North Wing
Harbors and Horizons: Maritime Prints by Phil Dike
Throughout his career, Phil Dike (1906-1990), one of Southern California’s most accomplished and respected artists, was repeatedly drawn to coastal and maritime subjects. Harbors, docks, sailboats and open water provided an ideal framework for his artistic interests, allowing him to balance strong structure with expansive space.
North Wing
Jørgen Klubien: at Disney and Pixar
Born and raised in Denmark, Jørgen Klubien emerged in the international animation world during one of the most important creative eras in the history of Walt Disney Animation Studios and Pixar Animation Studios. His drawings, storyboards, and character explorations helped form the invisible architecture beneath many of the films that defined a generation.
Sodaro South Wing
Cabinets of Wonder: The Art of Ralph Allen Massey
Enter the witty, wildly imaginative world of Los Angeles painter Ralph Allen Massey, who has been devoted to exploring the quirks, memories and visual poetry of American pop culture. Each work functions as a miniature “cabinet of wonder,” inviting visitors to linger, decode hidden jokes and references, and rediscover cultural icons that shaped generations.
North Wing
Witness to a Vanishing West: Maynard Dixon and The Oregon Trail
In 1927, near the end of a remarkable career, Maynard Dixon undertook what would become his last major illustration commission: a cycle of drawings for a new edition of Francis Parkman’s classic 1849 travel narrative, The Oregon Trail. The resulting works — nine of which are on view in this exhibition — stand among Dixon’s most evocative and mature achievements.
Sodaro South Wing
Route 66 – Happy 100th Birthday to America’s Mother Road: Paintings by Joan Gladstone
Celebrate the centennial of America’s most iconic highway as artist Joan Gladstone captures the spirit and nostalgia of historic Route 66 – the “Mother Road” that stretches 2,400 miles, from Chicago to Santa Monica. This exhibition showcases 18 vivid contemporary oil paintings of the legendary road and its bold, colorful signage.
North Wing
Stone and Scene
In Asia, the practice of deep meditation focusing on a “viewing stone” or “scholar’s stone” stretches back for centuries. This fascinating exhibition pairs, for the first time, a diverse collection of viewing stones with paintings selected from The Hilbert Collection. Some of the arrangements in the gallery acknowledge the shared similarities of paintings and stones. Others pose questions about the reasons for their juxtaposition.
Sodaro South Wing
Emigdio Vasquez: Retrospective 50
The art of Emigdio Vasquez (1939-2014) returns to the Hilbert Museum in what marks the largest and most comprehensive collection of his works ever exhibited. The exhibition features more than 50 oil paintings—many never before shown in public—drawn from the collections of Vasquez’s family and other devoted collectors, and traces his artistic evolution.
North Wing
Spirits of Earth and Fire: Pueblo Pottery from the Hilbert Collection
This exhibition highlights the artistry of top Indigenous potters from the pueblos of the Southwest, including exquisite tiles by the legendary Nampeyo and elegant vessels by Sara Fine Tafoya, Monica Silva, and others. Formed from the land and fired with care, these ceramics embody centuries-old traditions passed down through generations of Pueblo artists.
North Wing, Burra Family Community Room
Rock On, California! California’s Rock Poster Revolution
This exhibition, curated by Chapman University students, honors the artistic stylings of California’s rock music event posters. In the mid-1960s, a new kind of graphic art burst onto the streets of California. Created to promote live music but driven by artistic experimentation, rock posters became one of the most distinctive visual expressions of the burgeoning counterculture.
North Wing
Radiant Portable White Plastic Radios 1936-1960
These portable radios capture a remarkable evolution of form and style, from the bold geometry of Art Deco through the softer, streamlined silhouettes of the 1940s and into the optimistic, space-age vocabulary of the postwar years. White became a popular color choice as it projected cleanliness, modernity and technological progress, and complemented virtually every interior style.
North Wing
California Art from The Permanent Collection
Eight galleries in the North Building are dedicated to showcasing the vast variety of oil and watercolor paintings, prints and drawings in The Hilbert Collection, from the late 1800s through the Depression-era rise of the California regionalist Scene Painting style to the works of contemporary Golden State artists working today.
Upcoming Exhibitions
Sodaro South Wing
June 14 – September 13, 2026
California Art Club’s 115th Annual Gold Medal Exhibition
The Club’s 115th installment of this storied exhibition returns to the Hilbert Museum this summer. The highly-anticipated annual display is highly reputed as the most vital platform for demonstrating the best of the realist genre – from pristine landscapes and grittier urban scenes to novel still lifes and evocative figurative paintings and sculptures – all being exhibited for the first time.