L. Frank Baum's The Wizard of Oz captured the American imagination immediately upon publication in 1900. The story of a young girl from rural Kansas, who liberates a magical city from a cruel witch and a mysterious monarch, has been told and retold over the past 108 years. What is it about this story that resonates so strongly? Wattis curator Jens Hoffmann, himself a stranger in the strange land of San Francisco, has tried to figure that out. The show includes several new, commissioned works based on the titular work; archival materials and visual culture associated with the book, stage and film versions; and a number of historic artworks.

The exhibition, which fills the ground floor galleries, is staged more or less according to the progress of the novel. Approaching the entrance, visitors first pass a large, illuminated sign reading "Wonderful," which indicates the theatrical nature of what's to come. In the gallery's foyer, a psychedelic 1967 video by Harry Smith, Oz: The Woodman's Dream, plays, while a 2008 sound piece by Joseph Grigely adds to the odd atmosphere. Dorothy's homeland of Kansas is represented by Walker Evans' 1935 photographs of sharecroppers' homes in Hale County, Alabama, still one of the poorest parts of the United States. Donald Urquhart's Oz-Alphabet, 2008, describes another reality - that of the making of the 1939 film, which made the teenaged Judy Garland a star and also set her on the self-destructive path of drugs and drink that would kill her by age 47. Urquhart's wall drawing comically describes the film's chaotic set, Garland's manipulation by studio executives and her evolution into a gay icon. Lest things get too heavy, Felix Gonzalez-Torres' 1993 Untitled (Passport II) - a takeaway print of birds flying through the sky - takes us over the rainbow.

First editions of all 14 Oz books are on display, and the exhibition creates a timeline of the book's evolution into a play directed by Baum himself, a silent film version, and the classic MGM picture. Later iterations such as Gregory Maguire's 1995 update Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, which itself spawned a successful Broadway musical, are omitted. The historic material includes W.W. Denslow's original 1899 pen and ink drawings for the book; the silent film from 1910; and, from the 1939 film, Dorothy's ruby slippers, production stills, and original recordings of the famous songs. These artifacts lend the exhibition a nostalgic sensibility which the artworks on display largely contradict.

Cerith Wyn Evans and Sabisha Friedberg composed a sound work for the exhibition, Two Compositions for L. Frank Baum, which is dramatic, disorienting and quite lovely. In the same gallery, a series of drawings by Clare Rojas riffs on the scene where Dorothy and her friends become intoxicated with opium in the poppy fields. A large sculpture by Evan Holloway represents the Tin Woodsman, and a colorful curtain by Ulla von Brandenburg references the Wizard. An assemblage on the floor suggests the debris of Dorothy's Kansas farmhouse.

Through the curtain, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster's Tapis de Lecture, featuring books including Karel Capek's Rossum's Universal Robots, Susan Sontag's In America and Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is an assortment of related meditations on landscape, technology and the myths of America. A 1964 portrait of Jackie Kennedy by Andy Warhol seems to represent one of the witches, although whether she's the Wicked Witch of the West or Glinda the Good Witch is not apparent. Raymond Pettibon's drawing No Title (The Road To), 2008, turns this children's tale into something much more dark and violent, evoking the drugged-out 1960s generation raised on the 1939 film.

Continuing through, Glenn Ligon's neon text piece America references the real social divisions from which The Wizard of Oz provided a collective escape. Rivane Neuenschwander's Eu desejo o seu desejo (I wish your wish), a collection of ribbons printed with visitors' aspirations, offers another kind of escape. A hypnotic film by Bruce Conner, 1977's Valse Triste, plays in a small passageway. An autobiographical piece about the artist's own Kansas upbringing, it bears the influence of Baum's vision.

Vegetation, a 1999 series of photographs by Simryn Gill, shows hybrid human-plant figures that could be the Scarecrow or the menacing figures that hide in the woods along the Yellow Brick Road. A film by Jennifer Bornstein, Voyage to Samoa, 2003, shows a distant land cast in a green glow that suggests the Emerald City. Tying the wonderland back to the real world are two paintings by Robert Bechtle, portraits of houses in the Western end of San Francisco that recall the film's connections between the characters of Oz and Dorothy's return to Kansas.

The exhibition's climax is a haunting video by Steve McQueen, Once Upon a Time, 2002, which fills the final gallery. This piece juxtaposes images appropriated from a set that was sent into space on a 1970s Voyager mission, intended to represent human civilization for alien cultures, with a soundtrack of voices speaking in tongues. The effect is eerie and ominous, evoking the spectacle of the Wizard's chamber inside the Emerald City. Like the Wizard's terrifying display, McQueen's imagery is a fiction. It includes only the best aspects of human behavior, which the incomprehensible soundtrack challenges as a kind of nonsense.

The Wizard of Oz is an entertaining vision, described through an inventive use of space. Hoffmann's theater background serves the exhibition well, and the many new works by major artists are a treat. The show walks a fine line, nearly over-thematizing the works on display but ultimately keeping things loose enough for comfort. Whether or not it answers the question of why this story remains so beloved, it is sufficient proof that Baum's novel remains relevant to this day.

The Wizard of Oz will be on view at the Wattis Institute through December 13th, 2008.