Established 1981 Founded 1981 | Phone +1 213-744-7432 | |
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Type Cultural Heritage Institution Director George O. Davis (Executive), Naima Keith (Deputy) Curator Tiffini Bowers (History), Mar Hollingsworth (Visual Arts), Vida L. Brown (Visual Arts), Sonia Brown (Education), Denise L. Mc Iver (Research Library) Address 600 State Dr, Los Angeles, CA 90037, USA Hours Closed today MondayClosedTuesday10AM–5PMWednesday10AM–5PMThursday10AM–5PMFriday10AM–5PMSaturday10AM–5PMSunday11AM–5PM Public transit access Expo Park/USC station (Expo Line) Similar California Science Center, Natural History Museum, Craft and Folk Art Museum, Exposition Park, Fowler Museum at UCLA Profiles | ||
The California African American Museum (CAAM) is a museum located in Exposition Park, Los Angeles, California, United States. The Museum focuses on enrichment and education on the cultural heritage and history of African Americans with a focus on California and western United States. Admission is free to all visitors. Their mission statement is " To research, collect, preserve, and interpret for public enrichment the history, art and culture of African Americans with an emphasis on California and the western United States.
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CAAM hosts independent and collaborative educational programs both on and off site of lectures, workshops, innovative programs, and hands-on activities that serve public and private school students, museum patrons and community visitors.
California african american museum
History
CAAM was chartered by the State of California in 1977 and first opened in 1981, in temporary quarters at the California Museum of Science and Industry (now the nearby California Science Center).
Building
The current facility was built with state and private funds of around $5 million. The museum was designed by the African–American architects Jack Haywood and Vince Proby. The new museum building opened to the public during the Los Angeles Olympic Games in July 1984. A major renovation occurred between 2001 and 2003.
The museum occupies a 44,000 square feet (4,100 m2) building. It includes three exhibition galleries, a theater gallery, a 14,000-square-foot (1,300 m2) sculpture court, a conference center special events room, an archive and research library. Behind the scenes there are administration offices, exhibit design and artifact storage areas.
A 2011 preliminary planning by design firm Huff and Gooden Architects pegged the cost at $67.3 million for a major expansion and renovation that would nearly triple the size of the museum.
Collection
CAAM exists to research, collect, preserve and interpret for public enrichment, the history, art and culture of African Americans. The museum conserves more than 6,300 objects of art, historical artifacts and memorabilia, and maintains a research library with more than 20,000 books and other reference materials available for limited public use.
The permanent collection includes paintings, photographs, sculpture and artifacts representing the diverse contributions of African Americans. The collection ranges from African art to 19th-century landscape. Along with its permanent collection, CAAM hosts specially mounted exhibitions curated out of its own collection, as well as traveling exhibitions from other museums.
Exhibitions
Current exhibitions include:
Past exhibitions include:
Programs
The Museum's Education Department offers a broad range of programming and events designed to serve the needs of the greater Los Angeles community. Their focus is to provide a variety of enriching, entertaining and enlightening learning experiences, to serve as a resource for diverse communities and to broaden public awareness of the artistic, historical and cultural contributions of African Americans and how other cultures intersect with African American history, art and culture. More than 80 programs are offered annually and those include Target Sundays at CAAM,Young Docents, Young Docents After-Hours and Work-Study Re-Entry programs, Buses and Docents, Young Voices@CAAM, Conversations at CAAM, and Films at CAAM to name a few.
Management
The California African American Museum has a budget of about $3.5 million a year. Admission is free. The state provides $2.5 million, augmented by funds from a private nonprofit museum foundation that in recent years has generated annual contributions and other revenues of $650,000 to $1.4 million. In July 2015, George Davis was named as a new executive director to mainly oversee strategic planning, budget management, and outreach development of the museum. CAAM also welcomed Naima Keith, a curator at the Studio Museum in Harlem, in February 2016 as its deputy director to manage exhibitions and programs.
The California Natural Resources Agency oversees the California African American Museum and the California Science Center.