Ship of Dreams:

This exhibition shares the story of how a decommissioned ferryboat became an important cultural crossroad in the history of California. Moored on the north side of Sausalito in 1949, the S.S. Vallejo became a dynamic home and cultural incubator for artists, musicians, and literary luminaries such as Gordon Onslow Ford, Jean Varda, Alan Watts, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, and many others.

It was a pivotal period in the cultural development of California and America, with many of its thought leaders gravitating around this singular place on the edge of San Francisco Bay. This exhibition surveys a spectrum of creative life aboard the S.S. Vallejo from 1949 to 1969, and presents works of art by Onslow Ford, Varda, Ruth Asawa, John Baxter, J.B. Blunk, Richard Bowman, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Luchita Hurtado, Pirkle Jones, Larry Keenan, Adaline Kent, Roberto Matta, Lee Mullican, Wolfgang Paalen, and David Simpson, along with vintage ephemera.

This exhibition debuted at the Sonoma Valley Museum of Art in the spring of 2018 and is a collaboration between Sonoma Valley Museum of Art and Lucid Art Foundation.