The C.N. Gorman Museum will feature recently acquired prints in an exhibition set to open this Thursday (April 5). The university’s other museums this spring have ongoing exhibitions, as well as student exhibitions that will open in May.

Museum admission is free and open to the public.

The UC Davis Library also has new exhibitions for spring:

• The Aggie Spirit: Chronicling Student Life Through the University Archives — Photographs, yearbooks and other artifacts highlight six areas of student life: academics, student traditions and activities, sports and the band, housing and campus life, transportation, and fashion. And, naturally, bikes. Lots of bikes. Shields Library (lobby, outside Special Collections), April 6-Sept. 24. Check library website for hours.
• Confronting Violence: Improving Women’s Lives — The National Library of Medicine’s traveling exhibition on the role of nurses and doctors in raising awareness of and preventing domestic violence. Blaisdell Medical Library (located in the Education Building on the Sacramento campus), April 9-May 19. Check library website for hours.

Contemporary Prints at the Gorman

The C.N. Gorman Museum presents Contemporary Prints: A Selection from the Museum Collection, April 5 to June 15. “At the heart of the C.N. Gorman Museum’s permanent collections are the works on paper,” said Veronica Passalacqua, museum curator. “Through the generosity of artists, the museum has been honored to serve as a repository for several large print portfolios, as well as gifts by individual artists and collectors.”

Founded in 1973, the Gorman museum is named after Carl Nelson Gorman, Navajo artist, World War II code talker, cultural historian and advocate for Native peoples — and a founding faculty member in Native American studies at UC Davis. The museum, dedicated to the creative expressions of Native American artists and artists of diverse cultures and histories, is in 1316 Hart Hall. Regular hours: noon-5 p.m. Monday-Friday and 2-5 p.m. Sunday. Hart Hall. Regular hours: noon-5 p.m. Monday-Friday and 2-5 p.m. Sunday.

Ongoing exhibitions

The Design Museum presents It’s Bugged: Insects’ Role in Design, exploring the “complex and compelling” relationship between people and insects. This exhibition features objects from UC Davis’ JoAnn C. Stabb Design Collection, along with works by Professor Emerita Savageau and Master of Fine Arts students Alicia Decker, Lauren Kelly and Cory Wolffs. And, in keeping with the Design Museum’s year of design/science, the exhibition also includes insect specimens on loan from the UC Davis Bohart Museum of Entomology. Through April 22, 124 Cruess Hall. Regular hours: noon-4 p.m. Monday-Friday and 2-4 p.m. Sunday.

The Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art has three exhibitions continuing into May and June:

• Wayne Thiebaud: 1958-1968 — Rarely exhibited works from this formative decade of the artist’s career, along with new, related scholarship. Thiebaud, of course, is our very own UC Davis professor emeritus, having joined the art faculty in 1960 — and one of Northern California’s best known and most accomplished artists, fanour for his paintings of everyday objects of American life — from gumball machines to swimsuits and slices of pie — rendered with exaggerated colors reminiscent of commercial advertising. Through May 13.

Related event: “How I Learned to Paint,” with Roger White, artist and author of The Contemporaries: Travels in the 21st-Century Art World. Using both historical and personal examples, White will discuss the idiosyncrasies of studio-art education — in particular, how ideas and values are transmitted in a nonsystematic, essentially narrative way that complements or contradicts the more organized pedagogies of art history and theory. 5 p.m. Thursday, April 5, Manetti Shrem Museum.

• Tacita Dean: Day for Night — This 16mm silent film comprises 20 photographs mirroring still-life works by Giorgio Morandi, the Italian modernist painter and printmaker whom Thiebaud has described as “an artist’s artist.” By looking at these objects in different light, the British artist Dean offers a new read of Morandi’s work. Through May 13.
• ¿¡Welcome?! — The 1-year-old museum’s first faculty-curated exhibition — by Susette Min, associate professor, Department of Asian American Studies — explores the competing meanings of hospitality and the different ways it can be seen as a form of welcome or hostility, driven by necessity and greed, fear and desires, and subject to conventional demands of etiquette and the law. Featured artists include Andrea Bowers, Daniel Martinez, Dan Perjovschi, Kameelah Jana Rasheed and Jin-me Yoon. Co-sponsored by the Mellon Initiative in Comparative Border Studies at UC Davis and the Manetti Shrem Museum. Through June 17 (a week earlier than previously announced).

Manetti Shrem Museum regular hours: noon-6 p.m. Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday; noon-9 p.m. Thursday; and 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday-Sunday. See the museum’s updated Exhibits and Programs brochure (PDF).

Opening in May

• Design by Design: Undergraduate Senior Showcase — This annual juried exhibition celebrates the breadth, talent, creativity and multidisciplinary coursework from the Department of Design. May 21-June 18, Design Museum, 124 Cruess Hall. Regular hours: noon-4 p.m. Monday-Friday and 2-4 p.m. Sunday.
• Arts and Humanities Graduate Exhibition — Showcasing graduate students’ work and research across disciplines. May 29-June 24, Manetti Shrem Museum. Regular hours: noon-6 p.m. Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday; noon-9 p.m. Thursday; and 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday-Sunday. Opening reception: Thursday, May 31.
• Art History Graduate Colloquium — Learn about the work of this year’s art history master’s degree candidates, who will present their research as the culmination of their thesis projects. 1-4 p.m. Saturday, June 2, Manetti Shrem Museum.

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