COMING NEXT WEEK

Growing Up in India — Photographic exhibition that explores the culture of India from a youthful perspective. The exhibition comprises the works of three Indian artists: Dinesh Khanna, the exhibition's curator, and Prashant Panjiar and Anusha Yadav, who focus on different aspects of Indian society and culture. Nov. 14-Dec. 18, Yocha Dehe Grand Lobby, Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts. Open one hour prior to performances, and during the performances, to people with tickets to those performances. The photographic exhibition is being presented in conjunction with a three-part film series, Monday and Tuesday, Nov. 14-15. More information.

"Figures in a Landscape: The Beauty of Pissarro’s People" — James E. Housefield of the UC Davis faculty is scheduled to give this lecture Saturday, Nov. 19, in connection with the Pissarro's People exhibition at San Francisco's Legion of Honor, one of the city's fine arts museums.

Housefield, a scholar of modern French art and design, is an assistant professor in the Design Program.

The exhibition and lecture titles make reference to Camille Pissarro's unique and lifelong interest in the human figure.

"Like his fellow impressionists, Camille Pissarro (1830-1903) found new types of beauty in the French landscape," the Legion of Honor website states, on a page about Housefield's lecture.

"Yet Pissarro forged a distinct approach to Impressionism through the integration of figures into the landscape. Pissarro's art thus paved new ways to depict the complex geographies of modern France.

"This illustrated lecture examines how Pissarro's idea of beauty embraced the human transformation of the landscape."

Housefield has previously given lectures at another of San Francisco's fine arts museums, the de Young. His previous lectures accompanied the exhibitions Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cézanne and Beyond: Post-Impressionist Masterpieces from the Musée d'Orsay; Balenciaga and Spain; and Picasso: Masterpieces from the Musée National Picasso, Paris.

He is completing a book about the inspiration of geography and astronomy for the art and design creations of Marcel Duchamp.

Housefield's Pissarro lecture is scheduled from 2 to 3 p.m. in the Florence Gould Theater. The lecture is free with paid admission to the Legion of Honor, where Pissarro's People opened Oct. 22 and is set to run through Jan. 22.

More information about the Legion of Honor.

Dreams of Toyland — The Design Program's Dolph Gotelli, a professor emeritus, has another holiday treat for the Napa Valley Museum. In bringing back Dreams of Toyland, the renowned collector offers new vignettes that take visitors to a world of miniature fairies, animals and other delightful creatures in snowy forests, cozy kitchens and intricate drawing rooms.

"The exhibition is created to delight and inspire, evoking the wonder and innocent joys of childhood," the museum website declares. Dreams of Toyland is scheduled to run from Nov. 19 to Jan. 29.

More information about the Napa Valley Museum.

Buy what you like at the Craft Center

See something you like in the Craft Center Gallery? Submit a bid, and the item could be yours come Dec. 2.

The gallery is filled with jewelry, glasswork, textiles, ceramics, metalwork, woodwork, photography, painting, drawing, screen printing and mixed media, all handcrafted by Craft Center staff members for the Gallery Staff Show and Silent Auction, now in its 10th year.

Prices generally range between $5 and $100, with most priced under $25. Proceeds benefit the Craft Center's programming and operations.

“What could be better than handmade bargains?” asked Jan Garrison, Craft Center coordinator. “It is a benefit show displaying a wide variety of art and crafts made from different media, expressing the creativity in Davis and sharing that for the rest of the community to take part in and enjoy.”

Written bids can be placed at any time during the center's open hours: 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Friday, and 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. The center and gallery are in the South Silo.

The silent-bidding phase is set to close at 6 p.m. Friday, Dec. 2, amid a reception from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Live auctions will commence for any items for which interested bidders are in attendance.

For more information, call Garrison, (530) 752-3096.

ONGOING EXHIBITIONS

• Birds: A Kinetic Installation — Does the term "kinetic sculpture" fill your mind with images of clanking metal gears or corny water-driven fountain elements? Chico MacMurtrie has made his share of drum-pounding giant robots over the years. But, with Birds, he offers a different vision: a lyrical, even meditative exploration of the flapping of wings — a dozen pairs of them. Driven by compressed air, the fabric wings slowly inflate, flap and deflate over a period of minutes, in eerie grace and silence. Through Dec. 11, Nelson Gallery, Nelson Hall. Regular hours: 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday-Thursday and Saturday-Sunday, and Fridays by appointment.

• Double Vision: New Works by Hulleah J. Tsinhnahjinnie — A collaboration of the C.N. Gorman Museum, the Great Plains Art Museum and Hulleah J. Tsinhnahjinnie, this exhibition poses an intervention with the photographic archive. Based on historical images from the late 1800s by Laton Alton Huffman and William Henry Jackson, held in the collections of the Great Plains Art Museum at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, Tsinhnahjinnie creates works that serve as a remembrance of the bison, a visual confrontation and an appropriation into a Native American context. Through Dec. 2, C.N. Gorman Museum, 1316 Hart Hall. Hours: noon-5 p.m. Monday-Friday, and 2-5 p.m. Sunday. Artist and curator lecture, 4 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 29, with a reception to follow.

• Gyre: Regarding a Tragedy of the Commons — This exhibition by Robert Gaylor addresses the accumulation of plastic waste known as the "Great Pacific Garbage Patch" in the North Pacific Gyre (a giant, circular current on the ocean surface). The exhibition comprises two parts: photographs and an arrangement of flotsam objects gathered from the North Pacific Gyre, and a video installation titled Kamilo Twisted Waters, a moving mandala that reflects the fouling of the oceans. Through Dec. 2, Design Museum, Cruess Hall. Hours: noon-4 p.m. Monday-Friday, and 2-4 p.m. Sunday.

• Paper Takes: The Power of Uncivil Words — Built on the university's collection of radical pamphlets, as part of the Civility Project. Through Nov. 30, Buehler Alumni and Visitors Center. Hours: 8 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday-Friday, and 10 a.m.-2 p.m. Saturday. See separate story.

AT SHIELDS LIBRARY

• Campus Community Book Project: Celebrate the Freedom to Read — The General Library Committee on Diversity assembled this exhibition in connection with this year's book project selection, Sherman Alexie's The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, an award-winning young adult novel and one of the most challenged books of 2010.

The exhibition comprises classic and contemporary works of fiction that share with Alexie’s novel the distinction of being either challenged or banned in the United States.

Says the committee: "The best literature provokes discussion and challenges us to open our minds to the diversity of this common and uncommon thing we call life.' Our individual experiences are both unique and universal. Author Sherman Alexie’s semiautobiographical novel brilliantly captures this paradox."

• Jonathan Franzen — Highlighting the author's work, including The Corrections, Freedom and other novels. This exhibition aligns with Franzen's appearance in the Mondavi Center's Distinguished Speakers series. His talk, On Autobiography and Fiction Writing, is scheduled for Saturday, Oct. 8.

• The Ground Beneath Our Feet: The Nikola P. Prokopovich Papers on Land Subsidence — Manuscript archivist Liz Phillips prepared this exhibition on the papers of engineering geologist Nikola P. Prokopovich (1918-99)., who worked as a geologist with the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation's Mid-Pacific Region.

He worked out of the bureau's Sacramento office from 1958 to 1986, investigating the geology and geochemistry of statewide water projects, including the Central Valley Project and the Solano Project. He was an avid field geologist and spent as much time as possible on site, collecting his own data. Prokopovich was particularly interested in the engineering geology of the Central Valley Project's canals and dam sites, and in the effects of state water projects and field irrigation on the surrounding landscape.

The collection includes draft reports, memoranda and published writings, as well as nearly 25,000 slides and photographs documenting his work and the land around his work sites. 

• The Spirit of New Orleans: Culture, Community, Community, Catastrophe, Construction — In conjunction with The Spirit of New Orleans series (film and music) at the Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts. The exhibition, prepared by Michael Colby, features items from library collections representing scholarship on the history, music, architecture, culture, practices and, most important, the people of New Orleans.

The Franzen exhibition runs through Oct. 10; the Campus Community Book Project and The Spirit of New Orleans exhibitions are designated for fall quarter, and The Ground Beneath Our Feet for fall and winter quarters. All exhibitions are in the Shields Library lobby. Regular hours: 7:30 a.m.-midnight Monday-Thursday, 7:30 a.m.-6 p.m. Friday, noon-6 p.m. Saturday and noon-midnight Sunday. Holidays and other exceptions.

OFF-CAMPUS

• Premeditation: Meditations on Capital Punishment — California State University, Sacramento, draws from its University Archives and Special Collections for this exhibition of works by the artist Malaquais Montoya, professor emeritus in UC Davis' Department of Chicana/o Studies. Through Nov. 19, Gallery Annex, University Library, Sacramento State, 6000 J St. Hours: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday. 

The Premeditation: Meditations on Capital Punishment exhibition sponsors include the UC Davis Department of Chicana/o Studies and Taller Arte del Nuevo Amanecer, or TANA, the department-run community art center in Woodland.

• Wayne Thiebaud, professor emeritus of art — Five of his paintings are on display at the California Museum in Sacramento, in conjunction with his induction Dec. 14 into the California Hall of Fame. See separate stories on Thiebaud, "Painter, teacher, visionary" and his induction into the California Hall of Fame. The museum has gathered personal items from all of the 2010 inductees, for an exhibition that is scheduled to run through Oct. 31. Thiebaud's picks: Bikini Figure (1966), Waterland (1996), Two Tulip Sundaes (2009), and Intersection Building and Cliff Ridge (both from 2010), all oils, on canvas or wood.

The museum is in the California State Archives building at 1020 O St., at the corner of 10th Street, one block south of Capitol Park. Hours: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday-Saturday and noon-5 p.m. Sunday. (No one admitted after 4:30 p.m.) Closed all major holidays and furlough Fridays.