A Tour of the Lives and Loves of the Art Collecting, Museum Founding Mark and Jan Hilbert

Part One

I met Mark Hilbert, co-founder of the Hilbert Museum of California Art, in the fall of 2015. I was assigned to write an article about the museum, which was scheduled to open the next year on the campus of Chapman University in Orange. I visited his Newport Beach home to pick up the expansive catalog, Windows in Time: California Scene Paintings from the Hilbert Collection.

When I arrived at Mark’s home, I noticed a magnificent painting in his entryway. Bucolic (1938) by artist Fletcher Martin was so enchanting that I immediately began talking about it. Mark explained that the painting, with its depiction of a couple relaxing on the ground in a rural setting, evokes figures in Mexican murals. In fact, the artist had worked with the Mexican muralist Alfaro Siqueiros.

I visited the Hilbert Museum when it opened early in 2016 and have been there many times since then. I have written nearly two dozen articles about the museum for a variety of Southern California publications, while often visiting with Mark and with his wife, Janet, also a Hilbert Museum co-founder. Here are a few of these articles: Treasures of California Scene Painting, California Scene Painting, A Tour Through the New Hilbert Museum

As I discovered over several years, the story of the founding of the Hilbert Museum is inspiring and unique. A few years ago, I suggested to Mark that he and I, with Jan’s help, write a book to be called, Mark and Jan Hilbert: A Love Story. After several discussions, we began the process of interviewing and documenting the many fascinating details about the founding and evolution of the Hilbert Museum. The Hilberts also shared with me many enchanting stories about their lives and explorations of art museums and galleries in this country and abroad.

Working on the book has been a labor of love. Along the way, we changed the name of the book to be, Mark and Jan Hilbert: The Love Story that Launched an Art Museum, at the suggestion of Mary Platt, Hilbert Museum Director.

After many months of working on the book, I completed a 12,000 word manuscript late in 2024. The next steps would be editing of the book and adding to it by Mark Hilbert and Mary Platt, and choosing images of Hilbert-owned artworks and photos of the couple. Soon after, in December 2024, Jan passed away, and we decided to put completion of the book on hold for several months.

The story of the Hilberts and of their creation of a world-class museum is so compelling that I am excerpting sections from it in my posts, beginning with this one.

Here is a paragraph that I added to the book soon after Janet’s passing: “Mark and Jan Hilbert: The Love Story that Launched an Art Museum is dedicated to the memory of Janet Hilbert, who passed away on December 7, 2024. Janet’s support for the creation and development of the Hilbert Museum of California Art and encouragement for her husband Mark Hilbert’s efforts towards that goal are in the hearts of many people who love and support the museum, and the treasures within it.

Fletcher Martin, Bucolic, 1938, oil on canvas

Introduction

Art lovers might ask, why are museums founded? While the motivations behind the origins of these cultural venues vary, the stories of their foundings are often legendary. Yet few museums have stories that are as heartwarming as that of the Hilbert Museum of California Art at Chapman University in Orange, California.

As museum co-founder/donor Mark Hilbert tells it, in 2012 he was touring a major Los Angeles museum. “I went to one gallery and was very disappointed by the exhibition there, with its strong overtones,” he says. “I went to the next gallery and was even more upset by the dark display. I immediately left the museum and drove home. On my way, I kept thinking that my beloved wife Janet and I, with our expansive and diverse collection of California art, could create a museum that would be much more interesting for people to visit, one that is upbeat, inspiring and family friendly.”

Motivated by the story-telling and aesthetic aspects of their state’s artworks, the Hilberts — with the advice of art historians and gallerists, with their study of art history and extensive viewing of art exhibitions in this country and abroad — had already acquired several thousand pieces of more than a century of California art.

Their California Scene Paintings — the core of the Hilbert Collection — illustrate people at work and at play, in towns, cities, beaches, parks and ranches. These artworks, created while the state was growing in population and in industry, from the 19th century to the present, feature oils, watercolors, pastels, mixed media, drawings and lithographs. As many pieces were created during the modern art period, they contain impressionistic, expressionistic and cubist influences.

The Hilbert Collection also includes still lifes, landscapes, animation cels from Hollywood studios, 20th century American illustrations, many with humorous subtitles, Native American blankets and pottery, and more. The comprehensive collection, encompassing California’s unique and expansive spirit, takes visitors on a tour of the state’s idyllic settings over many decades.

Gordon McClelland, art historian and curator of several Hilbert Museum exhibitions, wrote, “Art can serve as a window to the past. This is particularly true when referring to paintings where the artist chose to visually tell a story.” Mark adds, “There are so many gems of storytelling in California Scene Paintings. These artworks, often referred to as genre paintings, were inspired by American Scene Paintings, also known as Regionalism, by artists including Thomas Hart Benton, Grant Wood, Edward Hopper and John Steuart Curry.” California Scene Paintings were also influenced by the early 20th century Ash Can School, an art movement portraying people, homes, restaurants, movie houses and other elements of New York City life by artists including Robert Henri, Everett Shinn and George Bellows.

The inimitable Hilbert Collection, along with Mark’s impactful 2012 Los Angeles museum visit, encouraged the Hilberts to move forward founding their own art museum. Their objective was to exhibit the many thousands of paintings they had already acquired. “With our diversified art collection, we had created the opportunity to present an endless variety of thematic exhibitions,” Mark says. "We also recognized that California Scene Painting was a largely overlooked but very important art movement, and that the artists who did this work had never been acknowledged as a group. We wanted to remedy that omission."

Four years later, in 2016, the Hilbert Museum of California Art opened to great acclaim by visitors, the press and Chapman University. The narrative art on display afforded viewers many heartwarming scenes of the Golden State over the decades.