Digital Exhibitions

These digital exhibitions showcase the diverse and innovative collections curated by the CCA Libraries and the outstanding productions of our students and staff. They are a complement to the physical exhibitions we put on in the Meyer, Simpson, and Materials Libraries throughout the year.

• The Joy of Life is Doing Things – CCA 100 Years Ago

  Looking back at CCA’s foundational decades from the Berkeley years to its beginnings in Oakland, The Joy of Life is Doing Things explores what the founders and the first students were doing: making in the studios, building the campus, creating a community, and laying the foundations of an enduring dedication to craft, industriousness, and community responsibility that we still find present in our institutional culture today.

• Onward and Definitely Upward! – CCA 50 Years Ago

  1970 marked the middle in a period of exceptional growth and change at the college. As the post-war “baby boomers” came of college age, enrollment nearly tripled over the course of a decade, and CCAC stood as one point in a powerful art resource triangle in the Bay Area with the Oakland Museum of Art and the School of Environmental Design at The University of California at Berkeley. This exhibition, the title of which comes from the Winter 1968 newsletter featuring a campus construction update, looks back fifty years ago, marking this time of incredible growth in size, space, discourse, and reputation.

• Community Conversations – CCA 25 Years Ago

  The 90s was a decade characterized by cross-cultural dialogue and challenging convention. At the California College of Arts and Crafts, this took many forms—from discussing contemporary social issues through student forums and lectures by visiting artists and activists and an increased emphasis connecting students with working artists, to bringing the community together in the campus’s galleries. Community Conversations explores the 90s at the CCAC and the dialogue happening within the college community during that time.

• Making Places — CCA’s Campus History

  California College of the Arts has called eight different addresses home across the Bay Area. Making Places explores these campuses, the evolution of their spaces, and the visioning around the changing needs of the community through images, maps, plans, and letters from the college’s archives.

• Posters, Periodicals, and Publications — CCA’s Visual Identity by Decade

  A historical exploration of the communications pieces produced by our community of talented student, faculty, staff designers.

• 2020 Yozo Hamaguchi Scholarship Exhibition

  The Hamaguchi Printmedia Scholarship Awards were established to foster excellence and dedication in the study and practice of printmedia. Explore this exhibition of works by the six undergraduate and one graduate Printmedia students who have been awarded the 2020 Yozo Hamaguchi Printmedia Scholarship.

• Investigations - Voting Story

  Exhibit of work from Aspen Mays' PHOTO-3400-1: Investigations 3: Process, Practice, Production class on the student's "Voting Story".

• Founders Hall Mural

  Images from the Founders Hall Mural created August, 2020 featuring historic photos of CCA students.

• INFLUENCES: Writers on Writers, Makers on Making

  In Spring 2020, 12 writers, artists and designers embarked on a class project (WRLIT 4000-2/LITPA 3200-8) to research and explore the influences in their works. These juniors and seniors from majors across the college came together to read, research and analyze.

• Poetics of Debris

  Born and raised in the Bay Area, Hannah Waiters scavenges sculptural memorabilia that speak to her identity: a first-generation African-American female fighting the curse of temporality. She is a Master of Fine Arts and MA in Visual and Critical Studies candidate at California College of the Arts.

• The Book Arts Awards

  The CCA Libraries host an annual Book Arts Competition to recognize the creative works of our students. View some of the wonderful creations of past award winners.

• Abecedarium Artists' Books at CCA Libraries

  "Abecedariums," a digital exhibition from the CCA Libraries Artists' Book collection. Artists play with the concept of the abecedarium to unusual effect; they explore typography, create poems, and use abstraction to re-imagine language.