KEVIN SLOAN: A COLLECTION OF RARITIES
To inaugurate their new location in Thousand Oaks, California, the California Museum of Art presents a solo exhibition of work by Kevin Sloan that is rooted in the history and heritage of the city.
In the 1920s, the area was home to Jungleland USA, where animals were kept for the nearby and growing movie industry. Soon, though, the facility became a tourist attraction, a place for families to visit and interact with the exotic animals. It has been nearly 50 years since the park closed, and Sloan’s exhibition brings wildlife back to the community.
Tortoise rides were a popular draw at Jungleland USA, and provided the inspiration for Sloan’s 96 Springs. In the painting, a giant Galapagos tortoise ambles through the foreground, lit candles melting atop its shell. “We really have an evolving approach to how we deal with animals,” Sloan says. “I wanted to point to the tortoise as a symbol of how we interact with an ancient creature. These tortoises can live to be 150 years old, so an animal that was doing its job in the 1950s could still be with us and alive today.”
The exhibition draws its title—A Collection of Rarities—from this menagerie of strange creatures that lived together at Jungleland USA, and was the result of a meeting of the minds between Sloan and CMATO executive director Tish Greenwood. Greenwood had seen an exhibition that Sloan had done at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, a complement to a series of Audubon prints.
“She wanted to show that body of work again, but many of them had sold or moved on,” Sloan describes. “But she also had this idea that the