Irvine, CA…Jack and Shanaz Langson Institute and Museum of California Art (Langson IMCA) today announced its summer exhibition, California Kinship: Painting Home Life in the Golden State Before 1940, on view June 7 through August 30, 2025. Featuring over 30 paintings and nearly a dozen works on paper, the presentation illuminates how the notion of kinship in the early 20th century—a notably progressive period in the state’s history—expanded beyond familial ties to include pets, plants, neighbors, immigrants, and broader social networks.

Drawn from Langson IMCA’s collection and loans from private collections, intimate portraits, domestic scenes, and imagery of everyday life reveal how artists responded to changing notions of domesticity and the effects of suburbanization, women’s suffrage in California, and rapid population growth in the Golden State. Langson IMCA Assistant Curator Michaëla Mohrmann, Ph.D., organized the exhibition in four sections, inviting viewers to examine the closest levels of intimacy to more expansive relationships.

“California Kinship is our Museum’s first exhibition focusing on portraiture and scenes of everyday life. These works capture the Progressive Era’s rapidly changing gender roles, access to home ownership, and notions of community belonging—topics that continue to be highly pertinent to present-day Californians,” said Mohrmann.

“Intimate Interiors” focuses on portraits of individuals in their homes and how artists created a sense of closeness with their subjects. The artists in this section, many of whom had trained in Paris, drew inspiration from emerging movements like Fauvism and Symbolism as well as French Impressionism. Portraying subjects indoors amid their personal belongings allowed them to render aspects of the sitter’s identity and psychological inner life.

Alson Skinner Clark’s Our Dining Room (1939) depicts a private space in the artist’s home, providing insights into his life. In his last decade of life, while preparing his retrospective at the Los Angeles Museum of History, Science, and Art (now the Los Angeles County Museum of Art), Clark created this painting as a nostalgic meditation on his artistic trajectory through allusions to his teachers, William Merritt Chase and James McNeill Whistler.

At the beginning of the 20th century, American art academies upheld the tradition of the nude as the pinnacle of artistic training. Artists represented in the “The Painter-Model Partnership” section were expected to render the human form through direct observation of live nude models. These idealized representations of the body also serve as the artists’ commentaries on evolving artistic conventions.

“Caring for Others” features portraits and images of pets representing how care and connection are expressed across social classes, cultures, and relationships within and beyond the human family. Paintings of individual sitters reveal their roles within a family while group portraits provide insights into family dynamics and values.

In Navajo (1930), Elsie Palmer Payne focuses on the care Navajo women routinely provided their children. While daily maternal responsibilities, such as hair braiding and cooking were widely minimized as “women’s work,” Payne elevates these activities through her attentive portrayal of kinkeeping and would eventually replicate such scenes on a larger scale.

The last section, “The Architecture of the Home,” explores how suburban architecture and gardens nurtured a sense of privacy and peace conducive to bonding with others and communing with nature. California’s growing suburban middle class rejected modern architecture and built cottages and bungalows inspired by the Arts and Crafts movement. Plein-air artists represented in the exhibition were inspired by these residential settings as well as their lush gardens, which extended domestic space as depicted by Arthur F. Mathews in Ladies in the Garden (1923).

Such suburban dwellings contrasted dramatically with the cramped housing of immigrant neighborhoods in cities. Of Czech origin, Emil J. Kosa, Jr. was drawn to these tight-knit neighborhoods where other notions of privacy and belonging developed.

Public programs will be announced on Langson IMCA’s website at imca.uci.edu.

About UC Irvine Jack and Shanaz Langson Institute and Museum of California Art

UC Irvine Jack and Shanaz Langson Institute and Museum of California Art (Langson IMCA) is home to two foundational gifts of California Art from The Irvine Museum and Gerald E. Buck estate. In addition, the permanent collection of more than 4,700 works from the late 19th century and early 20th century through present day continues to grow, augmented by acquisitions and gifts. The university is planning to construct a permanent museum and research institute to serve as a global magnet for the presentation and study of California Art within its social, historical, environmental, and cultural frameworks. Langson IMCA is currently located in an interim museum space at 18881 Von Karman Avenue, Suite 100, in Irvine, CA. The Museum is open to all Tuesday through Saturday 10 am to 4 pm. Admission and parking up to two hours are free. For more information, visit imca.uci.edu. Follow us on Instagram @langsonimca.

About the University of California, Irvine

Founded in 1965, UC Irvine is a member of the prestigious Association of American Universities and is ranked among the nation’s top 10 public universities by U.S. News & World Report. The campus has produced five Nobel laureates and is known for its academic achievement, premier research, innovation, and anteater mascot. Led by Chancellor Howard Gillman, UC Irvine has more than 36,000 students and offers 224 degree programs. It’s located in one of the world’s safest and most economically vibrant communities and is Orange County’s second-largest employer, contributing $7 billion annually to the local economy and $8 billion statewide. For more on UC Irvine, visit www.uci.edu.

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Media Contacts

For additional information, Libby Mark or Heather Meltzer at Bow Bridge Communications, LLC, New York City; info@bow-bridge.com.

Image captions

Edouard Vysekal, The Sisters, 1922, Oil on canvas, 36 1/8 × 34 1/8 in., UC Irvine Jack and Shanaz Langson Institute and Museum of California Art. Gift of The Irvine Museum

Alson Skinner Clark, Our Dining Room, 1939, Oil on board, 22 × 18 1/2 in., UC Irvine Jack and Shanaz Langson Institute and Museum of California Art. Gift of The Irvine Museum

Elsie Palmer Payne, Navajo Camp, 1930, Gouache on paper, 21 1/8 × 25 1/8 in. The Buck Collection at UC Irvine Jack and Shanaz Langson Institute and Museum of California Art, © DCM Trust

William Lees Judson, My Rose Garden, after 1893, Oil on canvas, 18 × 15 in. The Buck Collection at UC Irvine Jack and Shanaz Langson Institute and Museum of California Art