When doctoral music composition students at UC Davis hear their music played for the first time, they hear it played by professionals who are champions of new music with years of performance experience.

“It’s an absolute luxury to have these professional musicians play our work,” said student Jonathan Favero. “In many programs you have to beg, borrow and steal to find players.”

Nicole Berry (M.A., art history, '05) is executive director of The Armory Show, the New York art fair hosting 200 galleries from 30 countries and offering lectures, presentations and commissions. The 25th annual show runs March 7 - 10, 2019.  Berry became director of the Armory Show in 2017. She previously served as deputy director of the Armory Show and the Expo Chicago art fair.

For a long time, analyzing a literary work consisted of creating a “definitive edition,” which might be supplanted a decade or two later. Or maybe never. English professor Frances Dolan is part of a project that offers a new approach for literary analysis, one better aligned with the high-speed information exchange possible today.

Frances Dolan spent much of last year in the company of Hester Pulter, a little-known 17th-century British writer. Dolan, distinguished professor of English in the UC Davis College of Letters and Science, has done extensive research and writing for The Pulter Project: Poet in the Making, a “digital collaboration” launched in November.

“Recent Gifts from the Southwest” at the Gorman Museum showcases nearly 100 artworks by 60 artists. The exhibition, on display through Dec. 7, includes basketry, weavings, ceramics, prints, paintings and drawings made between 1920 and 2018. Most of the art was made during the past 50 years and donated or promised by collectors and artists over the past two years. The is the first Gorman exhibition focused on the art of Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and Utah.

One of Cuba’s most acclaimed writers, Leonardo Padura, will be giving talks and readings at UC Davis Oct. 24 and 25. Padura is known internationally for his series of Mario Conde detective novels, which have been translated into many languages and made into a Netflix series.

Padura has received the National Prize for Literature, Cuba's national literary award, and in 2015 the Premio Principe de Asturias de las Letras of Spain, one of the most important literary prizes in the Spanish-speaking world.

A celebrated African American artist, a 1980s art star and the curator of a new Paul Gauguin exhibition are among those speaking at UC Davis this fall, with more to come in winter and spring.  The lectures offered by the College of Letters and Science's Department of Art and Art History take place at 4:30 p.m. at the Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Museum of Art. All the talks are free and open to the public.