Flooding at OMCA postpones exhibition
The Oakland Museum of California has delayed the opening of its Heath Ceramics exhibition to 2022 due to ongoing repairs in the museum’s Great Hall related to water damage caused by Bay Area storms on Oct. 24.
This is the second postponement for “Edith Heath: A Life in Clay,” a new retrospective of the famed Marin ceramicist and tableware innovator. The show was originally scheduled to open in June 2020 but was then delayed to Nov. 13, 2021, due to the COVID-19 outbreak.
The Great Hall’s repair work also requires the temporary closure of “Mothership: Voyage Into Afrofuturism,” which opened in August in a portion of the same gallery. OMCA Executive Director Lori Fogarty anticipates that “Mothership” will reopen in early December.
The museum’s other galleries, sculpture garden and Town Fare restaurant remain open to the public.
“At first we were trying to just dry everything out, but water is insidious, and once it is in floors, ceilings and walls, it becomes a health issue,” Fogarty told The Chronicle. “This is a particularly tricky space because it has parquet floors, which buckle. It is requiring removing all of the floor, all of the (temporary) walls that were in the area where there was water damage, and all of the ceilings.”
Damage in the Great Hall was contained to the gallery’s foyer and an exhibition space to the left of the entrance with a lower ceiling where the Heath exhibition was set to be installed.
No artworks in “Mothership” were damaged. Works that were on display in the foyer area were removed for safety while objects for “Heath” were not yet in the gallery at the time of the storm, Fogarty confirmed.
The leak originated on a terrace and office area — not accessible to the public — directly above the Great Hall where construction equipment
and materials were being stored during a recent garden renovation by Walter Hood of Hood Design Studio and the multiyear project to refresh the building by Mark Cavagnero Associates.
While there have been occasional problems with leaks in Kevin Roche’s landmark 1969 Brutalist building, Fogarty said the recent issues were “unprecedented” for the museum, which reopened to the public June 18 following a 15month pandemic closure.
There are no plans for any special fundraising efforts since the city of Oakland’s insurance is covering the repairs on the city building, Fogarty said. OMCA is working with the Hayward disaster restoration company Belfor on demolition of the damaged areas and repairs. The museum plans to install temporary flooring in some of the affected areas, but Fogarty said that supply chain issues may require adjustments to those plans.
There is currently no date set for the opening of the postponed Heath exhibition, but depending on repairs to the Great Hall, Fogarty said the show may be moved to a different gallery space in the museum.
“The Heath show is all about resilience, and now our resilience was being tested yet again,” Fogarty said. “(The show) will happen, and it will sustain us just like those ceramics do.”