Painter Aliza Nisenbaum will join us on Friday, March 9, 2018 as the fourth Betty Jean and Wayne Thiebaud Endowed Lecturer. 

Born in Mexico City, and currently based in New York, Aliza Nisenbaum’s paintings are intimate exchanges between herself and her subjects. The artist makes portraits of undocumented Latin American immigrants, and of other distinct communities, using the focused attention of observational painting to mark those who are socially unmarked in society, along with the apparently anonymous goods that constitute a transnational trade in quotidian objects such as flowers, garments, handcrafts and letters. Often lushly decorated with patterened textiles, her canvases demand close looking in keeping with her personal connections to her subjects.

Nisenbaum has presented her work at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, Mary Mary, Glasgow; White Columns, New York; Lulu, Mexico City; the Whitney Biennial 2017; The Flag Art Foundation; The ICA at MECA, Maine; Biennial of the Americas, MCA, Denver; the Rufino Tamayo Painting Biennial, Museo Rufino Tamayo, Mexico City; T-293 gallery, Rome; Princeton University School of Architecture; The Renaissance Society, Chicago; Yale School of Art; The University of Wisconsin; and The University of Texas at Tyler, among others. She has curated an exhibition, “Intimisms” at James Cohan Gallery in 2016. She  has been an artist in residence at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, The Sharpe-Walentas Studio Program; Lower Manhattan Cultural Council; the University of Tennessee; and SOMA Summer, Mexico City. Fellowships and grants include the Rema Hort Mann NYC award, and the Fellowship for Immigrant Women Leaders from NYC Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs (MOIA). She has also been a participating artist at Immigrant Movement International, Corona Park, Queens. She was included in the book “Vitamin P3, New Perspectives in Painting.” She is currently Director of Graduate Studies, and Professor of Visual Arts at Columbia University School of the Arts.

The Betty Jean and Wayne Thiebaud Endowed Lecture honors the Thiebauds’ long commitment to educating the eye and hand along with the mind. The endowment will complement the Art Studio Program’s Visiting Artist Lecture Series, a core component of the Art Studio MFA Program, increasing its ability to invite distinguished artists, critics and curators to the UC Davis campus.

This event is supported by the Department of Art and Art History, the office of the Dean of the College of Letters and Science and the Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art.