A good museum will always offer surprises and teach you something, no matter how many times you return. Yesterday I visited to the California Museum in downtown Sacramento for the second time and was blown away by this sculpture by local artist Susan Shelton. The mythical Califia is believed by some scholars to be the source of our state’s name, with historical connections to the Moors and to early Spanish literature and exploration of the New World.

…both Calafia and California most likely came from the Arabic word khalifa which means ruler or leader. The same word in Spanish was califa, easily made into California to stand for “land of the caliph”, or Calafia to stand for “female caliph” — source Wikipedia