For more than thirty years Oakland Museum of California senior curator Therese Heyman, who passed away in January, collected the work of California photographers and printmakers, both celebrated and obscure.

Beginning in 1961, eight years before the present building opened, Therese set herself the daunting task of assembling a comprehensive collection of California works on paper for the Museum. As she often remarked with characteristic modesty, the early sixties were a favorable time for such an enterprise. Many of the older artists were still alive, and photography was "the bargain of the art world."

Almost immediately, she secured donation of Dorothea Lange's vast archive of negatives, vintage prints and papers. This stunning achievement was followed by major acquisitions of work by pivotal California artists: Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, Imogen Cunningham, Anne Brigman and Carleton Watkins, to name just a few. Contemporary artists such as Richard Diebenkorn, Judy Dater and Beth Van Hoesen were enchanted by Therese's wide-ranging connoisseurship and unwavering concern for museum audiences.

Therese Heyman was enthralled by California. Daring, whimsical, against the grain of conventional wisdom, her exhibitions and catalogs defined the field and set the highest standard. Long-time visitors can vividly recall groundbreaking exhibitions of daguerreotypes, rock & roll posters, Pictorialist photography and women's narrative art, among many others.

The art displayed here, hung in a gallery Therese herself conceived, represents just a tiny fraction of the superb legacy she has bestowed on the Museum, and on the people of California.

Drew Heath Johnson

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