Seven recent acquisitions on view are connected by a profound common denominator—individuality.

Produced across many decades by artists of different backgrounds and orientations, the works cover such movements as Light and Space (Norman Zammitt), neo-Dada (Noah Purifoy), abstract classicism (Frederick Hammersley), abstract expressionism (Frank Lobdell), and Bay Area figuration (Richard Diebenkorn).

The earliest work on view is by Frank Lobdell, a Kansas City native who settled in California after seeing intense combat in World War II. His painting 27 May 1948 recalls that trauma through an abstracted landscape of trees and crosses. The most recent work, by Mark Bradford, has its own oblique relation to landscape, with suggestions of Chinese classical painting as well as the sublime abstractions of Clyfford Still, himself a Westerner and an influential teacher in 1940s San Francisco.