JAMES
MCCRAY
Painter, Teacher,
1912-1993
Biography
James McCray was born in 1912 in the township of Niles, now Fremont, California. His early education was in parochial schools of Oakland. In 1934 he received s bachelor's degree at UC Berkeley and the following year he earned his master's degree. McCray was appointed a teaching assistant to professors Worth Ryder and John Haley. Further recognition of his outstanding capacities came with the award of a grant in 1937 to pursue studies in esthetics at the renowned Barnes Foundation in Merion, Pennsylvania. The following year, the foundation awarded McCray a grant-in-aid to undertake study and travel in Europe. Another scholarship was given him to continue studies at the foundation until 1939. In the fall of that year he returned to Berkeley to serve again as a teaching assistant in the Art Department.
McCray was dedicated to painting and drawing throughout his life. His active participation in public exhibitions began in 1935 with the presentation of two works in the Third Annual Exhibition of Watercolors, Pastels, Drawings, and Prints at the Oakland Art Gallery. In 1940, two of his works were in the Palace of Fine Arts exhibition at the Golden Gate International Exposition. The same year, McCray's work was awarded an Honorable Mention at the 60th Annual Exhibition of the San Francisco Art Association. At the 65th Annual Exhibition of Oil, Tempera, and Sculpture at the San Francisco Museum of Art in 1945, he won the prestigious Anna Bremer Memorial Prize for an abstract painting on panel, entitled "Reticulation." At that time, Alfred Frankenstein, the noted critic, wrote of his work, "McCray has produced the most original and interesting new development in painting that has manifested itself on this coast in my time." His stature as a creative artist grew with solo and group exhibitions throughout the country and abroad, including the Metropolitan Museum and the Whitney Museum in New York, the Art Institute in Chicago, the Phillips Memorial Gallery in Washington D.C., the California Legion of Honor in San Francisco, and the Salon de Réalité in Paris. He was awarded an Institute of Creative Arts grant in 1965-66.
In 1941, McCray was appointed to his first faculty position at the California School of Fine Art (now the San Francisco Art Institute). The school's board of directors selected him to introduce a new spirit of modernism in what had become a conservative, academic program. He proceeded with alacrity and arranged the appointment of a new member on the board of directors, Douglas MacAgy, a Canadian esthetician who had been his colleague at the Barnes Foundation. Under McCray's and MacAgy's influence, the faculty ultimately included Elmer Bischoff, Clifford Still, and David Park.
McCray left the art school in 1946 to accept an appointment as an assistant professor in the Art Department at the State College (now University) of Washington, Pullman. He was there only a year before he was invited to join the Berkeley Art Department, where he remained until becoming professor emeritus in 1982.
Source: Robert Hartman, Karl Kasten, Erle Loran, UC Berkeley