride with the scraper bike king, you better wear a helmet. Tyrone “Baybe Champ” Stevenson Jr., known around Oakland as the “king” and creator of the scraper bike movement, announced his new rule of the road Saturday near Oakland City Hall.

Oakland murals color the urban jungle

Hundreds of street murals brighten Oakland’s walls, painted by local artists, graffiti writers and collectives, like the Community Rejuvenation Project. Some are “bombed”, i.e. done without permission, on the fly, usually at night. Others are commissioned by private businesses and public institutions. This audio slideshow is a preview of some of them.

Oakland Museum presents 25 years of Pixar

After a five-year, 14-stop worldwide tour that kicked off at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 2005, the exhibition that covers Pixar’s entire lifespan is coming home. The Oakland Museum displays the East Bay studio’s unique visual style and extraordinarily vivid digital animation that brought the world Toy Story, WALL-E, and Finding Nemo.

Bring out the paintbrushes and hammers — arts and science camp begins

On an outdoor deck overlooking Lake Merritt, kids are busy sawing, hammering and sanding wood. Carpentry is just one of the classes offered at the Junior Center of Art and Science during its summer arts and science camp, which just kicked off on Monday. The Junior Center of Art and Science is an independent non-profit organization that has been in Oakland for 55 years and works to use a hands-on approach in teaching kids about science and art.