About the Place:
Taken from the website, "The Hilbert Museum of California Art at Chapman University, which opened in 2016, was founded thanks to the generosity of founders Mark and Janet Hilbert. The Hilbert Collection – which includes oils, watercolors and drawings of urban and industrial scenes, coastal views, farms, ranches and landscapes of everyday life – is a significant repository of images of the 20th century by California artists, celebrating the unique artistic and cultural development of the Golden State.
In November 2014, Chapman University announced that it had received a major gift of California art, valued at more than $7 million, from the Hilberts, in addition to $3 million from the couple toward establishing a museum on campus in which to permanently display the collection to the public.
“This will be the first museum anywhere that is totally dedicated to the display of California Scene and California representational art,” said Mark Hilbert. “The intent will be to cast a spotlight on this style of painting and these amazing artists, and to make this art known around the world. California has its own style, its own light, its own distinct landscape. California Scene paintings are distinguished from the earlier style of California Impressionism because these works show people and the works of humans: towns, cities, harbors, houses, ranches, cars, trains – people going about their everyday lives. These paintings show the changes taking place across our state as it grew, starting around 1920 – changes that are still happening and reflected in today’s representational art.”
A portion of the Hilbert collection of more than 1,000 paintings – mostly works in watercolor and oil created from the 1930s to the 1970s by such luminaries of the California Scene movement as Millard Sheets, Emil Kosa Jr., Mary Blair, Phil Dike, Milford Zornes and Rex Brandt, among others – will be displayed in the Museum’s permanent collection. In addition, rotating temporary exhibits will be scheduled."
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About the Person:
Taken from the website, "New York City-born Mark Hilbert arrived with his family in Pasadena at the age of three months – and has been a proud Californian ever since. He graduated from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo in 1966 with a degree in engineering, and immediately went to work for the Trane Company as an air conditioning engineer, a job he worked at for two decades. Over the course of that time, he began buying residential properties in Southern California. In 1985, he invented the “Chiller Optimizer,” a new product that reduced the energy consumption of air conditioning units. He sold the product in 1987 and began to devote this full time to managing his residential properties. In 1988, he founded Hilbert Property Management, a Newport Beach-based company in which he still serves as managing partner.
Mark married his wife, Janet, in 1994. Janet received her master’s degree and teaching credential from the University of Southern California, and served as professor of business at Santa Ana College for 35 years. Mark and Janet, who have three children and six grandchildren, reside in Newport Beach.
The couple began to collect California Scene paintings in 1992, when they bought a house together in Palm Springs and wanted to decorate it with original art. “I found our first California Scene painting at a consignment shop in Palm Springs that had a complete assortment of California watercolors,” Mark says. “It was love at first sight. After buying that first one, we developed an appreciation for the style. Since then, we’ve educated ourselves and continued to collect, and have now moved into collecting oil paintings and lithographs as well as watercolors.
“Building the Museum here at Chapman University is the perfect union of synergies,” Mark continues. “The ties with Chapman’s Dodge College of Film and Media Arts and the art and history departments will be very important. The setting here in the historic City of Orange, with its Old Towne district right in the heart of Southern California – all this combines to make Chapman the perfect home for our collection and the new Hilbert Museum of California Art. “"
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