The work of California painter Daniel Douke is a contemporary take on the age-old artistic theme of illusion versus reality. Since 1976 he has crafted uncannily convincing recreations of mundane objects such as mail packages, drink cartons, and cereal boxes. Often viewers assume that they are found objects that have been slightly manipulated by the artist when they were in fact wholly made by him, using traditional artistic materials. The result challenges our belief in the truth of our perceptions and invites us to think more about the given object than we would if it were “real.”

Douke’s work is featured in the collections of the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento, the Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego, and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, among others. He is represented by Peter Mendenhall Gallery in Los Angeles.

Malcolm Warner joined Laguna Art Museum as Executive Director in January 2012. Previously he was Deputy Director at the Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, Texas; Senior Curator of Paintings and Sculpture at the Yale Center for British Art, New Haven; and Curator of European Art at the San Diego Museum of Art.

He was born in Aldershot (UK) and pursued both undergraduate and graduate studies at the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London. He received his PhD from the Courtauld in 1985. His doctoral dissertation was on the British Pre-Raphaelite painter John Everett Millais. He remains the leading authority on Millais and, as a long-term project, is preparing a catalogue raisonné of the artist’s works.

From 2009 to 2017, Robert Hayden III served as chair of the Board of Trustees of Laguna Art Museum. He is currently facilitating the undergraduate seminar “Post-War Art in Los Angeles, 1957-1966” at UCLA in the Department of Art History, where he is a student.