About the Oakland Museum of California
The Oakland Museum of California (OMCA) opened its doors in 1969, bringing together three older city institutions under one roof: the Oakland Public Museum, which had opened in 1910 in the Camron-Stanford House on Lake Merritt; the Oakland Art Gallery, which began in 1916 in the Oakland Municipal Auditorium; and the Snow Museum of Natural History, opened in 1922. The merger produced a single museum devoted to the art, history and natural environment of California, with what the museum describes as "a distinctly Oakland point of view."
The building itself is a landmark. Designed by Kevin Roche John Dinkeloo and Associates, with landscape architect Dan Kiley and garden designer Geraldine Knight Scott, the stepped concrete complex turns each gallery roof into a terrace for the level above, so that the museum reads from the street as a tiered public garden rather than a conventional building. The City of Oakland designated it an Oakland Landmark in 1995. OMCA holds more than two million objects across roughly 110,000 square feet of gallery space on a seven-acre campus, and it is accredited by the American Alliance of Museums.
The permanent displays are organized into three main galleries: the Gallery of California Art, the Gallery of California History and the Gallery of California Natural Sciences. The history gallery, built around the theme "Coming to California," unfolds as a timeline beginning before 1540 and running to the present through some 2,200 artifacts, artworks and photographs. Its sections cover the taking of Native lands during early statehood, the Black Power movement in Oakland, the wartime incarceration of Japanese Americans, and a rotating "History Now" space on current events.
Collections and Research Services
OMCA is a collecting museum rather than a genealogical library, so a family historian will not find obituary files or city directories here. What it does hold is one of the most important bodies of documentary photography in the country: the personal archive of Dorothea Lange, given by the photographer herself, which includes thousands of negatives and vintage prints along with her field notes and personal memorabilia. Lange's Depression-era and wartime work in California, including her photographs of Japanese American removal, is a primary source for anyone studying East Bay neighborhoods, farm labor or the home front of the 1940s.
The museum presents its holdings as "a resource for the research and understanding of California's dynamic cultural and environmental heritage," and its history collection also includes Native California baskets, Gold Rush-era material and Arts and Crafts-period work by Arthur and Lucia Mathews. Researchers with a specific collections question should contact the museum through its website; for locating old photographs of a particular Oakland street or house, start with our guide to finding old photos of a house and neighborhood, and for family lines see free family history research.
Planning Your Visit
OMCA is at 1000 Oak Street in downtown Oakland, a short walk from the Lake Merritt BART station. According to the museum's visitor page, galleries are open Wednesday through Sunday from 11 am to 5 pm, with extended hours to 9 pm on Fridays for the Friday Nights at OMCA music series, and closed Monday and Tuesday. General admission is $25 for adults, $22 for seniors 65 and over, $18 for youth 13 to 17, students and educators, free for children 12 and under, $1 for EBT cardholders, and free for members. The museum garage at 1000 Oak Street, with entrances on Oak and 12th Streets, charges $5 per hour with an early-bird flat rate. Three accessibility ramps serve the Oak Street entrance, the 12th Street entrance and the cafe. Check museumca.org for current exhibitions, holiday closures and ticket reservations.
Two other Bay Area collections on this site complement a visit: the Richmond Museum of History across the bay in Contra Costa County, and the Chinese Historical Society of America in San Francisco's Chinatown.
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