Oakland's The Dome Center for Art, Music and Dance, a live/work community founded in 1976 by sculptor Peter Voulkos and ceramicist Marilyn Levine, is the subject of its first major museum exhibition. Titled "The Dome Show," the exhibition is on view at San Francisco's di Rosa Center through September 12, featuring works by Voulkos, Levine, Bella Feldman, Tom Holland, and other artists from the complex's four generations of Bay Area artists. The show was co-curated by di Rosa executive director Kate Eilertsen and curator Twyla Ruby after a visit to The Dome inspired them.
The exhibition matters because it finally gives institutional recognition to a vital but under-documented artistic community that has nurtured generations of visual and performing artists in the Bay Area. It also highlights overlooked female artists like Levine, Feldman, and JoAnn Gillerman, and celebrates the intersection of craft and fine art—a strength of Northern California's artistic identity. By bringing The Dome's spirit of experimentation and collaboration into a museum context, the show affirms the importance of communal, offbeat creative spaces in art history.