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In 1960, what was then the La Jolla Museum of Art dedicated its focus to contemporary art. Fifty years later, the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego (as it is known today) boasts powerful examples of work by visual artists that helped define the second half of the 20th century.

High Fidelity features selections from the sixties and seventies, formative decades in the Museum鈥檚 own maturation, as well as a period of artistic ferment in the United States. High Fidelity showcases more than 50 works by notable artists such as Ellsworth Kelly, Roy Lichtenstein, Agnes Martin and Andy Warhol, and others who call California their home, Billy Al Bengston, Ed Ruscha, and Alexis Smith. Together, these 鈥済reatest hits鈥� announce the Museum鈥檚 own history even as they chart contemporary art trends.

High Fidelity will honor the late Murray A. Gribin (1923-2011), an inspired trustee and patron of the MCASD since the 1970s. A passionate advocate for the arts, Gribin and his wife Ruth settled in California in the 1940s. Together they built a lively collection of recent art from the West Coast. At MCASD, the collection was the subject of a 2006 exhibition La Dolce Vita. The show highlighted the range of Gribin鈥檚 collecting even as it underscored his dedication to certain artists over time. In his lifetime, Gribin donated more than 75 works to MCASD. High Fidelity will feature selections of these gifts with an emphasis on his early acquisitions including works by Sam Francis, Joe Goode, and Ed Ruscha.

While reflecting different styles, such as minimalism, pop art, and assemblage, the works on view all reflect the experimental spirit of the period. Artists continued to challenge long-held stylistic conventions and allow room for contemporary content. Primarily an exhibition of paintings, High Fidelity includes many works which hone their focus on the formal components of art. Abstraction is represented in many variations from gestural efforts, reflecting the pull of mid-century abstract expressionism, to refined monochromes, which rejected that very approach.

Exhibiting artists, including Helen Frankenthaler, Robert Irwin, and Frank Stella, explore surface tension, positive and negative space, and limits or edge of painting. Other artists such as Sol Lewitt, Alfred Jensen, and Donald Judd employ systems to determine their compositions.

Alongside the refinement of such approaches, other works on view reflect a grittier, often informal quality. Artists such as Vija Celmins, Bruce Connor, Edward Keinholz, and John Baldessari use found materials, expanses of text, and prosaic imagery to reference the real world as much as the art world.  Together, these images and references recall and represent a period of recent history with 鈥渉igh fidelity.鈥�