“The time it takes to experience an artwork is usually quite short, but the effect is lasting.”
—Annabeth Rosen, Arneson Endowed Professor of Art
The Egghead sculptures on our campus are a reminder of our “Funk art” past and innovative present, which was once unimaginable. The legacy of The Arts at UC Davis is being realized in real time with each new generation of students and teachers as they innovate and connect with a broader community. Alumni in the arts are incredibly accomplished.
They include a Grammy Award winner, Hollywood screenwriters and renowned creatives whose works have debuted in galleries, museums, and concert spaces around the world. Its award- winning faculty include cultural icons, Emmy and Pulitzer Prize winners, and leading thinkers.
Alexandria Poore (B.A. art studio ’20) works on a class assignment about duality in TB 9. (Karin Higgins/UC Davis)
A Humble Beginning
Art at UC Davis began as one academic department in 1951, the Department of Philosophy and Fine Arts, when the College of Letters and Science was formally established. The campus was preparing to become a comprehensive campus, which it did along with UC Riverside in 1959. The three founding faculty members were Richard Nelson (Art), Jerome Rosen (Music) and Arthur Child (Philosophy).
They began in temporary buildings in the 1950s and today utilize a comprehensive set of professional facilities: Four performing arts venues, three museums, a makerspace, film room, art studios and rehearsal spaces, galleries, labs and more. One important temporary building remains: the historic TB 9, home to the ceramics studio today.
Broadly speaking, the 1960s
were a time of rapid development as the Art, Music, and Theatre buildings were constructed, and existing faculties expanded. The faculty created an earthquake which forever shifted the status quo in their respective fields. While visual artists were creating a new movement, music faculty formed the New Music Ensemble, which would go to beatnik hangouts in the Sacramento area
The Scream | Mike Henderson | 1966 | oil on canvas
and devised new systems of improvisation. Source Magazine, which documented the latest developments in the avant garde music scene, began on campus.
It was a period when arts faculty grappled with a society that was on one hand on the precipice of great technological advancement and fraught on the other with the violence of the civil rights era, which some of the early work of Professor
The Committee for Arts and Lectures formed on campus in 1964 to support traveling artists and guest speakers in order to enrich department endeavors, host festivals, and more. Today, the Robert and Margrit Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts (opened 2002) and the Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art (opened 2016) fulfill that charge by hosting important exhibitions and events. This includes the imaginative Egghead Walk with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, which engaged the public and campus community by premiering new compositions by faculty composers.
Exemplary Progress
Today, we explore and study the performing arts, studio and digital art, cinema and design, history, and the literary arts. Students and faculty bring new works to life and bring to light new narratives. These are just a few examples of the exceptional
nature of The Arts at UC Davis, which continues to push the boundaries of creative expression and cultural innovation while adding exceptional value to undergraduate and graduate education.
The Viewer is Essential
Art is participatory. In many ways the viewer experiencing it completes the work of art itself. Whether it is a performance or visual art piece, performers and artists imagine their work with the perspective of an onlooker as being critical to its formation. Distinguished Professor Annabeth Rosen, the Arneson Endowed Professor of Art, said: “The time it takes to experience an artwork is usually quite short, but the effect is lasting. It's not the moments spent in the museum, it is how it changes daily life for the better, opens up a sense of what's possible, and alters our perception of ourselves in the world.”
Chancellor Gary May and LeShelle May view the "Young, Gifted and Black" exhibition at the Manetti Shrem Museum of Art. (Karin Higgins/UC Davis)