Carolyn Campagna Kleefeld Contemporary Art Museum at California State University, Long Beach

Carolyn Campagna Kleefeld Contemporary Art Museum is a community of people who examine, critique, and create contemporary art and culture. Recently expanded to 11,000 square feet, the arts complex located on the beautiful campus of California State University, Long Beach, Kleefeld Contemporary is the only museum in Long Beach that is always free. Visitors can enjoy several new galleries, an education laboratory, Museum store, prints and drawings and room, archives room and more. We invite all to explore, shop, and learn at the Museum.

Exhibits

On Patron’s Plaza and in our Public Art Park, learn about our sustainable landscape through a variety of engaging activities. Go on a mini tour of our gardens and get to know our native and drought resistant plants. Children and folks of all ages may color our water-wise plants in our customized Museum gardens coloring book. Those who’d like to get more hands on may make their own mini planters for to take home with air-dry clay. All activities are free and open to the public with materials provided.

Public Art Park Tour and Art Activity:
At 12:00 p.m. enjoy a Public Art Park Tour with our docents and sketch the historic monument to peace, Vietnam, by American artist Tom Van Sant using our pastel and charcoal art kits. Visitors are asked to meet in museum lobby at noon if they would like to participate.

Museum Workshop in Education Laboratory:
Workshop stations inside in the Education Laboratory include explorations of pictographic as an art form. Using Weirs at Dawn by American artist Adolph Gottleib—currently on view in the Hurry Slowly exhibition.

Partners’ Activities on Patron’s Plaza:
• CSULB Science Center will present the examine the audio experience of phones, exploring how its sound is transmitted. They will host hands-on sessions with a variety of devices including the classic ‘cup-and-string phone’—also known as the Tin Can Telephone—to see if it really works!
• CSULB Shark Lab will share their Shark Shack, which aims to build an appreciation for sharks by reducing fear and informing the public about sharks and other marine life they may encounter at the beach. Come learn about marine and oceanic animals we share our oceans with

Current Exhibitions:

"Hurry Slowly" celebrates nearly fifty years of collecting leading up to the Museum’s anniversary in the 2023-2024 academic year. Now settled into our recently expanded home, we step into the future while honoring our origins as a teaching and collecting museum in service to our community. With over 70 objects on view, the exhibition encourages visitors to consider why and how museums collect works of art and learn about why we continue to acquire today. "Hurry Slowly" traces the Museum’s growth around steadfast themes, echoes shifting influences that have driven our evolution, and previews a future that reflects a more inclusive and progressive notion of how museums might grow. Artists such as Kim Abeles, Lita Albuquerque, Tina Barney, Rhona Bitner, Adolph Gottleib, Milton Resnick, Robert Rauschenberg, Michelle Vignes, and Dorr Bothwell are celebrated alongside new acquisitions from Clifford Prince King, Nancy Graves, Star Montana, Theodore Boyer, Brad Eberhard, Robin Mitchell, Stephanie Weber, and Charles Harlan.

"Miyoshi Barosh: The End" is centered on the eponymous 2017 sculptural mixed media work and the study sketches that led to its completion, the Mini Gallery holds space to explore an especially poignant creative process. Created shortly after the artist’s 2016 diagnosis with uterine cancer, "The End" is an exhibition that contemplates expression during the most profound conclusion one can consider: the end of one’s own life.

"Juan Gomez: Beautiful Blood/Sangre Hermosa", exhibits soft sculptures that are tied, tangled, and stitched into existence made by Long Beach-based artist Juan Gomez. Gomez honors his ancestors and his immediate family’s experiences as they immigrated into the United States, drawing upon the collective stories of his family, which profoundly inspire him.

"In-Between the Silence" is the inaugural exhibition of Carolyn Campagna Kleefeld. The space in-between the silence can best be described as a place that is not knowable by the mind, but its power and strength can be directly experienced by basking there. It is where the artist allows her to go, which is breathed back into her art and poetry.

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