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Professor Fidencio Fifield-Perez has a solo show at Dreamsong, which runs Sept. 10 through Oct. 24, 2026. It’s the first solo exhibition (ever) of the Minneapolis gallery.

During Heghnar Watenpaugh’s recent academic residency in Paris, the Louvre, the city’s most famous art museum, was continually in headlines even here in the U.S.

Assistant Professor of Design Akshita Sivakumar is one of fourteen faculty members from the College of Letters and Science who were selected in June to have their research supported by the college’s Regeneration Research Program — a program which came about as a way to sustain research as funding opportunities have become scarcer. Sivakumar is a designer, architect, and technoscience studies scholar whose work lies at the confluence of governance, social movements, technology, and the built environment.

It was a warm yet breezy week in New York City and the sidewalks were full of tourists, many coming for nearby World Cup festivities, others to celebrate Pride, Juneteenth and, especially, the city’s own Knicks basketball team’s historic win. But for students visiting from UC Davis, highlights of the week were largely concentrated in Midtown Manhattan and the Theater District.

The UC Davis Design Museum opens its 2026–27 season with Connecting Threads (together): Textile Works by Lynn Setterington which opens on Sept. 29 and runs through Nov. 20.  

Collaboration is at the heart of textile making and this idea is explored in a display of work by UK based artist Setterington. Through textiles the artist challenges contemporary issues in society and how stitch can be used to commemorate people and communities.

Alum and Senior Continuing Lecturer Michele Apriña Leavy is appearing in the West Coast premiere of "Manning" by Benjamin Benne. The work is presented by San Francisco's Crowded Fire Theatre, a critically acclaimed company for new play production on the West Coast. 

A short film about a serial bike thief slinking around the streets of Davis doesn’t seamlessly transition into meditations on how technology may hinder modern life, but no two films at the 2026 Film Festival at UC Davis could be thought of as alike, save for their resolve to serve as recognizable representations of our present-day world. 

Two Ph.D. students in computer science in collaboration with a professor of English in the College of Letters and Science, have created an AI-driven game which allows players to speak directly to Macbeth and attempt conflict de-escalation strategies to try to change his mind at this crucial juncture of the play. Link to Article

Jon Anderson began his lectureship in horn performance at Sacramento State University's School of Music.

Professor Shiva Ahmadi’s recent show Shiva Ahmadi: Crown of Flames at Haines Gallery in San Francisco was just positively reviewed by Maria Porges in Artforum. Ahmadi’s show featured new and recent works that present Ahmadi’s longterm exploration of conflict, corruption, and instability, informed by her own experiences and the current news cycle.

The launch of Professor John López’s new book The Aquatic Metropolis: Urban Design and Environmental Change in Tenochtitlan-Mexico City (Pennsylvania University Press) starts on June 26 with a virtual book talk sponsored by The Association of Latin American Art.

Professor Katharine Burnett has published a new article on the artist Wu Bin in the journal Word and Image. In “Mediated meaning of a magnificent rock: using Wu Bin’s words to understand his painting Ten Views of a Lingbi Rock,” Burnett examines the late Ming Originalist artist Wu’s intentions through an analysis of the artist’s inscriptions, colophons and similarly commissioned painting On the Way to Shanyin.

On June 7, Professor Katharine Burnett explored Yixing teapots and the discourse of originality with the San Francisco Ceramics Circle. She presented “The Marvelously Inventive 17th-Century Chinese Teapot (and Some of Its European Descendants)” at the Gunn Theater in the Legion of Honor, San Francisco to the San Francisco Ceramics Circle, an affiliate organization of ceramics enthusiasts connected to the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.

Professor Talinn Grigor has been awarded a fellowship by The Center for Iran and Persian Gulf Studies at Princeton University. She will be a Visiting Fellow from January to April, 2027. Professor Grigor will be working on her project Of Hyphenated Architects which examines the role of hyphenated and diasporic Armenian architects and artists in the global circulation and connectivity of the Modern Movement.

Professor Talinn Grigor will participate in the 2026 Cultural History of Asian Art Conference at the University of Hong Kong on June 24. Professor Grigor will discuss “Postcards, Hotels, and Hospitable Minorities: Armenian and Parsi Urbanity Networking a British Empire” for a panel exploring urbanity.