Davis is home to its own plethora of art, ranging from shops along F and G Streets to sculptures and murals scattered around town.
However, one of the most expansive art collections resides on UC Davis’ campus at the Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art, located on 254 Old Davis Rd.
This modern art museum was established after 60 years of the art department working toward building a museum dedicated to showcasing works of art not typically shown in “traditional” museums.
UC Davis received a $2 million donation from Margrit Mondavi, widow of Napa Valley winemaker Robert Mondavi, and a $10 million donation from philanthropists Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem. These donations resulted in the museum’s opening on Nov. 13, 2016.
“Our philosophy of giving rests on simple concepts,” Shrem said in a previous interview about the museum and its mission. “We believe that education and the arts should be accessible to all people and that a curious, open mind should be nurtured and supported.”
According to The New York Times, the museum includes “trailblazing contributions by the school’s renowned art faculty, which contributed to innovations in conceptual, performance and video art in the 1960s and 70s,” and to this day, the museum’s collections focus on those same mediums.
Over 100 different works of art are exhibited at the museum at any given point, 64% of which come from Black and/or Indigenous people of color and 45% are from female artists. Over 120 students presented their work at the museum in the 2023-2024 season, according to museum data and 41% of the artists featured in Manetti Shrem Museum’s halls have a connection to the university as an alumnus, faculty or former faculty.
In the last year, more than 71,000 people visited the modern art museum’s collections, and museum staff are hoping that number will increase with the 2024 season kicking off with the student-curated experience, Light Into Density.
Light into Density is the museum’s first student-curated and student-designed exhibition. Most of the 15 paintings — including works by Francis Bacon, Salvador Dalí, Vassily Kandinsky, Wifredo Lam and Joan Miró — are on public view for the first time in decades.
Thirty-two undergraduate and graduate art history, museum studies and design students worked on the exhibition throughout the past year as part of dedicated classes. Their goal was to demystify abstract art and to encourage visitors’ personal interpretations.
The works in Light into Density come from the collection of art lovers and museum founding donors Shrem and Manetti Shrem, and are shared between the Manetti Shrem Museum and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art — the two museums the couple has supported the most.
Two other collections coming to the museum this season are Ritual Clay and Entangled Writing, with all artists hailing from the Golden State itself.
“This fall, we are thrilled to bring museum visitors new perspectives, new works and new futures through three very different dynamic exhibitions,” said Susie Kantor, associate curator and exhibitions department head. “Light into Density is the first student-curated and student-designed exhibition from a private collection of 20th-century works shown together for the first time. Ritual Clay: Cathy Lu, Paz G, Maryam Yousif features a new generation of exciting young artists in our region who are on the cusp of reaching a larger national audience, continuing Davis’ legacy as a hotbed for creativity in ceramics.”
Ritual Clay features Bay Area ceramic artists who use clay to explore how their identities and experiences intersect with themes of immigration, dislocation and cultural hybridity. Cathy Lu, Paz G and Maryam Yousif channel ancient archetypes and spiritual mythologies as a way to reckon with inherited histories.
Phillip Byrne, Beatriz Cortez, Kang Seung Lee, Candice Lin: Entangled Writing presents new commissions by four California artists working in sculpture and installation — the largest group of works the museum has commissioned to date.
Entangled Writing explores the way that people and objects move across time and space, allowing for multiple potentialities to exist. This exhibition spotlights artists making a splash on the international arts scene: Kang Seung Lee and Beatriz Cortez (a UC Davis associate professor of art), both of whom are featured in the current Venice Biennale; Candice Lin, who was in 2022’s biennale; and recent UC Davis M.F.A. graduate Phillip Byrne.
The Manetti Shrem Museum is open Thursday through Monday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. For more information about the museum, visit its website at https://manettishremmuseum.ucdavis.edu/.
