The Oakland Museum of California,
Lonny Shavelson, Fred Setterberg, James LeBrecht, Christiaan Klieger 
and Heyday Books 
Invite you to the multi-media exhibition 

Trading Traditions: California’s New Cultures
January 19, 2008–April 6, 2008


Photographs by Lonny Shavelson
commentary by Fred Setterberg and Lonny Shavelson
sound design by James LeBrecht and Lonny Shavelson
Artifacts by Christiaan Klieger

Based on Shavelson and Setterberg's recently released book, Under the Dragon: California’s New Culture, TRADING TRADITIONS vividly shows how the San Francisco Bay Area is leading the way in creating today’s hybrid culture – with influences from Asia, Africa, Latin America, and Europe joining together to blend, intermingle, collide, and startle us all. 

The exhibition reveals the Bay Area to be a place where people come together, often inadvertently, to confound narrow expectations about race and culture. It's a fascinating look at the way individuals are building their own identities from an increasingly diverse pool, whether they are African American Buddhists, Latino Muslims, or a group of Mien students who invented their own cultural dance in order to celebrate an ethnic heritage. The stories behind the photographs will inspire you to look again. 

The photographs and text, mounted on sailcloth and suspended from the ceiling, so powerfully breathe life into the installation that the gallery feels more like a bustling city center than a museum. Drawing from sounds heard every day or once a year, James LeBrecht and Lonny Shavelson have also created a soundscape akin to aural images. Music, voices, and the ambient buzz and swoop of several dozen local environments fill the space, augmenting the photographs and text.

TRADING TRADITIONS brings it all together – a feast for the eyes, ears, heart, and mind as we walk shoulder to shoulder with images and sounds from the new California culture.

Click for the Trading Traditions Web Site

Visit the Under the Dragon blog

About the photographer, writer and sound designer: 

Lonny Shavelson is a writer, photojournalist, radio journalist, and physician whose articles and photographs have appeared in numerous publications, including the New York Times, People, Mother Jones, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times and many others. His radio stories have aired on NPR, The World, The California Report and other shows nationally. Shavelson is the author of six books. 

Fred Setterberg is the author of The Roads Taken: Travels through America’s Literary Landscapes, co-author with Lonny Shavelson of Toxic Nation: The Fight to Save Our Communities from Chemical Contamination, and the editor of Travelers’ Tales America. His work has been featured in the New York Times, The Nation, the Utne Reader, the Columbia Journalism Review, and scores of other national and regional magazines.  

James LeBrecht has designed and produced sound effects and music for over 100 professional theatrical productions and co-authored the book “Sound and Music for the Theatre: The Art and Technique of Design” with Deena Kaye. LeBrecht is the president of Berkeley Sound Artists, a full-service audio post-production company.