Mr. Jean Stern

Executive Director, The Irvine Museum

A recognized authority on California Impressionism, Jean Stern has extensive experience in the field as an author, curator, lecturer, and teacher. He has been the executive director of the Irvine Museum since its inception in January, 1993, and has established a national presence for the Irvine Museum in the field of California Impressionism through a noteworthy series of exhibitions, lectures, and video documentaries.

Mr. Stern is the author of numerous books and articles on California Impressionism, including monographs on important artists such Franz A. Bischoff, Alson S. Clark, Sam Hyde Harris and Elsie Palmer Payne. In 2001, he and Joan Irvine Smith researched and co-authored California, This Golden Land of Promise, the highly acclaimed history of California, illustrated with hundreds of important historical paintings, published by Chapman University Press and the Irvine Museum.

He has written essays for several books on California art including Plein Air Painters of California: The Southland; Plein Air Painters of California: The North; and Guy Rose: American Impressionist. In addition, he has been a contributor to numerous museum exhibition catalogues.

Mr. Stern is a frequent lecturer on California Impressionism having made presentations at the International Cultural Center, Cracow, Poland; the National Academy Museum in New York; the Terra Museum of American Art in Chicago; the Oakland Museum; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the San Diego Museum of Art; the Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa, Oklahoma; the Pasadena Historical Society; the Gibbes Museum, in Charleston; the Brigham Young University Museum; as well as many others. He appears in IMPRESSIONS OF CALIFORNIA, the PBS documentary video series on art in California and is on the Advisory Board of Plein Air, Painting the American Landscape, a forthcoming PBS series on American Art.

Since 1993, the Irvine Museum, with Jean Stern as director, has produced a number of traveling exhibitions, including SELECTIONS FROM THE IRVINE MUSEUM (1993); REFLECTIONS OF CALIFORNIA (1994); ROMANCE OF THE BELLS, The California Missions in Art (1995); PALETTE OF LIGHT (1995); GUY ROSE, AMERICAN IMPRESSIONIST (1995-1996, a joint project with the Oakland Museum); CALIFORNIA IMPRESSIONISTS (1996, an official event at the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games Cultural Olympiad); IMPRESSIONS OF CALIFORNIA (1996), accompanied by a PBS documentary series; ALL THINGS BRIGHT & BEAUTIFUL (1998), an exhibition tour that included the National Academy Museum, in New York, and the Terra Museum of American Art in Chicago; and MASTERS OF LIGHT (2002) the first international traveling exhibition of California Impressionist paintings, shown in Paris, France, Krakow, Poland, and Madrid, Spain.