'A Walk in the Wild,' John Muir, review

Kenneth Baker, Chronicle Art Critic

San Francisco Chronicle August 6, 2011 04:00 AM Copyright San Francisco Chronicle. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Saturday, August 6, 2011

Well before the aviation age, John Muir saw more of the world than most of us will.

We learn this from a large floor map tracing his life's travels - on foot whenever possible - at the heart of "A Walk in the Wild: Continuing John Muir's Journey," which opens today at the Oakland Museum of California.

"A Walk in the Wild" includes only a handful of artworks - or more, depending on the status we accord to Muir's many illustrations of his field notes. But the project serves mainly as a test case of the museum's new cross-disciplinary exhibition practice, which renders porous the implicit boundaries between museum departments devoted to the arts and to the social and natural history of California.

[Top: "Muir Glacier, Alaska," oil on canvas by Thomas Hill. Below: The exhibition displays John Muir's writing desk, a case containing his papers and "Mt. Ritter (Crown of the Sierra)," oil on canvas by William Keith.]

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