Joining the Bay Area museum openings this week is Sacramento’s Crocker Art Museum, which opens this week with the long-awaited exhibition in honor of UC Davis Professor Emeritus Wayne Thiebaud. Here, we repeat the information we put out a few weeks ago hoping the exhibition would be able to open. The Crocker opens this Friday! (The Manetti Shrem Museum at UC Davis will have a retrospective in the new year featuring artists who were influenced by Thiebaud). There’s also plenty of other entertainment: a concert today; a play over the weekend, and more. (Okay, most of this other stuff to do IS virtual, but hop on your computer and enjoy.) We give COVID-19 guideline links to all live events.
By Michelle Villagomez, UC Davis Media Relations Intern
Crocker Reopens on Friday along with Wayne Thiebaud 100: Paintings, Prints and Drawings
Crocker Art Museum: Wayne Thiebaud 100, 210 O Street, Sacramento, Friday, Oct.16-Jan. 3, $6-$12
Wayne Thiebaud, a renowned artist and professor emeritus of the UC Davis Art Department, celebrates his 100th birthday this Nov. 15. In honor of this occasion, The Crocker Art Museum presents Wayne Thiebaud 100: Paintings, Prints, and Drawings, an extensive, celebratory retrospective featuring the full range of the Sacramento artist’s achievements on canvas and paper in an exhibition at the Crocker from through Jan. 3, if the COVID-19 regulations allow the museum to remain open throughout its duration.
Opening shortly before Thiebaud’s birthday, the career-spanning exhibition of 100 objects made over more than 70 years (1947-2019), is the largest survey of Wayne Thiebaud’s work in in two decades. Works drawn from the Crocker’s holdings and the collection of the Thiebaud Family and Foundation, many of which have never been shown publicly, as well as the artist’s newest body of work, circus clowns, reveal an extraordinary, expansive practice. Accompanied by a full-color, richly illustrated publication with fresh scholarship by Crocker Art Museum’s Associate Director & Chief Curator Scott A. Shields and others asserts that Thiebaud’s body of work is singular and visionary, informed by memory, tradition and imagination.
“Wayne Thiebaud is a national treasure, Sacramento is his hometown, and we are delighted to celebrate his 100th birthday with an exhibition that honors the vitality, vibrancy, and wit of his art and civically engaged life,” says Lial A. Jones, the Museum’s Mort and Marcy Friedman Director & CEO. “Wayne Thiebaud 100 continues a Crocker tradition of organizing an exhibition of the artist’s work in every decade since 1951, when the Crocker accorded him his first solo museum show. We will recognize his achievements through an important publication alongside virtual exhibition tours and programs, fresh and archival interviews with the curator and the artist himself, plus fun and engaging digital activities for all ages.”
Click here to read the full news release describing the exhibition and the new scholarly publication/catalog.
Read the COVID-19 guidelines here.
For those that can’t view the exhibition in-person, view the collection online here. And lookout for a self-guided 3D tour starting Nov. 1 here.
Beethoven in Noon Concert today
Shinkoskey Noon Concert: Beethoven’s Chamber Music For Strings, Recital Hall, Ann E. Pitzer Center, Thursday, Oct. 15, 12:05 p.m. to 1 p.m., free, online via Youtube
- The concert presents a small ensemble featuring violist, Cassandra Lynne Richburg playing the viola, and two UC Davis lecturers in music— Dagenais Smiley playing the violin, and Susan Lamb Cook, playing the cello.
- Learn more here.
Next week, Shinkoskey Noon Concert: Goldberg Variations, Recital Hall, Ann E. Pitzer Center, Thursday, Oct. 22, 12:05 p.m. to 1 p.m., free, online via Youtube.
- Tune in as pianist and UC Davis lecturer, Marilyn Swan plays Johann Sebastian Bach’s Goldberg Variations (Complete).
- For more info, click here. If you miss the concert, the video will be posted here.
UC Davis Theatre Festival play, 'This Is How It Happened,' on tap
Register now for today and tomorrow’s live-streamed performance. A ripped-from-the-headlines, one-act play about race, police and friendship examines the search for truth after a white police officer kills a black man. “This Is How It Happened,” by Sacramento native Anthony D’Juan is being presented by Catalyst: A Theatre Think Tank through the UC Davis Department of Theatre and Dance. Free performances will be live-streamed free on Oct. 15 and 16 at 5 p.m.
“Although D’Juan wrote this piece in 2015, ‘This Is How It Happened’ could not be more applicable to the issues we are facing today in our society,” said director Lyndsay Burch, associate artistic director of Sacramento’s B Street Theatre. “D’Juan has crafted incredibly rich, relatable, and complex characters who draw the audience in and leave them asking important questions. After viewing this play, I believe audience members will be inspired to look at their own behavior and examine ways that they can be a part of creating positive change.”
For details about access to the play and other events, visit catalyst3t.com.
To learn more about the unique approach of this upcoming performance, check out this local television (Fox 40) interview featuring D’Juan himself.
The de Young Open exhibition features hundreds of Bay Area artists
Head to de Young museum to view all 877 works in a salon inspired presentation — the walls covered with art from top to bottom — or view the artworks in the comfort of your home in this web gallery. The de Young Open exhibition will be on display until Jan. 3, 2020. Learn more about COVID-19 guidelines here. Plan your trip to the museum by purchasing a ticket here.
UC Davis professor takes part in 'Angels in America' benefit
Associate Professor Margaret Laurena Kemp was part of the distinguished ensemble reading scenes from Tony Kushner’s Pulitzer Prize-winning epic “Angels in America” organized to benefit the Foundation for Aids Research, or amfAR’s, Fund to Fight COVID-19. The performance was broadcast on Oct. 8 and the free 60-minute livestream is available on Broadway.com’s YouTube channel. Learn more here.
The benefit was featured in The New York Times.