Artist Adaline Kent’s family name is found throughout Marin: Kentfield, Kent Woodlands, Kent Island, Kent Middle School. Adaline Kent (1900-1957) grew up in the family estate in the shadow of Mount Tamalpais, a forested setting that would influence her life and art. Educated on the East Coast, she returned to Northern California where she fell in with the most noted artists of the Bay Area. This presentation will highlight Kent’s life-long deep roots in Marin as well as her “comraderies and communities” of fellow avant-garde mid-century artists that included the likes of Ruth Asawa, Mark Rothko, Richard Diebenkorn, Ansel Adams, Isamu Noguchi, Diego Rivera, and Clyfford Still. 

Jeff Gunderson is librarian/archivist with the San Francisco Art Institute Legacy Foundation. He has written on the history of California art and photography and done presentations on the history of Bay Area conceptual art, and the influence of art libraries on artists. His most recent publication is “Adaline Kent: Communities & Comraderies, 1920s-1950s,” an essay for the retrospective exhibition catalog, Adaline Kent: Click of Authenticity (Rizzoli: 2023) He is currently working on a collection of essays about open water swimming.