AP Art History, AP Studio Art, Independent Portfolio, and AP Phototography students learned about local artists on a visit to the Di Rosa museum in Napa on March 4.

he Di Rosa museum resides on a 200 acre vineyard and houses about 2,000 pieces of art created by Bay Area artists.

“We saw a lot of contemporary and modern art,” said senior AP Art History teacher’s assistant Regan Gong. “It was kind of his [di Rosa’s] estate before he died, and he was just a collector so it was just random pieces of art.”

AP Studio Art and Independent Portfolio teacher Jill Langston said the museum contains a lot of “fun” pieces. She added that the photos, videos, performances, music, and installations displayed were “unusual because it’s so diverse, also very focused on Bay Area artists, and on contemporary artists you don’t usually get to see at museums.”

The multi-course field trip had been in the works for a while, according to Langston. “We had talked about doing a field trip together [Langston and Kerr] and we talked about different ideas for field trips,” Langston said. “And I suggested this museum to her, and she was interested in it because she had not seen a collection like this. And for me, this is a really good experience for my students to go because many of my studio mates from when I was in art school, and my teachers, and my teachers’ teachers are in this collection. So it’s really cool to go there with my students, and it’s just as great looking at art from one generation to the next.”

According to senior Independent Portfolio student Michelle Pang, students left campus at around 8:50am, rode a bus to Napa, and took an hour and a half long guided tour of the museum and surrounding estate. They ate lunch at the Oxbow Public Market before they returned.

According to Langston, funding for the trip came out of AP Art History’s budget for field trips and a $15 student contribution for the bus.

Students enjoyed the field trip, but Pang wished for more time “to look at the art pieces. I really, really liked it. I wish that we would have had more time in the museum, because on the tour they just led you through and you couldn’t stay in a room. You had to stay with the tour and the tour had a really strict schedule.”

“I really enjoyed it because it allowed me to 1) get out of school and 2) just kind of see a lot of different art pieces from regional artists,” said Gong. “It was not the big-name ones, so that was nice to see artists to work at my own community.”