After opening its doors in November of 2016, the Manetti Shrem Museum of Art has staked its claim to representing the fine arts at UC Davis. The museum is named for its founding donors, Jan Shrem, founder of Clos Pegase winery in the Napa Valley, and his wife, arts patron Maria Manetti Shrem, who made the gallery possible with a $10 million gift to the university in 2011.

For decades, artists have come to UCD because the place itself generated new means of expression and collaboration. The museum opened with “Out Our Way,” an exhibition featuring paintings, sculptures, drawings and prints from 12 faculty who became prominent well beyond the campus, including Robert Arneson, William T. Wiley and Roy De Forest.

In winter 2018 the museum featured “Wayne Thiebaud: 1958-1968,” which presented rarely exhibited works from this formative decade by Thiebaud, who officially retired from the UCD faculty in 1991 and continued to teach into the next decade.

The highly anticipated 2018-19 season launches in June. “Breaking Away, 2006-2018” by Susan Swartz and “You broke the ocean in half to be here” by Andrea Chung will run from June 30 to Sept. 2, with a public opening on July 15 at 3 p.m. Additional community programming and artist led-workshops will take place throughout July and August.

These two exhibitions find common ground in highlighting the university’s distinctive legacy of nurturing and exhibiting innovative contemporary art. “Breaking Away: 2006-2018,” is Susan Swartz’s California debut and a comprehensive evolution of her work. “You broke the ocean in half to be here” is San Diego artist Andrea Chung’s first traveling museum exhibition, which is composed of an immersive installation with selected prints and collages that explores legacies of colonialism and migration.

In the fall, the museum will launch its season with a spotlight on Bruce Nauman’s “Corridors,” running Sept. 27 to Dec. 16, and “Romance & Disaster: Irving Marcus 1970–2015,” from Sept. 27 to Dec. 30, with a public opening on Thursday, Sept. 27 at 4 p.m.

Coinciding with the opening of Bruce Nauman’s (MFA, 1966, UCD) retrospective at The Museum of Modern Art in New York, “Corridors” by guest curator Ted Mann and features the first realization of one of the large-scale, interactive environments that Nauman originally conceived in 1970: a narrow corridor with yellow and blue fluorescent light that wraps around three sides of an existing room. An adjacent gallery will include a selection of artworks that contextualize the corridor.

Also on view in the fall, the UCD legacy includes a series of complex and coexisting developments that came together in northern California at the end of the 20th century. This extended community has been critically undervalued relative to movements coming out of New York and Southern California. “Romance & Disaster: Irving Marcus, 1970-2015” will be the first museum retrospective of an important, and yet overlooked artist. The exhibition surveys more than 45 years of work with his vibrant and intensely personal paintings exhibited alongside works on paper.

The museum, a $30 million project, is an artistic statement itself — “conceived as a model for a new kind of art museum, one that defines itself as a constantly evolving public event, encouraging personal encounters and providing informal as well as formal learning opportunities,” as explained by the museum’s “design vision” statement.

Aside from changing exhibits — tours, studio programs, lectures, discussions and speakers are scheduled throughout the year.

Please note the museum will observe summer hours from June 30 to Sept. 2: Tuesdays through Sundays, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Mondays, closed. The museum will be closed for installation from Sept. 3 to 26. Normal hours (Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays, Noon to 6 p.m.; Thursdays, noon to 9 p.m.; and Saturdays and Sundays, 11 a.m to 5 p.m.) will resume on September 27.

See the schedule can at manettishremmuseum.ucdavis.edu/visit/events-and-programs.html. Visit manettishrem.org for more information on upcoming programs as well as volunteer opportunities. As always admission is free.

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