California Kinship: Painting Homelife in the Golden State Before 1940

California Kinship invites visitors into the private worlds of Californians in the early 20^th century, presenting portraits and scenes of everyday life that depict intimacy, care, and harmony, qualities that defined homelife and kinship for many in the growing state.

Sweeping social changes shaped Californian homelife between 1900 and 1940. The state pioneered the country’s first publicly funded kindergartens and in 1911 granted women the right to vote, nine years before women could do so nationally. Through its innovative banking entrepreneurs, California was also the first state to offer modest loans to working-class people seeking to buy or build their first homes. These developments and others reconfigured communities and domestic life, especially in terms of gender roles. The works on view grapple with these changes, conveying the progressive or conservative perspectives of their artists, and of Californians more broadly.

The exhibition is divided into three sections, sorted by levels of intimacy, from the closest to the most expansive. “Intimate Interiors” focuses on portraits of individuals in their homes and examines how artists created a sense of intimacy with their subjects while subtly communicating stories about their lives and relationships. “Caring for Others” features group portraits and images of pets that represent how care and connection are expressed across social classes, cultures, and relationships within and beyond the nuclear family. “The Secret Homelives of Suburbanites,” the third section, explores how suburban architecture and gardens nurtured a sense of privacy and peace conducive to bonding with others and communing with nature. These works are placed in dialogue with images of working-class and immigrant neighborhoods in urban centers where different notions of privacy and belonging developed.