The Manetti Shrem Museum of Art is a fine arts museum located at the University of California, Davis in Davis, California. Its full name is the Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art.
The museum opened on November 13, 2016. [1] According to The New York Times, the museum includes "trailblazing contributions by the school’s renowned art faculty, which contributed to innovations in conceptual, performance and video art in the 1960s and 70s". [2]
Richard L. Nelson was the founder of the art department at UC Davis, [3] and he recruited a faculty in the early 1960s that included highly successful artists such as Wayne Thiebaud, Robert Arneson, Roy De Forest, Manuel Neri, Roland Petersen and William T. Wiley. Several were associated with the Funk art genre. [4]
In a negative 1981 review in The New York Times, conservative art critic Hilton Kramer referred to Arneson as the leader of "a spirit best defined as defiant provincialism" at UC Davis. [5] That phrase has since been embraced as a defining description by artists associated with UC Davis.
For nearly 60 years, the art faculty hoped for and discussed the possibility of building a dedicated art museum, according to museum director Rachel Teagle. [6]
Margrit Mondavi, widow of Napa Valley winemaker Robert Mondavi, made an initial $2 million donation to begin the project. [7] Napa Valley winemaker Jan Shrem, founder of Clos Pegase winery, and his wife Maria Manetti Shrem, donated $10 million of the $30 million budget for building the museum. [6]
The architects were Florian Idenburg and Jing Liu of the firm SO-IL of Brooklyn, who partnered with local architect Bohlin Cywinski Jackson. [8]
Writing in the Los Angeles Times, architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne described the building: "Inside, a lobby with lightly polished concrete floors is lined with a sweeping curve of floor-to-ceiling glass. As you enter, a multipurpose room that can be arranged as an auditorium is off to the left, with classrooms, studios and museum offices straight ahead. To the right are the galleries, which fill rooms of varying sizes and heights and are topped with a ceiling of aluminum mesh, through which mechanical equipment is left visible." [8]
A "focal point" of the design is the Grand Canopy, a structure of swooping curves that surrounds the museum. [9] Described as a "perforated aluminum and steel roof that creates textured light and shadows throughout the grounds", it was inspired by the geometry of the farm fields that surround Davis. [9]
According to acting university chancellor Ralph Hexter, "Students, faculty, staff and the public all will be able to enjoy our rich art legacy and history at UC Davis in a gorgeous and inviting building at the gateway to our campus. Our new museum stresses education first and foremost, with classrooms, a working studio for students and other resources near the entrance where all can see and enjoy for generations to come."
In 2022, the Manetti Shrem Museum was listed as #24 of ARTnews's "The 25 Best Museum Buildings of the Past 100 Years". [10]
The museum owns nearly 6,000 art objects, including many works by Bruce Nauman, a 1966 MFA graduate of the university. [3] Wayne Thiebaud has donated 72 of his own works and 300 works by other artists to the museum's permanent collection. [4] [7] In addition to his financial support, Jan Shrem has also donated works of art including sculptures from his collection to the museum's collection. [11]
The University of California, Davis, is a public land-grant research university near Davis, California. Named a Public Ivy, it is the northernmost of the ten campuses of the University of California system. The institution was first founded as an agricultural branch of the system in 1905 and became the seventh campus of the University of California in 1959.
Robert Gerald Mondavi was an American winemaker. His technical and marketing strategies brought worldwide recognition for the wines of the Napa Valley in California. From an early period, Mondavi promoted labeling wines varietally rather than generically, which became the standard for New World wines. The Robert Mondavi Institute (RMI) for Wine and Food Science at the University of California, Davis opened in October 2008 in his honor.
Robert Carston Arneson was an American sculptor and professor of ceramics in the Art department at University of California, Davis for nearly three decades.
Margrit Biever Mondavi (néeKellenberger; August 2, 1925 – September 2, 2016) was a Swiss-born American businesswoman. She was vice president of Cultural Affairs at Robert Mondavi Winery which she joined in 1967. Under her direction, Robert Mondavi Winery developed original cultural and culinary arts programs. She was the wife of Robert Mondavi and worked with him in many of his philanthropic activities including the founding of the museum Copia. She played a key role in securing the downtown Napa location for the center, which opened in November 2001. She died of stomach cancer on September 2, 2016.
Rutherford + Chekene is a structural and geotechnical engineering firm in California specializing in new design and retrofit of structures for clients in sectors that include healthcare, higher education, corporate, research and development, art and education, and technology.
Packard Jennings is an American artist who appropriates pop culture symbols and references to create new meaning using a variety of media including printmaking, sculpture, animation, video, and pamphleteering. In his early career he modified billboards, a common practice of culture jammers. He has been working on a police mindfulness meditation project since 2012. Though he works mostly in public, he is affiliated with Charlie James Gallery in Los Angeles, and Analix Forever in Geneva. His work is in the collection of the UC Davis Museum and di Rosa. His work is in several books, including: “Art and Agenda” Gestalten, 2011, "We Own the Night ” Rizzoli, 2011 and "Urban Interventions" Gestalten, 2010. His Shopdropping work 'Anarchist Action figure was described on the front page of the New York Times.
Festival Napa Valley is a music, food, wine and lifestyle festival held in Napa Valley, California. It is presented by Napa Valley Festival Association, a nonprofit corporation governed by a board of vintners and local leaders.
Roland Conrad Petersen is a Danish-born American painter, printmaker, and professor. His career spans over 50 years, primarily in the San Francisco Bay Area and is perhaps best-known for his "Picnic series" beginning in 1959 to today. He is part of the Bay Area Figurative Movement.
SO – IL or Solid Objectives – Idenburg Liu is an architecture firm in Brooklyn, New York City, which was founded in 2008 by Florian Idenburg and Jing Liu. Between 2013 and 2018 the firm had a third partner, Ilias Papageorgiou.
Jing Liu is an architect, educator and co-founder of the award-winning design firm Solid Objectives - Idenburg Liu (SO-IL) in New York City.
Florian Idenburg is a Dutch architect and co-founder of the award-winning architectural design firm SO – IL in New York City.
Rene di Rosa was an American vintner and art collector.
Jan Isaac Shrem is an American book distributor and publisher, winery owner, art collector and philanthropist.
Frank Owen is an American abstract painter based in Keene, New York.
Stephen J. Kaltenbach is an American artist and author based in Sacramento, California.
Richard Whitten is a painter and sculptor of mixed Asian and American ancestry working in Rhode Island. His early work could loosely be termed geometric abstractions, but he is best known for his later representational paintings that combine an interest in architecture, invented machinery and toys. Whitten is also known for his toy-like sculptures. Whitten was the chair of the art department at Rhode Island College (2016-2018) and continues to teach there as part of the faculty.
Gorman Museum of Native American Art is a museum focused on Native American and Indigenous artists, founded in 1973 at University of California, Davis in Davis, California. It was formerly known as the Carl Nelson Gorman Museum, and the C.N. Gorman Museum.
Ruth Horsting, also known as Ma Renu was an American sculptor, professor, author, community organizer, philanthropist, and a student of Ashtanga Yoga. She is known for her bronze and steel sculptures, and taught at the University of California, Davis from 1959 to 1971. Horsting was the first female sculptor hired in the entire University of California system.
Oliver Lee Jackson is an American painter, sculptor, draftsman, and printmaker whose studio is in Oakland, California.
Dan C. Snyder aka Daniel Cotton Snyder is an American sculptor and ceramicist.
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