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.
Neal Benezra and Jock Reyonlds have been leading major museums for years, but in the 1970s both were graduate students at UC Davis. Both were back at UC Davis recently talking about the role of the university versus the civic museum, their time studying here and what they saw as possibilities for their talk’s venue—the Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art.
