Glass artist Josiah McElheny, the winter spotlight artist in The California Studio, explored ideas — and campus — during a week with students and faculty in the UC Davis Department of Art and Art History.
UC Davis art professor Beatriz Cortez has been invited to participate in the prestigious Venice Biennale arts and culture showcase, marking the first time in 40 years a current faculty member has been tapped for the honor.
Shiva Ahmadi, a professor in the UC Davis Department of Art and Art History, has an upcoming exhibition of 19 paintings in “Shiva Ahmadi: Strands of Resilience” at the Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art Jan. 28 – May 6.
Malaquías Montoya, a professor emeritus of Chicana and Chicano studies at UC Davis, is being widely celebrated with two major exhibitions at the Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art at UC Davis and at the Oakland Museum of California. But he is much more than an artist. Montoya, 85, has influenced several generations of students who went on to make art or make a mark on the world in other ways.
The UC Davis Department of Art and Art History will launch its 2023–24 public lecture series with talks by artists Katya Grokhovsky (Oct. 12) and Sky Hopinka (Oct. 26) at the Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art. The talks are free and open to the public.
UC Davis Chancellor Gary S. May presented the 2023 UC Davis Medal, the university’s highest honor, to international arts patron and philanthropist Maria Manetti Shrem at the afternoon commencement ceremony on June 18 at the Golden 1 Center in Sacramento. The award presentation was followed by a ceremonial tree planting on the UC Davis campus and a dinner at the UC Davis Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts.
At this year’s Arts and Humanities Graduate Exhibition, on view June 8-25 at the Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art, students in history, performance studies and English as well as design and art will take part. A free, public opening celebration will take place June 8 from 6 to 9 p.m. Art history students will present their research the following day. In all, 30 Master of Fine Arts, Master of Arts and doctoral students are participating.
The culmination of two or more years and a lifetime of experience and exploration by UC Davis students, “The Arts & Humanities Graduate Exhibition” offers new ways to understand the world, ourselves and the issues we face. We spent time with three students from art studio, music and design to learn about their journeys of creating works that are in the exhibition.
When Wayne Thiebaud arrived at UC Davis in 1961, the university had been an independent campus for only two years. The art department was in an embryonic stage. Then in 1962, Thiebaud had a groundbreaking exhibition in New York and, during the decades that followed, his reputation only grew. Along the way he was joined by other art faculty who soon developed national reputations as well, and UC Davis became nearly as well-known for art as for agriculture.
The UC Davis College of Letters and Science's Department of Art and Art History is growing, thanks to a generous $750,000 gift from Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem to formally establish The California Studio: Manetti Shrem Artist Residencies. The exciting new program will bring preeminent visiting art scholars and innovative artists to campus from around the world over the next three years.
