If a famous artist makes and markets a hundred saltshakers, is it art or commerce? One of the defining issues in art of the last hundred years has been the relationship among the art object, the collector, the art institution, the artist and the larger social reality of commerce. San Francisco collectors Lawrence Banka & Judith Gordon loan dozens of pieces of Merch Art for this first-ever exhibition. They focus on the more accessible side of the art market, collecting inexpensive work by the most notable artists of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries that was made for museum shops and other charitable purposes.

“It seemed a whimsical way to participate in a market otherwise closed to us by virtue of the astronomical prices these artists command,” write Banka and Gordon.

From puzzles to wine labels, Christmas ornaments to golf balls, Merch Art covers the full gamut of how art can be incorporated into everyday merchandise. Works included in the exhibition by such artists as Alexander Calder, Joseph Beuys, Damien Hirst, David Hockney, Jenny Holzer, Jeff Koons, Pablo Picasso, Robert Rauschenberg, Cindy Sherman, Andy Warhol, and many more.

A catalogue will be published with color illustrations and with essays by Banka and Gordon, as well as Nelson Gallery director Renny Pritikin and UC Davis art historian Blake Stimson.

The Nelson Gallery is located in Room 124 of the Art Building on the UC Davis Campus. For further information and images please contact Katrina Wong at nelsongallery@ucdavis.edu