Oceanside Museum of Art presents Masterpieces of San Diego Painting: Fifty Works from Fifty Years, 1900-1950, the inaugural exhibition for the grand opening of the museum's new 16,000 sqft Central Pavilion.

Masterpieces of San Diego Painting: Fifty Works from Fifty Years, 1900-1950 features some of San Diego's outstanding artists who lived and worked in the region between 1900 and 1950. It brings to focus the museum's mission to promote and foster the appreciation and understanding of regional art through its exhibitions, collections, and educational programs for the cultural enhancement of Southern California.

Guest curator Bram Dijkstra has assembled some of the finest paintings from private collections and museums that reveal the most accomplished artists during this fifty year period. The exhibition will include both the celebrated plein air painters of San Diego such as Maurice Braun, Charles Fries, and Charles Reiffel as well as the highly accomplished group of early modernists including Belle Baranceanu and Ethel Greene. Dijkstra is professor emeritus in comparative literature at the University of California, San Diego and author of several books, most recently, Belle Baranceanu: The Artist at Work and American Expressionism: Art and Social Change, 1920-1950. A nationally recognized scholar and art historian, Dijkstra is the author of the catalog that accompanies the exhibition which will be printed and bound in a hardcover portfolio commemorating the inauguration of the Frederick Fisher designed Central Pavilion.

Supported by The Historical Collections Council, Ivey Ranch/Stirling Enterprises, WIlliam and Dolores Marten, National Endowment for the Arts, Francis F Obler, Arthur and Molli Wagner.