EXHIBITIONS BY UC DAVIS’ NELSON GALLERY HIGHLIGHT BREADTH OF THE FINE ARTS COLLECTION

19TH CENTURY JAPANESE WOODBLOCK PRINTS

DATES: from September 28th to December 10th. Opening Night is Thursday September 28th from 6 to 8pm
WHERE: at the Entryway Gallery of the Richard L. Nelson Gallery, UC Davis, Room 125 of the Art Building

Japanese culture was discovered by Westerners in the 19th Century. Its brilliant sense of design and display had an enormous influence in the US and Europe on clothing, ceramics, furniture, and the fine arts. These works, made around the time of the opening of Japan, were not so much examples of high-art printmaking technique as lessons in how even everyday design could be exquisite and timeless if developed with sophistication and care. These were inexpensive prints that illustrated traditional tales from literature, opera and travel lore.

“These four pieces are incredibly stylized, beautiful and highly informative about a culture largely unknown to contemporary Americans,” says Nelson Gallery Director and Curator Renny Pritikin.

The exhibition is open Monday through Friday from 11 to 5.

THE OMNIVORE’S DILEMMA AS REPRESENTED IN ART

DATES: SEPTEMBER 11TH TO DECEMBER 10TH
WHERE: BUEHLER ALUMNI CENTER

Michael Pollan's widely influential new book, The Omnivore's Dilemma, has been selected for the fall 2006 Campus Community Book Project (http://occr.ucdavis.edu/bookproject.html). As part of a wide array of UC Davis projects connected with this theme, the Nelson Gallery staff has selected works from the Fine Arts Collection to show how food is a recurring theme in the visual arts. Work is included by Wayne Thiebaud, Joseph Yoakum and several others.

“The book traces out the impact of the gargantuan food-industrial complex on our society, the insinuation of corn products and byproducts into unimaginable nooks and crannies of our lives, and the near impossibility of establishing a diet that is free of corporate manipulation,” says Renny Pritikin, Nelson Gallery director. The dozen works in this exhibition counter the experience of food as industrial product by illustrating a personal and particular relationship with what we consume both literally and visually.

The Buehler is open Monday through Friday 8-5, Saturday 9-4, and Sunday 10-3

Digital images of both shows are available. Please contact Torreya Cummings at 530-752-8500 or tjcummings@ucdavis.edu