di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art is a nonprofit art center at 5200 Sonoma Highway in Napa. It holds about 1,600 works by Northern California artists, including Robert Arneson, Bruce Conner, Jay DeFeo, Viola Frey and William T. Wiley.
The collector
Rene di Rosa (1919–2010) was born in Boston and graduated from Yale. He served as a Navy lieutenant in World War II and became a San Francisco Chronicle reporter in 1950. Living near North Beach's art scene, he began collecting emerging Bay Area artists. In 1960 he bought 465 acres in the Carneros region of southern Napa County and planted vineyards. He took viticulture classes at UC Davis, where he befriended art professors including Arneson, Roy De Forest, Manuel Neri and Wiley. He married watercolorist and sculptor Veronica di Rosa in 1976.
The land
The property was once part of the Rancho Huichica land grant. Frenchmen Michael Debret and Pierre Priet built a stone winery there in 1886. Phylloxera ended the vineyards, and the stone building later held a mushroom farm, moonshine, grain and hay. Di Rosa turned it into a house and dammed a WPA-era pond into a roughly 35-acre lake, Winery Lake. He sold the vineyards to Seagram in 1986 and used the money to build an art park. It opened to the public in 1997, took its current name in 2017, and the 217-acre site is protected under the Napa County Land Trust.
In 2019 the foundation announced plans to sell most of the collection, which drew public outrage and an artists' petition. In 2021 di Rosa reversed course under executive director Kate Eilertsen.
Visiting
di Rosa is open Friday through Sunday, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., with last admission at 3:30. Tours run at 11 a.m. on those days, and reservations are recommended. Admission is $25 general, $20 for seniors, students and military, and $5 for ages 5–17. Children under 5 and members get in free, and parking is free. Some outdoor areas may be closed in bad weather. Private tours are available Tuesdays and Wednesdays with two weeks' notice.