Sarah Bancroft, curator of the critically acclaimed traveling exhibition Richard Diebenkorn: The Ocean Park Series, will speak about the artist’s career on Sunday, February 24 at 2:00 p.m. at the Museum of Ventura County. The presentation is $10 for the general public and $5 for museum members. Admission includes the exhibition ISLAND TREASURES: Artworks from the Santa Cruz Island Foundation, featuring 17 works by Diebenkorn. For reservations call 805-653-0323 x7.

Bancroft will explore the noted American painter’s artistic journey through cycles of representation and abstraction, culminating in his highly abstract Ocean Park Series, produced between 1967 and 1988 while living in the Ocean Park neighborhood of Santa Monica. All but two of Diebenkorn’s works in ISLAND TREASURES are dated earlier but already show his progression toward abstraction. A sequence of four pieces illustrates how his sketch of an island view out a bedroom window evolved into an abstract painting.

Bancroft is a curator at the Orange County Museum of Art in Newport Beach. Her aforementioned traveling exhibition was the largest ever retrospective exhibition of Diebenkorn’s Ocean Park Series. The retrospective debuted at the Orange County Museum of Art in the spring of 2012 and subsequently traveled to the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.

The Museum of Ventura County is located at 100 East Main Street in downtown Ventura. Hours are 11 a.m. – 5 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday. Admission to the exhibitions is $4 adults, $3 seniors, $1 children 6-17, members and children under 6 are free. Paid events include free admission to galleries. The first Sundays of every month are free general admission for the public. For more museum information go to www.venturamuseum.org or call 805-653-0323.