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| About the Collection |
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| The Oakland
Museum of California is home to the California
Collections, rich in art, artifacts and natural specimens representing
the great diversity of California’s art, cultural history and
ecology. A part of the California Collections highlights Oakland,
the hometown of the Oakland Museum of California. |
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| This website welcomes you
to the Oakland collection at the Oakland
Museum of California. The Oakland collection presented here include
over 7000 objects related to Oakland, California. Oakland, as a city,
was founded 150 years ago, in 1852. Initially it was a small village
along what is now Broadway. In the following decades, the village
grew to become a commercial center, especially after it became the
western terminus of the first transcontinental railroad (1869). It
grew still larger by annexation of Brooklyn (1872), Vernon Heights
(1891), the area north to Berkeley (1897), and the area south to San
Leandro (1909). In 1910, the visionary Mayor Mott founded the city’s
first municipal museum, the Oakland Public Museum. As a cutting edge
museum in 1910, it began to acquire the California
Collections, which now, over 90 years later, number more than
one million objects. The Oakland collection that you find on this
website is part of the larger California Collections. |
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| The Oakland collection include
objects as large as a fire engine and as small as a stone marble.
You will find many photographs of Oakland’s past, some reaching back
to the 19th century and some much more recent. Also included are paintings
created by artists using aspects of Oakland as inspiration for their
work. There are a variety of artifacts including toys, costumes and
textiles, furniture, signs, documents and other objects used or made
in Oakland. In addition there are a few natural specimens found in
Oakland. All the objects presented here have been collected by the
Oakland Museum of California since 1910. Explore. Discover a myriad
of objects and images that sharpen focus on Oakland’s past as well
as its present. |
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| To learn more about the larger
California
Collections, visit the Oakland
Museum of California. Thousands of objects are on exhibit in galleries
of art, cultural history and natural science. Samples of the collection
are available on the museum’s website. Access to even more of the
collection is available without charge on Thursday afternoons from
1PM until 4PM, using computer terminals in the museum’s History office
on the 2nd level of the museum. Explore, discover, learn, and enjoy.
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