September 15, 2026

ArtCenter College of Design Presents First Comprehensive Survey of Pioneering California Artist and Designer Dorr Bothwell

Dorr Bothwell: In Her Mind's Eye Opens October 24
with More Than 100 Works Spanning Six Decades

Landmark Exhibition to Be Accompanied by First Monograph
Devoted to Bothwell, Co-Published by Hirmer in June 2027

PASADENA, CA — ArtCenter College of Design presents Dorr Bothwell: In Her Mind’s Eye, a major exhibition celebrating the extraordinary life and work of California Surrealist artist, designer and educator Dorr Bothwell (1902–2000). Co-organized by the Frances Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, the exhibition will be on view from October 24, 2026, through April 24, 2027, in the College’s flagship space, the Alyce de Roulet Williamson Gallery, and at the Loeb Art Center in Poughkeepsie, New York in summer 2027. In Her Mind’s Eye marks the first comprehensive survey of Bothwell’s work.

Nearly 20 years in the making, Dorr Bothwell: In Her Mind’s Eye features more than 100 works spanning six decades of Bothwell’s artistic practice and representing the breadth of her oeuvre. Focusing on her paintings and prints while also highlighting her work as a West Coast designer, the exhibition includes paintings, drawings, prints, ceramics, textiles and selected ephemera, demonstrating the artist’s lifelong creative practice and her independence as a creative force.

Born Dorothy Hodgson Bothwell in 1902, the artist began her pursuit as an artist as a young child, evidenced in an extensive series of journals that recorded images and experiences that spans from her youth into her later years. She studied dance as a teenager and attended the California School of Fine Arts, later known as the San Francisco Art Institute, from 1921-23. In 1924, she studied under Rudolph Schaeffer and Gottardo Piazzoni. Around 1925, she changed her name to “Dorr,” at the time more widely recognized as a male name, a practice that some women in creative fields adopted to avoid discrimination.

In 1927 Bothwell moved to Samoa to explore Samoan culture and create works inspired by the landscape and traditional tapa (bark cloth) designs. She remained there for several years, earning the honorific Samoan name “Soaifetu” when the local chief adopted her as his daughter. She spent another two years in Europe before returning to California, eventually settling in Los Angeles in 1934.

From 1933-39 Bothwell participated in the Works Progress Administration (WPA), creating murals and becoming part of the Southern California Post-surrealism movement that included Lorser Feitelson, Helen Lundeberg, and other who championed art as a means to communicate the relationship between the perceptual and the conceptual. In the early 1940s she moved to San Francisco, exploring the city in her early years as an emerging artist with friends including designer Tamaris Keefe (c. 1942). She taught at the California School of Fine Arts from 1944-48 and again from 1953-58. She also began screen printing in 1943, embracing the medium at a time when museums and galleries still questioned its viability as fine art.

Travel remained central to Bothwell’s life and creative development. She was especially captivated by non-Western cultures and spent time not just throughout Europe but also in Asia and Africa, among other regions, to study alternative principals of design, textiles, architectural motifs, gravestone rubbings, and dance. Independent and self-supporting, design and other creative endeavors were integrated within her artistic practice in various ways, not only due to her interests and affiliations with other creatives, but also as a means of income.

Bothwell was also connected to California’s art and design communities. In Los Angeles, Bothwell co-founded the Bothwell Cooke Gallery in 1935 on Beverly Boulevard; created dioramas for the Los Angeles County Museum; and developed popular ceramics for the Catalina Pottery and Franciscan ware lines produced by Gladding McBean in their Glendale plant in 1937. In San Francisco, during the 1920s, she operated the Modern Gallery with other artists, including Ruth Cravath, Yun Gee, Julius Pommer, and others. In the early 1940s she and Keefe, among other artists, worked in textile designer Dorothy Liebes’ San Francisco workshop. Bothwell later collaborated with Liebes on a series of “motto rugs” produced by Bigelow-Sanford and produced her own series of textiles, as well as wallpaper designs, including Shell Fantasy for Katzenbach and Warren in New York.

A teacher through her entire career, in later years Bothwell taught at the San Francisco Art Institute from 1959-60; the Ansel Adams Yosemite Workshop summer sessions from 1964-77; and the Mendocino Art Center from 1962 to 1990s, where she spent her final years. Still relevant to us now is the fundamental design education book that Bothwell produced in 1968 (reprinted in 1991), in collaboration with her lifelong friend, Marlyss Mayfield: Notan: The Dark-Light Principle of Design.

Through the breadth and variety of work on view, Dorr Bothwell: In Her Mind’s Eye positions Bothwell as a singular and continually evolving artist whose practice crossed disciplines and challenged conventional categories. Her paintings, prints, ceramics, textiles, and designs reflect a sustained engagement with experimentation, abstraction, and the imaginative possibilities of visual form.

Viewers will experience the most extensive gathering of Bothwell’s iconic surrealist/symbolist paintings and serigraphs alongside other bodies of work not exhibited since her lifetime. Borrowed from public and private collections across the United States, including historic California collections such as the Buck Collection at the UC Irvine Langson Orange County Museum of Art; and institutions such as the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Santa Barbara Museum of Art; Crocker Art Museum; Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art, Utah State University; Wolfsonian-Florida International University; Mendocino Art Center; and others. Works brought in from private collections include a substantial selection of Michael T. Ricker’s paintings and works on paper, and a vast assembly of works owned by Bothwell’s friends, colleagues, and admirers.

Dorr Bothwell: In Her Mind’s Eye is co-presented by ArtCenter Exhibitions and the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, where it will be presented June 18 – September 19, 2027. The exhibition is co-curated by Julie Joyce, Director, ArtCenter Galleries, and Mary-Kay Lombino, Deputy Director and the Emily Hargroves Fisher ’57 and Richard B. Fisher Curator at The Loeb. The exhibition represents over 20 years of discussion, research and planning in association with the trustees of the Dorr Bothwell Estate and with the assistance of many of her dedicated friends and associates.

The exhibition will be accompanied by the first monograph and solo exhibition catalogue devoted to Bothwell, co-published by Hirmer in June 2027. Featuring a complete biography, new photographs of her work, and commissioned essays by the exhibition curators and writers Michael Duncan, John Murphy, and Juliette Theureau, the book will provide an illustrated overview of the artist while also contextualizing her work among the histories of California and American art.

SUPPORT

The exhibition is made possible with support from the Terra Foundation for American Art

Additional support was provided by the Pasadena Art Alliance

EXHIBITION DATES & OPENING RECEPTION

Dorr Bothwell: In Her Mind’s Eye
October 24, 2026 – April 24, 2027
Alyce de Roulet Williamson Gallery
ArtCenter College of Design, Hillside Campus
1700 Lida Street, Pasadena, CA 91103

Gallery Hours: Wednesday – Saturday | Noon–5 p.m. and by appointment
The exhibition will be closed Veteran’s Day (November 11), Thanksgiving (November 26-December 2, and the Winter/Holiday Break (December 23-January 5, 2027).

Opening Reception: Saturday, October 24, 2026 | 5:30–7:30 p.m.

Exhibition admission is FREE.

About ArtCenter Exhibitions
ArtCenter Exhibitions oversees the College’s public-facing curated spaces that serve students, artists, scholars and creative audiences from Southern California and beyond. Made possible through the generosity of individuals and foundations, our exhibitions and related educational programs form deep and varied ties to culturally relevant issues and ideas. Serving as a vital part of the contemporary art and design realms of greater Los Angeles, exhibitions aim to inspire, educate, and resonate. Admission to ArtCenter Exhibitions programming is free and open to the public.

About The Loeb
The Loeb Art Center is a teaching museum supporting Vassar College’s goals of leadership, scholarship, and integrative learning. The Loeb achieves this through the preservation, documentation, interpretation, presentation, and development of its collections; and through a dynamic program of temporary exhibitions and educational activities aimed at diverse audiences. Art should stand “boldly forth as an educational force,” declared founder Matthew Vassar. His college was the country’s first to be founded with a gallery and teaching collection. Admission to all Loeb programming is free and open to the public.

About The Pasadena Art Alliance
The purpose of the Pasadena Art Alliance is to foster appreciation for contemporary visual arts in Southern California by supporting artists, exhibitions, educational programs and art-oriented, non-profit institutions.

About The Terra Foundation for American Art
The Terra Foundation for American Art expands narratives of American art through its grants, collection, and initiatives. With offices in Chicago and Paris, the foundation works with organizations to foster intercultural dialogues and encourage transformative practices, locally and globally.

About ArtCenter College of Design
Founded in 1930 and located in Pasadena, California, ArtCenter College of Design is a global leader in art and design education. With a mission to educate, inspire and empower creative and design leadership, the College is renowned for its undergraduate and graduate degree programs spanning industrial design, media and technology, as well as visual and applied arts. With deep industry relationships, state-of-the-art facilities and a strong faculty roster, ArtCenter provides real-world experience aligned with industry needs. Through rigorous, hands-on, practitioner-led instruction, the College prepares students for meaningful creative careers. For nearly 100 years, ArtCenter alumni and faculty have shaped many of the world’s most iconic products, vehicles, campaigns and creative works, leaving a lasting impact across art, design and culture.

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