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See Sonic Horizons at the UC Davis Design Museum
From Friday, Nov. 1 at noon through Friday, Nov. 22 at 4 p.m., Cruess Hall
Devised and curated by graduate student Maral Salehian, this multi-screen installation showcases nature videos centered around landscape themes. This sensory-rich immersive experience aims to promote well-being and inspire a deeper connection to nature.
Maral Salehian is an interdisciplinary designer with a background in industrial design. In 2018, she graduated top of her class from the University of Art, Tehran. Her design practice in conceptual and formal inventiveness matured and converged in furniture design. In 2019, she attended the University of Tehran, where she studied M.A. in industrial design. During her study, she gained a deep understanding of design principles, methodology, and philosophy. She began working as a furniture designer.
The UC Davis Design Museum is a founding adopter of the Green Museums Initiative. The initiative is a set of five principles that propel museums to become environmental leaders and is administered by the California Association of Museums and the Green Museums Initiative. The Design Museum, part of the College of Letters and Science and free to the public, is in 124 Cruess Hall.
Debuting at the Manetti Shrem Museum of Art: Phillip Byrne, Beatriz Cortez, Kang Sung Lee, and Candace Lin’s Entangled Writing
At the Manetti Shrem Museum of Art until Dec. 29, 2024.
Entangled Writing presents new work by Phillip Byrne, Beatriz Cortez, Kang Sung Lee, and Candace Lin in the realm of sculpture and installation. The featured artwork explores how people and objects move across time and space allowing for different versions of reality to exist.
This exhibition spotlights artists making a splash on the international arts scene: Kang Seung Lee and Beatriz Cortez (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. Read a full press release here. (Aug. 8–Dec. 29, 2024)
Ritual Clay: Cathy Lu, Paz G, Maryam Yousif
Avaliable until Dec. 29, 2024 at the Manetti Shrem Museum of Art
Ritual Clay brings together recent ceramic work by Cathy Lu, Paz G and Maryam Yousif. These contemporary Bay Area artists are united by their shared interest in clay as a link to the past and as a conduit of cultural knowledge. They channel ancient archetypes and spiritual mythologies as a way to reckon with inherited histories. For each of them, there is power in clay’s iconographic as well as ritualistic past that opens a path for exploration of their own origin stories.
Curated by Ginny Duncan, curatorial assistant
Light into Density: Abstract Encounters 1920s–1960s
From the Collection of Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem
Available until May 5, 2025 at the Manetti Shrem Museum of Art
The works in Light into Density come from the collection of art lovers and museum founding donors Jan Shrem and Maria 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.
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.
Read more here: Current Exhibitions | jan shrem and maria manetti shrem museum of art
At the Gorman
'Brenda Mallory: In the Absence of Instruction' at the Gorman Museum of Native American Art
Available until Jan. 26, 2025, at the Gorman Museum of Native American Art
In the solo exhibition, Brenda Mallory includes prints, multi-media and installation artworks to consider the complex relationships and structures of power and identity. In the Absence of Instruction explores an intersection of themes from the past and present to express new forms of cultural knowledge despite historical disruption. By creating multiple forms that are joined with crude hardware that imply tenuous connections or repairs, her work addresses ideas of interference in long-established systems of nature and human cultures.
A citizen of the Cherokee Nation who grew up in Oklahoma, lived experience deeply informs her practice, as do the histories of survival inherent to Indigenous peoples.
Read more about Mallory and her work here: Brenda Mallory
The Collections Gallery
Availiable until September 2025, at the Gorman Museum of Native American Art
The Collections Gallery features a selection of artworks from the Gorman Museum Collections on a rotational basis. The current exhibition is a survey spanning across the collection.
Display cases in the Collections Gallery serve as visible storage, housing much of the museum's ceramic and basketry collection. By moving museum collections from storage into prominent long-term exhibits in the main public galleries, the Collections Gallery provides enhanced visibility, access, and engagement to collections for visitors while also furthering university teaching and research.
Read about the exhibit here: The Collections Gallery | Gorman Museum