Oct. 06--Marijuana has been the subject of films, television, novels, art and political deal-making (the latter, increasingly, about regulation). Now it will be the focus of a full-blown museum exhibition at the Oakland Museum of California (OMCA) -- the first show of its kind, according to the museum.
The show, titled "Altered State: Marijuana in California," will explore the history of the plant -- along with its social, political, scientific and cultural significance. The exhibition has been in the works for 18 months and will open in 2016 -- the same year California voters will likely face a ballot option to legalize marijuana for recreational use.
"It's inviting the public to think about this moment where we're writing a chapter of our state's history," says Kelly McKinley, who oversees the various curatorial departments at the OMCA. "This is a history that's being written."
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Certainly, this isn't the first time marijuana has cropped up in a gallery. Painter Fred Tomaselli, who has had exhibitions at the Brooklyn Museum and the Orange County Museum of Art, has long employed the leaves in his deeply layered resin works. A documentary photography series recently featured at Spot Photo Works in Hollywood examined the hard labor of growing and harvesting the plant. And certainly pot will be well-covered in a museum of cannabis history that is set to open in Denver next year.
But the show at the OMCA promises to be the first real-deal exhibition tackling the subject of marijuana in a methodical way. The museum regularly features a mixed program of art, history and the natural history of California (next year it plans exhibitions on the photographer Dorothea Lange and the history of the Black Panthers) and it will likewise employ a multidisciplinary approach to the marijuana show.
There will be sections devoted to the plant's medicinal and sacred uses, its political history and its creative associations. The installations, conceived with the help of an array of outside experts, will occupy a 3,700-square foot temporary gallery space.
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Certainly, the show has launched quite a bit of online buzz (assiduously covered on sites like Cannabis Now and the Weed Blog). But it's been a serious endeavor for the museum. McKinley took time out to chat about how the show came about, the type of reception it's gotten and the musician whose name most frequently crops up in the curatorial meetings. (This conversation has been lightly edited for flow.)
How did the OMCA arrive at the subject of marijuana?
We were thinking about topics that are interesting, that are shaping conversations around the dinner table -- so this was on the list of topics that we've been chewing on. When we saw that marijuana would likely be on the ballot for next year, we decided to put it on the calendar.
But, first and foremost, we had to feel that this was a topic worth tackling, that we could do it justice, that we could do it with balance. We're not pro legalization. We're not against legalization. Our question was, "Can we create conditions that could get people to talk about it?"
Once we felt we could do it justice, once we felt we had partners who could support that, we moved forward. We have partners from the medical field, the political field, from the artistic point of view. We want to make sure we have a broad representation of voices.
Did the idea meet resistance? And how exactly does this fit in with the museum's mission?
It's been interesting. We've had lots of questions: Why this topic? Why now? Why a museum? Why not leave this to the news stations? We've had lots of questions, but very little, "You should not be doing this." Our board doesn't vote on our exhibitions, but if they did not support this project they would have let our executive director know.
The museum has a long history, especially over the last nine years, of positioning itself in relation to its original mission. [The museum] was founded in 1969. It came out of this very particular moment in the history of California and was positioned as a place where people would share their histories. Lori Fogarty, our current executive director, very much has this mission in mind. So how can we tell the history of California? How can we create a platform for multiple voices? We want people to pause and think about that.
So what will the exhibition cover?
It will explore the history, it will explore the political side, it will show how it came to be called cannabis -- everything. It's trying to take as many different angles on everything that marijuana has impacted. We want to talk about things from a historical context -- how it's understood in the context of other banned substances, for example. And there's the creative context. In [the section titled] "Creative Grass," the team has been thinking about artists for whom marijuana has played a part in the creative process. I can't tell you how many times Bob Marley has come up.
I understand that you've been occasionally showing small mock-ups of the exhibition to some of the museum's members. How have these been received?
We have been prototyping this exhibition all summer and we've been so impressed with with the level of feedback across the board. It has had broad appeal across ages and members and non-members.
We even asked the public for the title of the exhibition. One Friday night we put up a big blank sheet and asked, "What should we call this show?" The one we picked was a name that some random visitor chose and everyone voted on. (Though the curatorial team has final say.) It's been a time-consuming process, but we believe that to be able to do this kind of controversial topic well, it's important to invest this type of effort to get it right.
Now on to the important stuff: what kind of merch will the museum be featuring in the gift shop?
I'd have to ask my colleague. [Laughs.] I'm sure he's having a great time imagining items to put on sale. That's been the fun part of this project. Everyone keeps asking, "What is your donor dinner going to look like?" "What will you do at the opening?"
"Altered State: Marijuana in California," opens April 16, 2016 at the Oakland Museum of California. 1000 Oak St., Oakland, museumca.org.
Find me on Twitter @cmonstah.
