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, started in 2015, complements the
Art Studio Program’s Visiting Artist Lecture
Series and The California
Studio, both core components of the Art Studio
M.F.A. Program. The Betty Jean and Wayne Thiebaud
Endowed Lecture features practicing artists, along with
critics, curators, writers, historians, and museum professionals,
to provide cultural insights and context for contemporary art.
The Thiebaud Endowment also aims to bring more than one guest per
year and/or extend the length of their UC Davis engagement.
Wangechi Mutu, whose works are all rooted in her investigations
and advocacy around human representation, is the 2022 Betty Jean
and Wayne Thiebaud Endowed Lecture guest artist.
Njideka Akunyili
Crosby, whose art negotiates the cultural terrain between her
adopted home in America and her native Nigeria in collage and
photo transfer-based paintings, will give the
seventh Betty Jean and Wayne Thiebaud Endowed Lecture. This
year’s lecture celebrates Wayne Thiebaud’s centennial
birthday.
Leonardo Drew, known for creating reflective abstract
sculptural works that play upon the dystopic tension between
order and chaos, will give the sixth Betty Jean
and Wayne Thiebaud Endowed Lecture.
Peter Schjeldahlm, staff writer at The New Yorker and
magazine’s art critic, will be the Betty Jean and Wayne Thiebaud
Endowed Lecturer for 2016. He came to the magazine from The
Village Voice, where he was the art critic from 1990 to
1998. Previously, he had written frequently for the New York
Times’s Arts and Leisure section. His writing has also
appeared in Artforum, Art in America, the
New York Times Magazine, Vogue, and Vanity
Fair.
Painter Rackstraw Downes will give the inaugural Betty Jean and
Wayne Thiebaud Endowed Lecture at UC Davis on May 6, 2015. He
will talk about about painting from observation on site in the
contemporary environment. He will also be visiting the studios of
current MFA candidates in Art Studio.
The Art Building is located on Hutchison Drive, about halfway
between the Memorial Union and Mrak Hall on the UC Davis campus.
There is limited parking behind the building, but there is
visitor parking nearby, across the Arboretum in lot VP5.
